the great question of our time, the social question, whose solution is dependent on faith, reason, revelation, and natural and Christian morality...

Fr. Dehon and “The Social Question” (Part 2)
In his biography “Leo Dehon and His Message,” Giuseppe Manzoni, SCJ, dates Dehon’s “social apostolate” from 1888 to 1908 – only twenty years of a much longer career.  But he opens the chapter of the same title by remarking:
As a young chaplain in the industrial city of Saint Quentin, Leo Dehon was moved by the social decay and his own apostolic zeal to become interested in the world of work.  This included apprentices, laborers, students and entrepreneurs.  From that time on, his goal was to find a just solution to the social question.  He made every effort to sensitize parish priests and seminarians about social problems so that they would leave their sacristies and go to the people. 
PictureLeo Harmel
So, even from his early priesthood in the 1870’s, Fr. Dehon was becoming exposed to what would later become known as “Social Catholicism.”  At this time he was starting a newspaper and organizing the St. Joseph Youth Club.  He started a “Workers Circle” for young apprentices and workers living far from home.   This group was part of the Catholic Circle Movement, begun in 1871 by Albert de Mun and Rene La Tour du Pin[1].  They wanted to create workers’ associations under the guidance of respected members of the Catholic middle class.  For three years, from 1874-76, Dehon took part in general assemblies of workers circles. 

It was at the first of these assemblies that he met Leo Harmel, devout Catholic owner of a textile mill in Val-des-Bois in northeastern France, which had become something of a (for the times) workers’ paradise, with limited hours, humane working conditions, provisions for workers’ retirement and education for their children, and leisure and worship opportunities.  Early Catholic social action efforts were quite paternalistic, but both Harmel and Dehon ultimately moved toward a more collaborative approach which encouraged the workers’ own leadership, unlike de Mun and La Tour du Pin.  They and Dehon eventually went their separate ways.

In 1876, Fr. Dehon was asked to speak to the seminarians at St. Sulpice on the social question.  The invitation was extended for several years, and other seminaries began to show interest, leading to the establishment of annual conferences at Val-des-Bois, and after they outgrew that venue, at St. John’s College.  Dehon took part in them regularly until they ended in 1901.  

After his decision to found a religious congregation, Fr. Dehon spent the years 1878 to 1888 immersed in that effort and the direction of St. John’s College, which his bishop had made a condition of his approval of the Congregation.  In 1888, he finally obtained the “decree of praise” from Rome he needed to proceed[2].  In September, he went to Rome to thank Pope Leo XIII for the decree.  There he received the Pope’s famous instruction “Preach my encyclicals.”  Rerum Novarum would not appear for almost three years, but at that point 27 of the 85 encyclicals Leo would eventually issue had already been promulgated.  Dehon would follow that command from that moment until Leo’s death twenty years later.

In January of the next year (the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution), Leo Dehon launched his magazine, “The Reign of the Sacred Heart in Souls and Society.”  In an early article, he wrote that “It is necessary that the veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was begun in the mystical life of souls, come down and enter into the social life of the world's peoples. It will bring the sovereign remedy to the cruel ills of our moral world.”  And these ills, he made clear, had one primary cause:  the atheistic State.
Christ, the benefactor of society, is held up by them as the enemy.  Open warfare has been declared on him.  He is pursued, hunted, chased from the schools, from the hospices, from the courts, from the cemeteries.  They would like to erase all mention of him from legislation and diplomacy.  They would even like to remove Christ from history and literature.
Two issues later, he turned to the struggle of workers and acknowledged the inroads made by socialism:
The Revolution overturned the Christian mode of living for laborers. It reduced the influence of the Church and curtailed the faith of the worker and of those who employ him.  The people are agitating to rediscover an equilibrium. The socialists proposed some useful measures, but on balance they have as their criterion of validity only the opinion of the crowd, changing, ignorant, and emotional; and as their means of action, they have only violence and strong-arm tactics.
PicturePope Leo XIII
While noting that The Church will be the “main factor in the recovery,” because it alone “has the full concept of justice and the secret of charity” without which “the lower, suffering classes will not make the best of their fate, nor will the wealthy and powerful be disposed to lend their aid to the disinherited,” he insists that the State and private initiative must also contribute.  Government must legislate rest on Sundays, regulate the work of women and children in factories and night work, reform inheritance laws and encourage workers' guilds and insurance.  Business needs to “attend to the moral well-being as well as to the temporal well-being of their workers… assist in works of moral teaching, education, relief, and insurance funds.  They must unite with their workers in cooperative associations.”  Finally, workers themselves must take initiatives and have their contributions valued.

In the December 1889 issue of The Reign, he again condemns socialism, which “represents the overturning of the order established by God.”   Religious faith and socialism he sees as “mutually exclusive expressions.”  Only “religion, and Catholicism in particular have enough authenticity to wrest [the worker] away from the seductive hopes of socialism.”  However, while the Church has an “essential role [in stopping] the rising wave of socialist democracy, its efforts must be protected against heartless and pitiless exploitation by capitalism.  It is incumbent upon the State to come to its aid through legislation protecting labor.”

In July 1891 there appeared an article in The Reign entitled “The Encyclical of May 15 on the Social Question.”  That was Rerum Novarum, the “long-awaited” and “longest…yet” teaching from Leo XIII on the rights and duties of capital and labor.  Dehon quotes the Pope’s statement of the problem and its solution, and adds his own summary of what created the problem: 
"The problem is not easy nor free from danger, but it is necessary, through prompt and effective measures, to come to the aid of the lower classes," which as a result of the destruction of the old guilds which protected them; and as a result of unbridled competition, of stock speculation, of the concentration of labor and wealth in a small number of hands, are in a state of "undeserved wretchedness."
Dehon approvingly notes the Pope’s “refutation” of socialism as a solution, as well as his insistence that
"A major error is the belief that the two classes are natural enemies.  Each has a driving need for the other; there can be no capital without labor, nor labor without capital.  The whole thrust of religious truths concerning the economy concerns the rapprochement between rich and poor, by reminding them of their reciprocal duties and, above all, those of justice (his emphasis).  The rich and the employers must not treat the worker as a slave, but must respect in him the dignity of man and that of the Christian.  Work, far from being shameful, brings honor to a person.  What is shameful is to use a person like a cheap instrument."
To this Dehon adds that “the truth is social harmony, not antagonism,” a principle to which he would adhere for the rest of his life.  He also stresses the papal declaration that “labor is the sole source from which the wealth of nations comes.”  What were Dehon's other "take-aways" from the encyclical?  A few other quotes illustrate what he saw as of central importance: 
"The State must particularly make itself the protector of the weak and the poor."

“Wages must not be insufficient for the worker's subsistence at a moderate level.  If he accepts harsher conditions out of necessity, it is a serious injustice."

"All of the works which are appropriate for relieving poverty and reconciling the classes...help remarkably in the solution: societies for mutual aid and assistance in case of accidents, organizations for children and adolescents, and (especially) workers’ guilds, which in themselves embrace almost all kinds of works." (again, his emphasis)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Former French military men and staunch royalists, but also well-intentioned social reformers.
[2] Still to come were struggles with two unsympathetic bishops, leading to what he called the “Consummatum Est” (the four month suppression of his congregation by Rome in 1893-4).