alt Hacker NewsThis sounds like a whiggish progressive distortion of history.
First, the Church isn't in the business of policy. The Church recognizes the distinction between secular and religious authority, and indeed, it is the origin of that distinction, from which the exaggerated liberal separation of Church and State comes from (you won't find this distinction outside of Christianity, and indeed it makes no sense outside of that context). The Church will advise or comment or respond to policies as a moral authority, but policy as such does not belong to its scope.
Second, Catholic Social Teaching didn't materialize out of thin air. It is a culmination and explicit formulation of millennia of teaching. The industrial, political, and economic upheavals of the modern era are what motivated this explicit formulation.
Third, I wonder what you consider as "reactionary" here. The term itself is an incredibly loaded and condescending progressive term and takes for granted the correctness of the progressive view. The Church has been consistent in its teaching. It does not adapt to what is fashionable or to ideological fallout (even if particular prelates may show signs of doing so).
> This sounds like a whiggish progressive distortion of history.
Proceeds to argue that the Catholic Church is not in the business of policy, when it ran an actual, sizeable _nation state_ all the way to 1870 and in fact was extremely pissy when it was taken from them. And you call me distorting? Lol. They are in the business of policy, they've always been.
Dude, I'm from a city that was directly ruled by popes for centuries. We've dealt with all that rubbish over and over, Gelasius' swords etc etc. The reality is that the institution does what it does in order to survive and maintain as much power and influence as possible, by any means necessary. They will find ways to justify anything and its opposite, because theology is just a literary game.
Rerum novarum was an attempt to maintain power and influence in a situation where their power system was fundamentally challenged (or unmasked, some would say). It remained a niche and largely ignored effort all the way to Council II. For all the effort of some local clergy, most of the real powerbrokers in the Catholic Church still don't give two shits about redistribution and social justice, and never will.