Obviously to get there we'd need several different pods before hand (socialists don't try to secularize, Mussolini never takes power, the Papacy still controls Rome, etc), but assuming that all the necessary events were to have happened, were there any candidates for Pope in the late 1930's who had Socialist sympathies? What I had in mind were that he'd condemn both capitalism and state-atheist communism while supporting Catholic trade unions. Were there any significant otl figures in the Church at the time who in this tl could've been elected as a pro-worker Pope?
AHC: Socialist Pope
- Thread starter Kaiser Tito
- Start date
Chapman
Donor
I like this idea but I have no truly useful knowledge to offer. Based on a very quick Google search/reading of a few Wikipedia pages, though, I would find it very funny if some POD(s) led to a Pope Michael O'Flanagan. O'Flanagan was apparently a Roman Catholic priest, an avowed Socialist, and a dedicated Irish Republican (as a side note, there's never been an Irish Pope either) who was actually suspended from the priesthood for his views. He died in 1942 just before his 66th birthday.
Don't know how you make a world where he could become Pope, but if someone could do it, that'd be cool.
Don't know how you make a world where he could become Pope, but if someone could do it, that'd be cool.
I once heard him preach live about the economic injustices that wealthy countries inflict upon poor countries. He actually sounded pretty firebrand about it all.
That said, Catholic economic teaching can best be thought of as left-wing Christian Democracy(in fact the roots of Christian Democracy are explicitly Catholic), and I doubt you'd ever be able to get it much further left than that. Socialism is likely to always be too militantly secular for Catholic tastes, and too wedded to favouring state institutions(eg. in education) over private ones.
You'd probly need the USSR to not implment state athiesm and instead stop at separation between church and state.
You can't get a self-described Socialist Pope with any PoD after the publication of Rerum Novarum, the encyclical that outlines most of Catholic economic/social teaching. This encyclical, to give a TL;DR, condemns Marxist socialism on the basis of "private property is an inherent natural right," but also defends the right of workers to organize and calls for a living wage. After that encyclical is published, you cannot get any self-described socialist promoted to the ranks of bishop, let alone the College of Cardinals.
OP's exact words, indeed, already include the OTL Popes.
Literally Leo XIII.
But let's maybe be a bit more ambitious. Is it possible to have a Pope who favors revolutionary activity to implement such a "third way" economic system? Unfortunately, this is also tough, because the Papacy for much of the nineteenth century favored reactionary monarchies as a way of shielding itself from the possibility of bourgeois revolution. So you'd need a Pope who sees no future in cooperation with established monarchies and agitates for uprisings against them to create a just and Catholic social order--something kind of like theocratic Iran.
Something like fascism, but much more overtly Catholic, might also fit the bill. If Mussolini were a devout Catholic, perhaps...
OP's exact words, indeed, already include the OTL Popes.
Literally Leo XIII.
But let's maybe be a bit more ambitious. Is it possible to have a Pope who favors revolutionary activity to implement such a "third way" economic system? Unfortunately, this is also tough, because the Papacy for much of the nineteenth century favored reactionary monarchies as a way of shielding itself from the possibility of bourgeois revolution. So you'd need a Pope who sees no future in cooperation with established monarchies and agitates for uprisings against them to create a just and Catholic social order--something kind of like theocratic Iran.
Something like fascism, but much more overtly Catholic, might also fit the bill. If Mussolini were a devout Catholic, perhaps...
Perhaps rather than embracing the status quo or violent revolutions, perhaps this pope could embrace Catholics electing social-democracies but support violence only when defending against fascism and totalitarianism.
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Emmanuel Célestin Suhard, Cardinal and Archbishop of Paris, father of the worker-priests movement (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Célestin_Suhard).
Pierre-Marie Gerlier, Cardinal Primate of France and Archbishop of Lyon, was a supporter too (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Marie_Gerlier).
George Mundelein, Cardinal and Archibishop of Chicago, was a strong supporter of trade unions (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mundelein).
Pierre-Marie Gerlier, Cardinal Primate of France and Archbishop of Lyon, was a supporter too (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Marie_Gerlier).
George Mundelein, Cardinal and Archibishop of Chicago, was a strong supporter of trade unions (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mundelein).
Were there any likely papal names or was that something that's picked randomly?
No, there were not openly pro-socialist names among papabili. Due the forced-atheism many socialist regimes imposed this position is understandable. The Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno of 1931 clearly condemned Communism, Nazism and “unrestricted” Capitalism as incompatible with Catholicism. There were important Cardinals and even papabili, like Elia Dalla Costa and Giacomo Lercaro, who worked to establish a dialogue with Communists, opposed Fascism and promoted a “pro-poor” Church but nevertheless they were critical of Communism. Mundelein, Suhard and Gerlier were not papabili but they were pretty high in Church hierarchy. Below them, among priests and bishops there were many of them, sometimes so pro-socialism to be reputiated by the same Church: for example, Marc Sangnier and Abbè Pierre in France, Romolo Murri in Italy and Thomas Hagerty in America.
I was referring to the name that a Pope uses after being elected. As for the lack of openly socialist papobiles (I'm assuming that's what you meant by papobili), the goal was to just throw in as many pods as are available to push the church towards socialism then pick out socialist cardinals, bishops, or any other well-known in the church who'll be voted into the papacy in the alternate late 1930's (38? 39? Butterflies are difficult to anticipate when messing with a position's succession of membership).
noun: a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
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Aloísio Lorscheider of Brazil was a communist and liberation theologian. IOTL he was considered for the 1978 conclave and was the preferred candidate of the eventual John Paul I. In a timeline where JPI lives longer, Lorscheider would be his likely successor. He’d also be a frontrunner if JPII was killed in 1981.
The closest you can get is Alosio Lorschedier of Brazil, who as Oppo said was considered a candidate in both of the 1978 conclaves. Lorschedier was certainly one of the most left wing cardinals in papal history, and possibly the most due to his avowed sympathies with liberation theology, which was from what I’ve read is Christian Socialism. He would certainly anger conservatives to a ridiculous extent. Marcel Lefebvre, who was excommunicated IOTL for going against JPII, who he didn’t consider conservative enough split from the church with the SSPX. ITTL I can see more folks going to the SSPX, though it’s very unlikely it makes a dent in the Catholic Church’s support. I can imagine Lorschedier being very popular in Latin America and Africa who love his anti-poverty stances and radical message while being disliked in western countries for his liberation theology. Asia and Eastern Europe I have no clue what he’d be viewed as. It’s just hard to have him be Pope as he was a left wing radical. Maybe if South America has a worse history. Chilean Civil War after OTL’s coup attempt as an example he’d be able to convince the cardinalate he could deal with the problems presented.
Another interesting possibility is Karl Marx never writes the Communist Manifesto and develops the idea of communism. This would leave a power vacuum for left wing political thought that could be replaced by Christian Socialism. Pope Leo XIII IOTL condemned unfettered capitalism in favor of distributionism, which ranges from Christian social democracy, espoused by Leo XIII too a form of qausi libertarian socialism espoused by Dorothy Day. So it’s not impossible for Christian Socialism to appeal to poor folks all over the world preaching God and economic justice with socialism not being considered atheistic.
Another interesting possibility is Karl Marx never writes the Communist Manifesto and develops the idea of communism. This would leave a power vacuum for left wing political thought that could be replaced by Christian Socialism. Pope Leo XIII IOTL condemned unfettered capitalism in favor of distributionism, which ranges from Christian social democracy, espoused by Leo XIII too a form of qausi libertarian socialism espoused by Dorothy Day. So it’s not impossible for Christian Socialism to appeal to poor folks all over the world preaching God and economic justice with socialism not being considered atheistic.
dcharles
Banned
I was just about to say something about Rerum Novarum.
Here's a link to the wiki on the work, although it's worth reading in its' entirety.
