Letter: Papal `third way'
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Canon Wilkinson (letter, 24 November), is less than fair to the Roman Catholic tradition of social teaching which goes back to the encyclical Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII of 1891. Leo condemned both secular socialism and its denial of the right to private property, and an unregulated liberal laissez-faire capitalism, and enunciated an ideal of social justice which included a just and living wage. This is reasonably close to Mr Blair's "Third Way".
It was Leo, not Marx, who said in criticism of the capitalism of his time "that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the labouring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself." (Rerum Novarum, paragraph 2).
The "pro-socialist" pronouncements of some of the Anglican bishops signified approval for a socialism very different from the aggressively anticlerical socialism of the Continent, which Leo condemned. Indeed Anglican episcopal socialism was, in the rigorous sense of the word, as meaning the collective public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, hardly socialist at all.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments