Three or four Christmases

Just a few days ago, a friend gave me two booklets published in the early 1930s by the Foment de Pietat Catalana, founded in 1909 by Eudald Serra i Buixó. And this wasn't just any year: it was the year of the Tragic Week. The two volumes I'm referring to contain the encyclicals Rerum Novarum (1891) of Leo XIII and Fortieth Year –better known as Restoration of social order– of Pius XI (1931). The translation is done in a standardized but at the same time archaic Catalan; that of Rerum Novarum It's from 1933, and the one from Fortieth Year From 1931. In the 1930s, amidst the global economic crisis and the rise of totalitarianism, these encyclicals gained prominence in the European social and political debate. They could be interpreted as a kind of third way between liberal capitalism, which the 1929 crisis had profoundly discredited, and communism, which was advancing as a radical alternative and which the Church considered incompatible with its principles. In this turbulent context, the reception of Catholic social doctrine was diverse and often contradictory.

Some interpreted Rerum Novarum as the doctrinal foundation of a Christian social model that defended labor justice, fair wages, and state intervention to correct market abuses. The publication of Fortieth Year In 1931, this interpretation was consolidated. Using different language, Pius XI updated Leo XIII's message, denouncing the concentration of capital and the dehumanization of labor. He rejected collectivist socialism and reaffirmed private property as a natural right, but subordinated to the common good. One of the encyclical's central proposals—the corporate organization of society into professional and intermediate bodies—received an ambivalent reception. For democratic Catholic movements, it represented a modern and balanced alternative. However, authoritarian regimes of National Catholic inspiration, such as Portugal or later Francoist Spain, interpreted corporatism as doctrinal justification for hierarchical and pseudo-democratic structures. Nevertheless, caution is needed when oversimplifying those times. On June 4, 1931, the newspaper The conquest The book by Ramiro Ledesma, founder of the JONS, bore this slogan on its cover: "Long live Fascist Italy! Long live Soviet Russia! Long live Hitler's Germany! Long live the Spain we will create! Down with bourgeois and parliamentary democracies!"This was written on June 4, 1931: it refers, therefore, to the Spanish Republic, not to the much later Franco regime. The strange succession of cheers and exclamation marks was more coherent then than it seems today. The USSR and Nazi Germany had in common, among many other things, their rejection of parliamentary democracy and Christianity.

For many people, Christmas ninety years ago—to use a round number—was probably unlike any other. The tension between liberal democracies and totalitarian regimes of the right or left was already beginning to emerge, and Leo XIII's encyclical didn't fit with either. Christianity was going through a difficult period, which makes his writing all the more meritorious and visionary. Manifest Emmanuel Mounier's 1936 work, which today is considered by some to be of a certain left-wing perspective, was a significant development. However, things changed radically after the end of World War II. In May 1950, the Frenchman Robert Schuman proposed a trade union between recent enemies, which ultimately became the European Union. This would not have been possible without the courage of the German Konrad Adenauer and the Italian Alcide De Gasperi. Christmas 1950 was very different from Christmas 1940: the three most important founders of modern Europe were practicing Catholics and viewed European reconciliation as a project with a strong Christian ethical foundation.

Perhaps interpreting certain phenomena of popular culture somewhat hastily, some believe that this Christmas of 2025 is marked by a supposed resurgence of Catholic spirituality. If our health holds, we can talk about this resurgence in ten or fifteen years. Some events unfold in hours, or even minutes; others take place over months; still others, over years; and finally, some require the perspective of decades, or even centuries—Montserrat commemorated its first millennium this year. This doesn't mean that nothing is happening. It is happening, and it has much to do with the exhaustion of a world that some young people, I don't know how many, no longer perceive as their own.