This past week we’ve
probably been finding out more about the history of social justice and the way
the term was coopted by the socialists, modernists, and New Agers than we
really want to know, but that we need to know.
And there have been a few more recent events as well —
• It seems that the
healthcare system is the big news item this week. An alternative to what either party is
proposing can be found in the CESJ occasional paper, “Affording
Universal Healthcare: A Private Sector Alternative to Mandates.” It might be worth sending a copy to your senators
and representative, whichever party or parties they are. As it is neither Democrat nor Republican, it
might actually get read, and give them some food for thought.
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| Msgr. Aloysius Taparelli d'Azeglio, S.J. |
• In doing some
research on a current project delving into the roots of socialism versus
Catholic social teaching, we discovered what appears to be the first attempt to
use the term “social justice” systematically.
Monsignor Aloysius Taparelli d’Azeglio, S.J. (1793-1862), involved in
the Thomist/natural law revival, began using “social justice” in the late 1840s
to describe an alternative to the socialist, modernist, and New Age principle
(best stated by the socialist Henri de Saint-Simon), that “The whole of society
ought to strive towards the amelioration of the moral and physical existence of
the poorest class; society ought to organize itself in the way best adapted for
attaining this end.” Taparelli’s “social
justice” was that, yes, that should be done, but within the confines of sound
doctrine and the precepts of the natural law.
In 1850, to promote this new understanding of social justice, Pope Pius
IX gave Taparelli and Father Carlo
Maria Curci S.J. (1810-1891) permission to found the journal La Cviltà Cattolica. Unfortunately, not only did the
socialists seize on the term to describe what they were doing, failing to admit
the distinction between what they were saying and the critical foundation of
Taparelli’s concept on natural law — particularly the natural right of private
property — but Curci became a Christian socialist, refused to accept
correction, and was expelled from the Jesuits.
Shortly before his death, however, he submitted, and was readmitted to
the Society posthumously. Much of the
confusion over “social justice” today results from the socialist hijacking of
the term, and the failure to realize Pope Pius XI’s breakthrough in giving
Taparelli’s somewhat vague concept a precise and scientific definition: the
particular virtue directed to the common good.
• CESJ has been
having some interesting discussions with Professor Tom Kleiner, who teaches
graduate courses in economics and global affairs. Tom has helped connect us to some people who
could be key to implementing the Justice University concept.
• We have also been
talking to a number of internship and fellowship candidates, all of whom have
some very impressive credentials.
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| "Won't you please sign up for Smile so I can smile?" |
• Here’s the usual announcement
about the Amazon Smile program,
albeit moved to the bottom of the page so you don’t get tired of seeing
it. To participate in the Amazon Smile
program for CESJ, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift
through. Once you’ve typed (or copied
and pasted) “Center for Economic and
Social Justice Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you
will be taken to the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• We have had
visitors from 31 different countries and 43 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the
United States, Poland, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Philippines. The
most popular postings this past week in descending order were “Freedom of
Conscience,” “Separation of Church and State,” “How to Redeem the Non-Owning
Worker,” “The Forgotten Encyclical: Mirari Vos,” and “News from the Network,
Vol. 10, No. 24.”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” If you have a short
(250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the
blog — do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#