Sir William Blackstone

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With Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical “Rerum Novarum” being published in 1891, just two years before the 1893 economic depression, it’s quite appropriate that the new Pope has chosen the name Leo XIV, just before the event of another financial depression.

It’s fitting, because “Rerum Novarum” was at least partly written as an attempt to dismiss Henry George’s case in “Progress and Poverty: An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth …. The Remedy“, wherein George surgically demonstrates that regular financial collapse ensues directly from privatising land rent, as decried in the Leviticus injunction “The Land Shall Not Be Sold”.

Although “Rerum” was acclaimed by many Catholics, insofar as it was said to represent the interests of workers, it was a turgid and poorly-argued attempt that actually failed to do so by skirting around the crux of “Progress and Poverty”.

Henry George politely pointed this out in his “The Condition of Labor: An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII” as an immmediate response to the Pope’s encyclical.

Having gained access to Church records in Rome, the Australian historian, John Molony, confirmed that Henry George was indeed part of the inspiration for “Rerum Novarum” on its centenary in 1991 in his “The Worker Question“.

Molony is equally dismissive of Henry George’s case as was Pope Leo XIII, although Leo didn’t mention George’s name. Molony’s bibliography appears to suggest he did not read “Progress and Poverty”, but he does provide detailed accounts of the personalities involved in the rewrites of “Rerum”, and the careful sidesteps around the ills of private property in land, as presumably he would had it been possible also to privatise the air that we breathe. Molony notes that Jesuits were particularly on side with the encyclical, but he misrecords ‘Patrick’ Corrigan for New York’s Archbishop Michael Corrigan who alerted the Pope to what he considered to be the grave misdeeds of locals, Henry George and the popular and very supportive priest, Dr Edward McGlynn.

Regardless of how world economies now operate by inflating land prices moonward, the Church remains on the wrong side of history on the private property in land. As Henry George explained, workers and their families will accordingly continue to remain indebted and underpaid.

So, we await to see Leo XIV’s public reaction to the 2027 financial collapse. He has the opportunity to correct the Church’s misguided stance on the matter. Pope Francis has prepared the way for him in Laudato Si’.

Can a Catholic be a Georgist?