Catholic Political Economy, Social Reconstruction, and the Irish World, 1880-1930
Patrick Doyle (University of Limerick)
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the emergence and popularization of the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching. With the publication of the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, Pope Leo XIII invited Catholics to think about material as well as spiritual matters related to the society and the economy. In short, it set out a prescription for a third way between capitalism and its opposite, socialism.
The encyclical was rich in ideas, but also proposed some guidelines for the way that Catholics should act in the world. The encyclical discussed issues such as trade unionism, private property, the rights and duties of labour and capital, and the ideal of the living wage. For Catholics, both clergy and laity, the encyclical was at once energizing and contentious, sparking a robust debate about the extent to which Catholics should devote attention and energy to reforming economic relationships and institutions.
This paper examines ways in which the moral reform of capitalism was conceived, circulated, and received by a transnational diaspora of Irish Catholics. This Catholic diaspora included an influential cohort of intellectuals and knowledge producers who were connected through a wide array of sites including universities, continental colleges, social movements and diplomatic circles. Intellectuals in this network were just as likely to be influenced by Fabian socialism as they were by the teachings of Aquinas.
The paper’s aims are twofold. First, by focusing on contentious issues such as what constituted a ‘living wage’, and questions of land ownership and use, this paper will show the way in which Catholic Social teaching was developed and communicated by some of its Irish proponents. Second, it sets out to sketch out certain aspects of what made up an emergent, yet coherent, project of Catholic political economy that aimed to ameliorate the excesses of capitalism and carry out the work of ‘social reconstruction’.
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