MAY THE FIRST, SAINT JOSEPH THE CRAFTSMAN

[Pre-55: Saints Philip and James, Apostles]

Month in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In his Communist Manifesto Karl Marx called on the workers of the world to unite in a worldwide class struggle. Just over 40 years later May 1st was chosen by socialists as International Workers' Day, or May Day: the celebration of the achievements of socialism in memory of the 1886 Chicago labor riots, popularly called the Haymarket Riots.

The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848 by Germans Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), was a declaration of war against western society and culture, a tract some 12,000 words in length that called for the working (or proletariat) class to forcibly overthrow the ruling (or bourgeoisie) class and produce a classless society.

This classless society would be attained after passing through a period characterized by a dispersed agrarian-based populace deprived of rights of property and inheritance and gathered into industrial armies that were governed by a State with a monopoly on credit, communication, transportation, and the instruments of production.

Marx vilified the proposition that capital and labor were complementary, vociferating instead that the two were constitutionally antagonistic. He argued that the internecine warfare waged by those who work for a wage upon those who possess capital and the means of production was an evolutionary step, the inevitable culmination of the history of the oppressors’ injustice inflicted on the oppressed.

In this manner communists furiously agitated ostensibly on behalf of the proletariat – i.e. in a perverse fashion that the Catholic Church and men of good will could never sanction, but only look upon with horror. The Marxists protested that they were protecting the afflicted, but they did so by denying men the honor owed them in their property, their reputation, and their life. Further, by exaggerating the excesses of the predominant social systems, they sought a means by which to eviscerate the existing edifices of society – religion, country, family – and replace them with a totalitarian, materialistic, and atheistic despotism. Communism was total war on God and all that proceeded from acknowledgement of the Deity.

Hoping to shore up support and increase its appeal, in 1884 the languishing Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions initiated a national campaign to introduce a mandatory eight-hour workday which, if not adopted, would become grounds for a national strike.

The strike commenced on May 1, 1886; over 350,000 workers from 1,200 factories participated. New York numbered 10,000 strikers and Detroit 11,000, but by far the largest turnout was Chicago’s 90,000 strikers.

On the third day of the Chicago strike, at the McCormick Reapers Works, police officers killed four participants and wounded several others while breaking up a fight between strikers and workers who had been sent to cross the picket line.

Later that day anarchists distributed fliers implying that the police murdered the strikers. The fliers announced a rally the next day at Chicago’s Haymarket Square. To the concern of the city’s mayor and the police force, one version of the flyer said, “Workingmen Arm Yourselves and Appear in Full Force!”

On May 4th the strikers converged on Haymarket Square. The police were there in strength, prepared for any contingency. The rally was uneventful, however, until August Spies, an immigrant German anarchist known for advocating political violence, took the stage to give a speech.

During Spies’ speech, his comrades distributed a flyer for the occasion written in English and German and titled “Revenge!” Its concluding sentiment ran as follows:

If you are men, if you are the sons of your grand sires, who have shed their blood to free you, then you will rise in your might, Hercules, and destroy the hideous monster that seeks to destroy you. To arms we call you, to arms.

As Spies was speaking, the police attempted to disperse the crowd. A scuffle ensued, during which someone threw a pipe bomb that immediately killed one police officer and injured many more, several of them mortally.

Without hesitation, the police opened fire on the crowd. Four strikers were killed in the ensuing riot, and five dozen police officers and well over a hundred on-lookers were injured. Several men, including Spies, were arrested.

The first encyclical of Pope Pius IX, Qui Pluribus, promulgated in 1846, was the initial Papal condemnation of the error of communism. Thus, even before Marx and Engel’s “scientific” articulation of communism the Catholic Church was doing battle with that modern terror that was utterly contrary to the natural law. Pius XII was one of several succeeding pontiffs who spoke to refute the false claims of communism and to remind men of the true solution to the world’s woes: not material success, not violent upheaval, and not atheism. What men of the world needed – what in fact they were obliged to do – was not to seek riches and comfort, not even to demand equality of opportunity, but to give themselves wholly to Almighty God, not only interiorly but in all their exterior works.

The ideal model for men in this capacity was to be St. Joseph. The foster-father of the Son of God was himself a poor man, though of noble descent; he possessed no material wealth, held no prospects for worldly advancement, did not aspire to directly refashion society through revolution. And he was reckoned a just man to whom the Son of God Himself was subject as to a father.

Pope Pius XI declared that St. Joseph to be the patron of the Universal Church. In 1936 Pope Pius proclaimed, “We place the vast campaign of the Church against the world of Communism under the standard of St. Joseph, her mighty protector.” Pius XI also gave the Church many allocutions, encyclicals, and speeches to combat the rapidly-spreading errors of the Marxist creed.[3] The most eloquent encyclical appeared in 1937, Divini Redemptoris, condemning atheistic communism. “This Apostolic See,” the Holy Father reminded the Church and the world, “knows that its proper and social mission is to defend truth, justice, and all those eternal values which Communism ignores or attacks.”

On May 1st, 1955, Pope Pius XII granted an audience to the Catholic Association of Italian Workers, whose members had gathered in Saint Peter’s Square to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their society by publicly renewing their commitment to the social doctrine of the Church. On that day the Pope instituted the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. The Pope assured his audience and the working people of the world that:

"You have beside you a shepherd, a defender and a father in Saint Joseph, the carpenter whom God in His providence chose to be the virginal father of Jesus and the head of the Holy Family. He is silent but has excellent hearing, and his intercession is very powerful over the Heart of the Saviour."