Comment by toyg

> This sounds like a whiggish progressive distortion of history.

Proceeds to argue that the Catholic Church is not in the business of policy, when it ran an actual, sizeable _nation state_ all the way to 1870 and in fact was extremely pissy when it was taken from them. And you call me distorting? Lol. They are in the business of policy, they've always been.

Dude, I'm from a city that was directly ruled by popes for centuries. We've dealt with all that rubbish over and over, Gelasius' swords etc etc. The reality is that the institution does what it does in order to survive and maintain as much power and influence as possible, by any means necessary. They will find ways to justify anything and its opposite, because theology is just a literary game.

Rerum novarum was an attempt to maintain power and influence in a situation where their power system was fundamentally challenged (or unmasked, some would say). It remained a niche and largely ignored effort all the way to Council II. For all the effort of some local clergy, most of the real powerbrokers in the Catholic Church still don't give two shits about redistribution and social justice, and never will.