A Return to Rome

July is probably the worst time to visit but the Eternal City at its worst is still magical

Happy Fourth of July, all Americans and supporters of America! I remember the bicentennial celebrations of 1976 and here we are at the “bicentennial and a half” — or something.

I am enjoying the day off, lounging about, drinking coffee, and boning up on my ten words of Italian.

The Italian is because next week I’m off again to Roma. I have to pick up my British grandchildren in London, and, as is my custom, I am using them as an excuse to explore a bit first. This time I am visiting Rome for nine or ten days before flying to Heathrow. It should be a bit like my trip to Budapest in that it will be scorching hot, in the mid-90s Fahrenheit.

Another excuse I have for the trip is that I’m working on a new book about the “Two Leos,” Leo XIII and Leo XIV, and how their parallel lives shaped or will shape the development of Catholic social teaching.

We think of Pope Leo XIII as the pope of Rerum Novarum, the first big social encyclical, but he was actually far more than that.

Leo pioneered the Church’s response to the social and political forces that both transformed, and partly destroyed, much of Europe: the Industrial Revolution... the revolutionary nationalism that changed Europe from a quasi-feudal collection of fiefdoms into what we know today... political liberalism or libertarianism... critical Biblical studies... the renewed interest in Thomas Aquinas.

By taking the name of this illustrious predecessor, Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago signaled that he intends to walk in Leo XIII’s footsteps and confront the equally-monumental social and economic forces that are shaking our own societies.

These include mass migration and globalization, artificial intelligence, the whole gig economy, so-called surveillance capitalism, artificial methods of reproduction, and more.

I hope to write a “dual biography” of the two popes, but one that traces the development of Catholic social teaching as it struggles to chart a path to a more human future.

We or maybe just I tend to shrug off CST as just the pious boilerplate of bishops and academics, mere platitudes.

But when you really look at things historically, you see how the Church confronted truly destabilizing social and economic forces and tried to figure out whether and how to make peace with them.

As always, the world offers Christians a series of false dichotomies: empire or jingoistic nationalism, laissez-faire capitalism or totalitarian socialism.

With the light of Christ and an eye on the common good, the Church must discern the good and evil in complex realities, highlighting what is worthwhile and what must be rejected. We live in a fallen world in which wheat and weeds grow side by side. The Industrial Revolution was a Mordor-like wrecking ball that destroyed entire communities and ways of living… and yet it also undoubtedly led to an increase in living standards worldwide that benefited billions. Leo XIII thought long and hard about that.

Another complex social reality he had to confront was the rise of nationalism.