Social Justice

94—Understanding Postmodern “Social Justice”—Darel Paul | Catholic Culture https://t.co/n9GfjTbuSp

— James Matthew Wilson (@JMWSPT) December 22, 2020

94—Understanding Postmodern “Social Justice”—Darel Paul | Catholic Culture https://t.co/n9GfjTbuSp

— James Matthew Wilson (@JMWSPT) December 22, 2020

Red Flags

DOCAT, “spicy peppercorns” and the Pope’s dream
An interview with Bernhard Meuser, editor of the original German edition of DOCAT.

DOCAT. Will it help or confuse?

Given the incomplete state of Catholic Social Teaching, I guess the latter.

Do Christians have a political identity?

That is, does membership in a political community have any moral relevance?

There should be an ordering of our actions based on the good of the political community -- modern Catholic "social justice" proponents may even agree that there is an order of charity. But there will be disagreements in our judgment of particulars: what is to be considered a community, whether this group of people is a community, whether this community has the same group identity as another, and so on.

What is to be done in the absence of any real membership?

Social Justice is Legal Justice

What Exactly Is Social Justice? by Carrie Gress
Pope Pius XI Defined the New Virtue, Focusing on the Common Good, in 1931

Social Justice Isn't What You Think It Is by Michael Novak and Paul Adams, Encounter Books

Parts of it may actually be good even though Novak is a liberal, i.e. a supporter of capitalism.

Correction from a NeoCath

Fr. Schall gives an approval of Michael Novak's latest on Catholic social teaching: Crisis: What “Social Justice” Really Means by Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.

Thomistica.net: Taparelli's magnum opus available from La Civiltà Cattolica

Taparelli is perhaps best remembered (if at all) for his contribution to the concept of subsidiarity and for coining the term “social justice” (giustizia sociale). His understanding of social justice is not exactly the same as our contemporary notion of it. Thomas Burke (one of the few people who write about Taparelli in English — Thomas Behr is another) has this to say about Taparellian social justice:

It is one of the ironies of history that the quintessentially “liberal” idea of “social justice,” as it was to become (in American terminology), should have been originated by an ardent conservative … Unlike the conception of social justice generally accepted in our society at the present time, which is socialist and difficult, if not impossible, to harmonize with our ordinary conception of justice, Taparelli’s conception 1) is simply the ordinary and traditional conception of justice applied in a new area, namely the constitutional arrangements of society, 2) does not apply to states of affairs in society that could exist independently of human actions, 3) constitutes a defense of societal inequality, and 4) is conservative.

I will have to read Thomas Burke's paper.

Clarifications on the Political Common Good

Solidarity, subsidiarity, and principled sanity by Carl E. Olson (via Insight Scoop)

A lot of people have made use of a picture of Inigo Montoya from Princess Bride and the quotation, "You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means," with reference to some disputed term or other. I think it would be humorous to make one of these photos with "common good."



Is the definition of the common good (along with subsidiarity), as put forth by contemporary CST and used by Mr. Olson, helpful? Yes, but primarily with reference to the modern nation-state. He cites the Compendium: "The common good of society is not an end in itself; it has value only in reference to attaining the ultimate ends of the person and the universal common good of the whole of creation. " The political common good, as "traditionally" understood by Thomists and Aristotelians, is not the same as the instrumental good defined by John XXIII and adopted into contemporary CST. The common good, the good of the community, is an end in itself - desirable for its own sake and not merely as a means to an end desired for itself. This does not mean that it is not subordinate to a "higher" end or good, like the supernatural common good (and man's ultimate end), God Himself. The common good, as defined within contemporary CST, may be an instrumental good to the political common good, but it is not identical to the political common good:

The principle of the common good, to which every aspect of social life must be related if it is to attain its fullest meaning, stems from the dignity, unity and equality of all people. According to its primary and broadly accepted sense, the common good indicates “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily”.

This instrumental good is explained as such by proponents of the New Natural Law Theory, for example. And yet there is use of language usually associated with the traditional [definition of the] common good:

The common good does not consist in the simple sum of the particular goods of each subject of a social entity. Belonging to everyone and to each person, it is and remains “common”, because it is indivisible and because only together is it possible to attain it, increase it and safeguard its effectiveness, with regard also to the future. Just as the moral actions of an individual are accomplished in doing what is good, so too the actions of a society attain their full stature when they bring about the common good. The common good, in fact, can be understood as the social and community dimension of the moral good.

An explanation of how the common good is common, though it may have been better to explain how it is common or shared - not as belonging to them, like property (in which case common would be said in praedicando), but as a shared end. And in the next paragraph:

A society that wishes and intends to remain at the service of the human being at every level is a society that has the common good — the good of all people and of the whole person [347] — as its primary goal. The human person cannot find fulfilment in himself, that is, apart from the fact that he exists “with” others and “for” others. This truth does not simply require that he live with others at various levels of social life, but that he seek unceasingly — in actual practice and not merely at the level of ideas — the good, that is, the meaning and truth, found in existing forms of social life. No expression of social life — from the family to intermediate social groups, associations, enterprises of an economic nature, cities, regions, States, up to the community of peoples and nations — can escape the issue of its own common good, in that this is a constitutive element of its significance and the authentic reason for its very existence[348]

Can the second part of this section be harmonized with the first? If the common good is the "social and community [communal] dimension of the moral good [the life of virtue]" then is it the same as "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily"?

As for Fr. Barron's essay -- "Now in Catholic social theory, subsidiarity is balanced by solidarity, which is to say, a keen sense of the common good, of the natural and supernatural connections that bind us to one another, of our responsibility for each other." Solidarity may be identified with the virtue of social justice (or legal justice), or with civic friendship, or both, depending on, of course, its definition. The Compendium:

Solidarity is also an authentic moral virtue, not a “feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good. That is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all”[418]. Solidarity rises to the rank of fundamental social virtue since it places itself in the sphere of justice. It is a virtue directed par excellence to the common good, and is found in “a commitment to the good of one's neighbour with the readiness, in the Gospel sense, to ‘lose oneself' for the sake of the other instead of exploiting him, and to ‘serve him' instead of oppressing him for one's own advantage (cf. Mt 10:40-42, 20:25; Mk 10:42-45; Lk 22:25-27)”[419].

I've already written about subsidiarity (as well as the contemporary notion of common good) and how these terms probably are better understood as reactions to the growth of the modern nation-state and polities that are too big for their own good, and the concomitant political and economic centralization. This may have been a conscious formulation for the first theorists, but those currently presenting CST as a basis for seeking political solutions may be unaware of the original contextual background of the terms.

Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts when we consider the [political] community and its members? Is legal justice distinct from civic friendship? I will have to address these questions at some other time. At some point I will also have to rewrite the discussion of how one cannot talk about common good if a community is mostly absent and the potential for community must be developed first, addressing the need for a common culture and a single identity, one people. Taking the United States as one nation, or polity, is a problem, because the scale is too big and the relationship between all of its members to one another too tenuous for the most part. Talking about the common good (and subsidiarity and solidarity) when the current political order (taken broadly as to referring not only to the federal government but also the culture and social order), or constitution in the Aristotelian sense, mitigates against it.

In defense of the status quo

Conservatives and Social Justice
by Ryan T. Anderson

What else should one expect from AEI?

A critique of a recent essay by R. R. Reno giving suggestions as to how we would best help the poor: R. R. Reno's "Preferential Option for the Poor"  (from a link posted at FPR)

I can understand why those with families would wish to avoid living in poor areas. A universal precept that aone should move to such areas seems inappropriate. But we should do what we can to build up community and to live in solidarity with the poor, giving up luxuries that are not necessary (and may even interfere with progress in charity) and working for a more just political economy.

What can be done to improve the moral condition of poor areas, if they are beset by moral problems in addition to material poverty? The lack of fathers has had an impact, and government intervention and welfare has not done much.

Responsibilities of a migrant. And who owes land?

The right to migrate is not the same as the right to join a political community. I've speculated before that the right to migrate is joined in part to land and other natural resources being common goods. One has the right to move elsewhere in order to supply for their physical needs. As a consequence, they can settle there and establish some sort of community. Because of man by nature is ordered to living in community, he should first of all move in a group, not individually or with a family. If he seeks to join another group, then he should find one with which he already has some social ties and shares a common culture, and while his request to be with them should probably be granted out of hospitality (guest-hospitality of the Greeks or what not), it is nonetheless provisional. His acceptance does not mean that he is entitled to the full rights and benefits of citizenship.

I have also mentioned the responsibilities of a migrant in passing elsewhere. Off the top of my head, I am thinking primarily of the responsibility to adopt the culture of the host community (in so far as it is not forbidden by the natural law), and to embrace its mores and language, and to offer one's loyalty to the people and devotion to the common good. If his heart does not lie first of all with his host community, at the very least he should not expect to be considered one of its own, but to remain an outsider. If he desires to be a member of the host community, he owes out of justice complete participation in its economy, as the the network of economic exchanges from which he seeks to benefit is ordered to the good of the community (of the members who make up that community), and not to the good of another community. (Hence there is a moral dilemma for those who leave family behind in their native community and are obligated to provide them with financial support, plus whatever other obligations he owes to other members of his native community.)

If he remains an outsider, he may be morally free to send money home. And it may be that he is owed a family wage for his work, and not merely a wage that will support him individually. Still, does the host community have a right to decline him the right to participate in the economy? (So long as it provides him with some means to work and sustain himself?)

A tentative response to the question I raised here, "If secular governments are unwilling to part with the territory they control, even though land is a common good, then how can the right to move (for the sake of improving life) not be transformed into the right to immigrate?" It seems to me that the claim to land and so on should first be pressed in their native country, not in a foreign country. We can look at a concrete example, Mexico, and ask how many in Mexico are forced to leave and look for work elsewhere because of the lack of social justice in that country? Isn't it incumbent upon the Mexican government to satisfy the claim to land and such, before any other political community? And if the Mexican government fails to meet its obligation, forcing another political community to do so, then does that political community have the right to seek redress/compensation from the Mexican government?

(I ignore at the moment the complicity of U.S. companies, and by extension the Federal Government, in promoting social injustice in Mexico.)