In
1948, CESJ co-founder Rev. William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D., condensed and
popularized his 1941 doctoral thesis, The
Act of Social Justice (1942, 1943, 1951 . . . it’s complicated), for high
school students as a short pamphlet, Introduction
to Social Justice. One of the things
Fr. Ferree did in the pamphlet that he didn’t do in his thesis was to set out
the “laws and characteristics” of social justice. This makes sense, for the thesis was intended
to settle the question as to whether legal justice and social justice are
discrete virtues, the former general, and the latter particular. Today we look at the “laws” of social
justice:
Like any other
human activity, social justice must operate within certain parameters, or it
ceases to be social justice. It may be
something bad, or it may even be something very good, but if it does not adhere
to the “laws” of social justice or conform to its characteristics, it is not
social justice.
I. That the Common Good Be Kept
Inviolate
In all private dealings, in all exercise of individual
justice, the common good must be a primary object of solicitude. To attack or to endanger the common good in
order to attain some private end, no matter how good or how necessary this
latter may be in its own order, is social injustice
and is wrong.
II. Cooperation, Not Conflict
Given the uniqueness of each human person, the particular
good of each individual is different.
Any particular good that is falsely made into an ultimate principle must
necessarily be in conflict with every
other particular good. Only cooperation,
organization for the common good, can make a real society. This does not mean overriding or ignoring
individual goods, but it does mean integrating them into the whole effort.
III. One’s First Particular Good
is One’s Own Place in the Common Good
The first particular
good of every individual or group is that that individual or group find its
proper place in the common good. As
Father Ferree put it, “It must be admitted that this is not the way most of us
think at the present time, but that is because we have been badly
educated. It must be admitted also that
to carry out such a principle in practice looks like too big a job for human
nature as we know it; but that is because we are individualists and have missed
the point. Of course it is too big a job
if each one of us and each of our groups is individually and separately
responsible for the welfare of the human race as a whole. But the point is that the human race as a
whole is social.”
IV. Each Directly Responsible
Every individual, regardless of his age or occupation or
state of life, is directly
responsible for the common good, because the
common good is built up in a hierarchical order. That is, every great human institution
consists of subordinate institutions, which themselves consist of subordinate
institutions, on down to the individuals who compose the lowest and most
fleeting of human institutions.
Since every one of these institutions is directly
responsible for the general welfare of the one above it, it follows that every
individual is directly responsible for the lower institutions which immediately
surround his life, and indirectly responsible for the general welfare of his
whole country and the whole world. (This
is the principle of subsidiarity.)
V. Higher Institutions Must
Never Displace Lower Ones
No institution in the vast hierarchy that we have seen can
take over the particular actions of an institution or person below it. (This, too, comes under the principle of
subsidiarity, although this is the aspect most often ignored.)
VI. Freedom of Association
If every natural group of individuals has a right to its
own common good and a duty towards the next highest common good, it is evident
that such a group has the right to organize itself formally in view of the
common good. (Yet another aspect of the
principle of subsidiarity.)
VII. All Vital Interests Should
be Organized
All real and vital interests of life should be deliberately
made to conform to the requirements of the common good.
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