''Quamquam pluries'' is an

encyclical An encyclical was originally a circular letter sent to all the churches of a particular area in the ancient Roman Church. At that time, the word could be used for a letter sent out by any bishop. The word comes from the Late Latin (originally fr ...

Saint Joseph Joseph (; el, Ἰωσήφ, translit=Ioséph) was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who, according to the canonical Gospels, was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus. The Gospels also name some brothers ...

Pope Leo XIII Pope Leo XIII ( it, Leone XIII; born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci; 2 March 1810 – 20 July 1903) was the head of the Catholic Church from 20 February 1878 to his death in July 1903. Living until the age of 93, he was the second-ol ...

. It was issued on August 15, 1889 in

Saint Peter's Basilica The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican ( it, Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano), or simply Saint Peter's Basilica ( la, Basilica Sancti Petri), is a church built in the Renaissance style located in Vatican City, the papal ...

in Rome.

Saint Joseph

Leo XIII presented St. Joseph as a model at a time when the world and the Church were wrestling with the challenges posed by modernity. With the encyclical ''Quamquam pluries'', Leo XIII was the first pope to draw the lines of a theology of Saint Joseph, with clearly defined titles that fit into the history of

salvation Salvation (from Latin: ''salvatio'', from ''salva'', 'safe, saved') is the state of being saved or protected from harm or a dire situation. In religion and theology, ''salvation'' generally refers to the deliverance of the soul from sin and its ...

, of human redemption, both at the level of the

incarnation Incarnation literally means ''embodied in flesh'' or ''taking on flesh''. It refers to the conception and the embodiment of a deity or spirit in some earthly form or the appearance of a god as a human. If capitalized, it is the union of divinit ...

, as husband of

Mary Mary may refer to: People * Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name) Religious contexts * New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below * Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...

and father of

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and relig ...

, and at the level of the

Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chri ...

's life, as its natural protector. The pope stated the challenges facing the Church and urged Catholics to pray to Saint Joseph, as the patron of the Church:

The special motives for which St. Joseph has been proclaimed Patron of the Church, and from which the Church looks for singular benefit from his patronage and protection, are that Joseph was the spouse of Mary and that he was reputed the Father of Jesus Christ. From these sources have sprung his dignity, his holiness, his glory. ...Thus in giving Joseph the Blessed Virgin as spouse, God appointed him to be not only her life's companion, the witness of her maidenhood, the protector of her honour, but also, by virtue of the conjugal tie, a participator in her sublime dignity.Pope Leo XIII. "Quamquam pluries", §3, Libreria Editrice Vaticana
/ref>

Labor as a vocation

Leo was concerned with the industrial capitalism of the end of the nineteenth century and its treatment of workers. According to D. Stephen Long, Pope Leo "viewed labor not as a mere commodity subject to free competition, but as a dignified vocation."Long, D. Stephen. ''Divine Economy'', Routledge, 2002
Referring to Saint Joseph, Pope Leo wrote, " set himself to protect with a mighty love and a daily solicitude his spouse and the Divine Infant; regularly by his work he earned what was necessary for the one and the other for nourishment and clothing" Pope Leo saw the family as the foundation of Christianity and society, therefore, a wage sufficient to support the family was essential. Long explains that the Holy Family provides an example of the

dignity of labor The dignity of labour is the philosophy that all types of jobs are respected equally, and no occupation is considered superior and none of the jobs should be discriminated on any basis. Regardless of whether one's occupation involves physical wor ...

and the obligation of the employer to provide a living-wage. Leo opposes both capitalism's infringement on the family and socialism's call for common ownership. It is a subject Leo would expand upon two years later in ''

Rerum novarum ''Rerum novarum'' (from its incipit, with the direct translation of the Latin meaning "of revolutionary change"), or ''Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor'', is an encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII on 15 May 1891. It is an open letter, pa ...

''. The pope then prescribed that during October, a prayer to Saint Joseph be added to the

Rosary The Rosary (; la, , in the sense of "crown of roses" or "garland of roses"), also known as the Dominican Rosary, or simply the Rosary, refers to a set of prayers used primarily in the Catholic Church, and to the physical string of knots or ...

"Prayer to St. Joseph after the Rosary", USCCB
/ref> and granted an indulgence of seven years and seven Lents for each such act; the prayer remains enriched with a partial indulgence in the current '' Enchiridion Indulgentiarum''.

References

External links

Vatican website: ''Quamquam pluries''
{{Authority control Saint Joseph (husband of Mary) 1889 documents 1889 in Christianity August 1889 events Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII

Saint Joseph

Labor as a vocation

See also

References

External links