Greetings in the Name of the Lord, 

I know as Presbyterians we are not really supposed to care that much about the Pope, but even after writing something up in memory of the last Pope, I am already struck by some of what the new Pope is doing, and although it does not affect us directly, I think it is worth paying attention to as Christians in the United States.

As you may already be aware, Popes name themselves with an eye towards who they will seek to emulate from the past. Much has already been written about how the new Pope, by naming himself Leo XIV, is acknowledging a connection to Leo XIII. 

Now I am no scholar of Roman Catholicism, but what I have learned over the last week or so is that Leo XIII was most famous for an encyclical he wrote called rerum novarum. To fully understand the impact of this encyclical, it is important to understand the context in which it was written.

Leo XIII was pope from 1878 until 1903. During his tenure there was a great debate emerging between capitalism and communism. Today, communism tends to be a dirty word in the western world as a result of the cold war and the collapse of the USSR, but in the late 1800s it was very much in the middle of the western world's exploration of what systems would work best. It was a much more balanced debate in those days, when communism was purely ideological and had yet to be tested in any meaningful way (before its structural flaws were exposed) and capitalism had yet to garner many of the regulatory safeguards that now exist. 

Even though we are certainly familiar with both terms today, they embodied something that was significantly different from how most understand the terms today.  Both capitalism and communism had champions and both had critics across the Western World, and it was a pretty fierce debate. In many ways, it paralleled our current era in the fact that things could often be very polarized. In the late 1800s the question revovled around whether it was more important to produce capital and wealth (and the power it brought to the global stage for one's own nation) or was it more important to support workers rights and develop collective ownership.  Was there more power starting from the "bottom" (communism) or was there more power starting at the "top" (capitalism). It was hard to find much middle ground in those days.

In a major shift for the Roman Catholic Church, Leo XIII found a middle ground and staked his papacy right in the midst of it all. The rerum novarum encyclical stood for workers rights by advocating fair wages, unions and safer working conditions (central elements of communism) while at the same time maintaining a commitment to individual property rights and free enterprise (central elements of capitalism). This sounds pretty normal to us today, a very real world solution to the reality that existed, but at the time it was pretty bold, seen as a rejection of the extremes and the places where most people existed, calling the world into something new.  We owe Leo XIII a debt of gratitude for this understanding due to his courageous leadership through such heightened polarization and offering a tenable and meaningful middle way through it all.  

Leo the XIII was able to forge this new path by staying committed to the teachings of Christ, with an eye to caring for the marginalized and the poor and the dispossessed, in giving a voice to those who are most often voiceless. Compassion was at the core of his way through the polarization. With this, he was able to see the fallacy of the extremes, that true laissez-faire capitalism, when unregulated, did take advantage of the working class, while communism took away so much of what it meant to be a diverse, creative and nimble community. 

I am pretty sure that Leo XIV, the new pope, was thinking about this as he decided upon a name. I have to imagine the polarization of our moment, particularly here in the United States, his nation of birth, had to be part of the reason he decided to harken back to that particular Pope. Even though as Presbyterians we are not required to follow the Pope's lead, this move is one that should inspire us, inspire us to lead with courage to find a meaningful middle ground, critical of both extremes being offered, while rooting in ourselves in compassion for the most vulnerable around us, leading, as Christ encourages us, with Love.

In Peace, 

Mike