Das Gift des alten Europa und die Arbeiter der neuen Welt

© Ferdinand Schöningh

This is the first historical analysis which uses the newly accessible Inquisitorial sources to examine America’s influence on the way the nineteenth-century papacy confronted the social question. Leo XIII's famous encyclical, Rerum novarum, of 1891 presented the papacy’s own response to the socio-political questions raised by industrialization, thereby shaping Catholic social doctrine to this day. For the first time, the author here analyses the trials that substantially determined the Curia’s discussion on socialism and workers' associations in the 1880s, namely the cases of the Knights of Labour, Henry George, Edward McGlynn and Richard Burtsell.

Sabine SCHRATZ, Das Gift des alten Europa und die Arbeiter der neuen Welt Zum amerikanischen Hintergrund der Enzyklika Rerum novarum (1891), Paderborn et alibi 2010, 562 pages, hardcover, ISBN: 978-3-506-77032-5.