LEO XIII

All Catholics should do all in their power to cause the constitutions of states and legislation to be modeled on the principles of the true Church.

Certain forms of property must be reserved to the state, since they carry with them an opportunity of domination too great to be left to private individuals without injury to the community at large.

If the laws of the state are openly at variance with the laws of God—if they inflict injury upon the Church—... then indeed it becomes a duty to resist them, a sin to render obedience.

Inciting to revolution is treason, not only against man, but also against God.

Inequality of rights and power proceeds from the very Author of nature, from whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named.

It is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual, either to disregard all religious duties, or to hold in equal favor different kinds of religion.

It must not be supposed that the Church so concentrates her energies on caring for souls as to overlook things which pertain to mortal and earthly life.

Labor which is too long and too hard and the belief that pay is inadequate not infrequently give workers cause to strike and become voluntarily idle. This evil, which is frequent and serious, ought to be remedied by public authority, because such interruption of work inflicts damage not only upon employers and upon the workers themselves, but also injures trade and commerce and the general interests of the State

Liberty belongs only to those who have the gift of reason.

The Church ... has always reproved the doctrines and condemned the men that rebel against the legitimate [secular] authority.

The main principle and foundation of liberalism is the rejection of divine law.

The main tenet of Socialism, namely the community of goods, must be rejected without qualification, for it would injure those it pretends to benefit, it would be contrary to the rights of man, and it would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonwealth.

The liberty of thinking and of publishing whatever one likes ... is the fountain-head of many evils.

To despise legitimate authority, no matter in whom it is invested, is unlawful; it is rebellion against God's will.

Wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage earner.

Free enterprise and the market economy mean war; socialism and planned economy mean peace. We must plan civilization or we must perish.

Workers are not to be treated as slaves; justice demands that the dignity of human personality be respected in them

Every man has a right by nature to possess property as his own.

Inasmuch as the Socialists seek to transfer the goods of private persons to the community at large, they make the lot of all wage earners worse, because in abolishing the freedom to dispose of wages, they take away from them by this very act the hope and the opportunity of increasing their property and of securing advantages for themselves.

It is gratifying that societies of this kind [labor unions], composed either of workers alone or of workers and employers together, are being formed everywhere, and it is truly to be desired that they grow in number and in active vigor.

Neither capital can do without labor, nor labor without capital.

The maternal love of the Catholic Church embraces all people. As you know, venerable brother, the Church from the beginning sought to completely eliminate slavery, whose wretched yoke has oppressed many people.

In the presence of so much suffering, the condition of slavery, in which a considerable part of the great human family has been sunk in squalor and affliction now for many centuries, is deeply to be deplored; for the system is one which is wholly opposed to that which was originally ordained by God and by nature. The Supreme Author of all things so decreed that man should exercise a sort of royal dominion over beasts and cattle and fish and fowl, but never that men should exercise a like dominion over their fellow men.

[The U.S. Church] would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.

We are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some "Americanism." But if by this name are to be understood certain endowments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to various other nations, and if, moreover, by it is designated your political condition and the laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take exception to the name. But if this is to be so understood that the doctrines which have been adverted to above are not only indicated, but exalted, there can be no manner of doubt that our venerable brethren, the bishops of America, would be the first to repudiate and condemn it as being most injurious to themselves and to their country. For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.