La Bourgeoisie Chretienne

Extract

The analysis of the present Catholic position in France, with its hopes and fears for the future, as presented by the Marquis d’Aragon in the January issue of Blackfriars was both interesting and inspiring. On one point however he was rather reticent. Certain it is that in large measure the apostasy of the working class in that country was due to the fact that quite a number of employers were practising Catholics. In their own circles, in their families and in all that concerned the practice of religious duties, they were without reproach. But this did not prevent them, with a few notable exceptions of whom the most glorious example was Leon Harmel, from being “amoral liberalists” in their treatment of the workers. Harmel, writing to a priest friend, described them thus: “They are little Louis XIVs, in their factories and in their towns. Their ideas go no further than the patronage, and the publication of new ideas for the education of the people, for popular initiative, and for devotion to the working class, seems monstrous to them.” How can one blame the workers for associating Catholicism and wage-slavery? The struggle of the C.F.T.C. (Christian Trade Union) to play its proper part in the relations between Capital and Labour in France is sufficient proof that Rerum Novarum found many stony hearts among French employers. The result of this was that apostasy which Pius XI termed the greatest scandal of the twentieth century.