Modern society,
if there are any doubts, is in serious trouble.
Over the last two centuries, the institutions of civil, religious, and
domestic society — State, Church, and Family — have been revised, reformed, and
reinvented to the point that these chief props of human dignity have become, to
all intents and purposes, meaningless.
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| Thomas Hobbes: The State is a Mortall God. |
To clarify the
situation, “the State,” (human) nature's only legitimate monopoly, which in this context refers broadly to all governing
institutions and forms of government at all levels of the common good in the
civil order, is nowadays often understood only in terms of the Nation State. “Church,” a term referring to all organized
religious bodies (as in the phrase “Church and State”), is taken to refer to
religion itself or, at the other extreme, only to a particular institution or
belief system. “Family” has come to mean
whatever someone or group with enough power has decided is most expedient,
often being subsumed, along with religious society, into civil society.
In part because “The State” has
a monopoly over the instruments of coercion, it has become all-powerful in the eyes of many people, an entity sovereign in and of
itself, a virtual “Mortall God,” as Thomas Hobbes put it in Leviathan. In modern political science, in common with other
social sciences, the underlying theory is that the State has absorbed
everything and everybody, changing from a specialized and very dangerrous social tool, into the
source of all good. Any individual or
group with sufficient power to control the State can decide what is right for
everyone; “might makes right.”
Nevertheless, the
real issue is not encroaching State power, but human dignity: the sovereignty
of the human person under God. Human
beings, as Aristotle put it, are “political animals.” Institutions, up to and including the State
itself, were made by people, for people.
This is so that people can meet their own wants and needs (primarily
acquiring and developing virtue, “humanness”) by their own efforts within a
justly organized society, “the pólis”
— hence “political.”
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| Father William Ferree: Social Justice scholar. |
When institutions
(especially the State), however, are controlled by a few people or groups for
their own benefit to the detriment of others, become more important than the
people for whose benefit they were established, or fail to do the jobs for
which they were designed, there is injustice.
Human dignity has been violated.
Organizing to restructure the institutions of society to conform to the
demands of human dignity then becomes the direct and personal responsibility of
every member of society.
And that is the
“matter” of social justice.
To explain, neither
social justice nor any other social virtue is a right that any form of society
has over people, individually or in association with others. Nor are the social virtues a replacement for
the individual virtues of temperance, fortitude, prudence, faith, hope, or,
above all, justice or charity.
No, the social
virtues, especially social justice and social charity, are not directed at any
individual good, however important or immediate that individual good might be
in the individual order. Rather, the
social virtues are directed to removing barriers to the proper functioning of
the individual virtues within the context of the social order, not to replacing
the individual virtues.
That is, social
virtues are directed to the common good, that vast network of institutions
within which people carry out the business of living, not any individual good. Once barriers to participation have been
removed, institutions can be accessed and rights exercised: human dignity can
be respected.
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| Aristotle: Man is by nature a political animal. |
This confuses a
great many people today. They tend to think
of the common good as the aggregate of individual goods, and thus the goal of
social justice is the greatest good for the greatest number, regardless of the
rights, wants, or needs of the minority or any individual.
The common good
is not, however, the aggregate of individual goods. It is the vast network of institutions within
which individual human beings as political animals realize their individual
goods, primarily the acquisition and development of virtue — “human-ness” — a
seemingly subtle but important difference.
Unfortunately,
misunderstanding of human nature and essential human dignity has resulted in
social justice and socialism being confused in both Church and State. This has changed Church and State from the
chief props of human dignity outside of the Family, to the principal obstacles
to virtuous human development.
Religion —
“Church” — has been reoriented and updated to focus almost exclusively on people’s
material wants and needs. At the same
time, politics — “the State” — has changed from overseeing institutions that
make it possible for people to meet their own needs through their own efforts,
to meeting them directly, after those in power decide what wants and needs are
legitimate.
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| Auguste Comte: Worship of Humanity is the true faith. |
Is this true in
all cases? Has every religion and every
government fallen into this trap? Has
there been a complete shift from God to Collective Man, as the late Fulton
Sheen put it?
Of course
not. These are tendencies and trends,
not general rules. There are thousands
of religious organizations and political institutions, along with millions of
believers and citizens, who not only do not accept or go along with these
changes, they actively oppose them.
Having said that,
it cannot be denied that “the Religion of Man” has in many cases displaced a
more traditional understanding of both Church and State for many groups and
individuals — Pagan, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, or anything else. Organized religion has become an effective
branch of government in many cases, while the modern Nation State has taken
over more and more of what was once considered the exclusive purview of the
individual and the family.
As noted above, however,
when institutions are flawed, every individual in or affected by that
institution has a personal responsibility in social justice to organize with
others and work to remove barriers that inhibit or prevent the institution from
functioning properly as props for human dignity. The problem is that when it is social justice
(or at least the understanding of social justice) that needs reform, where does
one begin?
That is what we
will look at tomorrow.
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