A lot of “experts” are getting bent out of shape over pretty
much anything Pope Francis says these days.
Take, for instance, his answer to somebody’s question as to whether he
might retire as Pope Benedict XVI did.
Pope Francis’s answer was to the effect that, sure, it’s possible. Immediately the pundits and commentators
started discussing papal retirement as if it were an established fact and was
scheduled for a few months from now. You
see the same thing every now and then when somebody asks whether it’s possible
that Queen Elizabeth II could abdicate.
Sure she could. Is it
likely? Hardly.
Getting back to the head of the Catholic Church and leaving
the head of the Church of England to her own devices, there are, broadly
speaking, two groups of Catholics who weigh in whenever Pope Francis does
something of great moment, e.g., where
he lives, the shoes he wears, what he has for lunch, where, and with whom — you
know, all those doctrinal issues so critical to the 1.2 billion Catholics he
shepherds.
Let’s call them “Group A” and “Group B,” and take a look at
their reaction to, say, Pope Francis’s call for redistribution. The labels liberal v. conservative, even
orthodox v. heterodox don’t really mean anything. This is because from an Aristotelian-Thomist
perspective, they’re all off-base to some degree.
Those in Group A claim that Pope Francis’s call for
redistribution couldn’t possibly be a solution to the growing wealth and income
gap. He would bankrupt the world, and
everybody would be worse off than before . . . if they managed to survive the
war that would follow.
Those in Group B claim that only redistribution is the
solution to the growing wealth and income gap . . . and everything else, for
that matter. Once the State
redistributes, all problems will be solved.
Just as they were in the Soviet Union and China. North Korea?
Cambodia? After all, private
individuals cannot be trusted to do the right thing, especially as other people
define it for them.
Okay, it’s time for a reality check. The fact is that if you look carefully at Catholic social teaching,
instead of just cherry picking to see if you can find what you most fear or
hope for, you will see something that all the “experts” seem to be
missing. They’ll see that people in both
Group A and Group B are partly in the right, all the while managing to be
completely in the wrong.
The simple fact is that a lot of commentators don’t realize
that Catholic social doctrine has two basic parts, only one of which is,
strictly speaking, social. As Leo XIII explained in Rerum Novarum, there is a double task involved when the social
order is badly structured and in need of reform. These can be stated briefly as:
1. Take care of individual needs now. This is charity, and must be voluntary, or it is not truly charity.
2. Organize to reform the system so that the causes of the
problems are removed. This is social justice.
Social justice is the particular virtue directed at the institutions of
the common good, not to any individual good.
There is a permitted exception to addressing the problem of meeting individual needs with charity, which Pope Leo XIII noted in § 22 of Rerum Novarum. When the situation is such that individual charity can’t or won’t handle a situation, then the State may levy additional taxes to redistribute a measure of wealth to keep people alive in a manner befitting the demands of human dignity until the “extreme case” passes.
It is important to note that redistribution of existing
wealth by the State is neither charity nor social justice. It gets “filed” under “distributive justice”
by default, since it is action by the State.
This, however, creates confusion, as it makes it sound as if “distributive
justice” is based on need, not proportionality of inputs.
State redistribution is something that (in my opinion) is
justified under the “principle of double effect.” The principle of double effect is an ethical
doctrine that originates in Aquinas’s analysis of a killing in self-defense in
the Summa Theologica.
We won’t get into self-defense, but content ourselves with
summarizing the principle. The principle
of double effect applies when carrying out an act that is ordinarily either
good or morally indifferent, but which has bad “side effects.” For example, surgery causes pain and
endangers the patient’s life, but the intent, to repair or remove a diseased or
injured organ, is good; surgery itself is morally neutral.
For an act to be morally licit (i.e., “allowed”) under the principle of double effect, four
conditions must be met:
1. The
act must either be good or morally indifferent, i.e., the act cannot be inherently or objective evil in and of
itself.
2. The
bad side effect must not be the means by which the good effect is achieved (i.e., it must be an actual side effect).
3. The
good effect must be what is intended.
The bad side effect must be unintended.
(This isn’t exactly the same
as #2.)
4. The
good effect must be at least as significant or important as the bad effect; i.e., the good must either equal or
surpass the bad.
In social justice, as we saw above, there is a fifth condition:
we cannot allow the cause(s) that forced such a choice on us to remain. We have the duty to organize in social
justice to restructure the institutions of the social order that were causing,
or allowing others to cause, the situation that forced us to choose something
bad.
