How do the popes write social encyclicals anyway?
Church social teaching is traditionally defined as the application of universal moral principles to specific reality. It is a top-down deductive process. But even the earliest encyclicals like Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum in 1891 or Pius XI’s Quadragesimo anno in 1931 were not written in a vacuum. Those popes were concerned with the loss of the working classes to apparently anti-religious socialism, and they were also concerned with the fact that industrial capitalism treated those workers as merchandise and did not even provide them with sufficient salary so that their families could live a decent life. The popes in those days were not out on the streets with the impoverished people of Rome to experience their suffering first hand. Nor indeed were most of the bishops. But at least the bishops were hearing about those conditions from many of their pastors who lived among the poor, and the bishops for their part were sharing that experience with the pope. In other words there has always bee
