Yesterday we
raised the question about what to do when the institution of social justice,
the virtue directed to correcting institutions, is the very institution that is
in need of correction. Fortunately, the
paradox of the very institution essential to reform being itself in need of
reform resolves itself — up to a point.
Realizing that
there is a social problem and identifying it correctly is more than half the
battle. The other half of the battle to
resolve social problems is to develop solutions that bring institutions back
into material conformity with their particular missions and at the same time
respect the demands of human dignity.
That, however,
presents an additional problem today.
Far too many key institutions, such as the State, organized religion,
Academia, money and credit, and a host of others, have become almost completely
disconnected from the traditional understanding of human dignity: respect for
the individual sovereignty and natural rights of every human person, especially
life, liberty, and private property.
Instead, as noted yesterday, the collective — most often in the institution of the Nation State — has
in many cases displaced both God and the human person, the former as the object
of religion, the latter as the object of the social order. This is in spite of the fact that the
collective, any organized religion, the social order, or any other institution
is not an end in itself.
All institutions
ultimately exist only for the human person, and are legitimate only so long as
they embody respect for individual human dignity. Losing sight of that absolute principle
almost inevitably means that institutions, regardless how venerable, important,
or powerful they may be, will lose their way.
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| Pope Pius XI |
Another paradox
thereby presents itself. Without
essential institutions to support human dignity, respect for human dignity
decays. At the same time, without an
understanding of essential human dignity to provide a sound guide for
structuring institutions, these “social habits” degenerate.
Fortunately, the
situation is not hopeless. In social
justice, nothing is impossible. As
Father William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D., an expert in the social doctrine of Pope
Pius XI, noted,
Another characteristic of Social Justice, . . . is that
in Social Justice there is never any such
thing as helplessness. No problem is
ever too big or too complex, no field is ever too vast, for the methods of this
Social Justice. Problems that were agonizing
in the past and were simply dodged, even by serious and virtuous people, can
now be solved with ease by any school child. (Rev. William Ferree, S.M., Introduction to Social Justice. New York: Paulist Press, 1948, 47.)
Thus,
The completed doctrine of Social Justice places in our
hands instruments of such power as to be inconceivable to former generations.
But let us be clear about what is new and what is old.
None of the elements of this theory are new. Institutions, and institutional
action, the idea of the Common Good, the relationship of individual to Common
Good — all these things are as old as the human race itself. There is nothing
more new in those things than in the school boy’s discovery that what he has
been speaking is prose; nor must we ever believe that God made man a two-legged
creature, and then waited for Aristotle to make him rational. Moreover, much of
the actual application of these
principles to practical life is to be found in older writers under the heading
“political prudence.” (Ibid., 56.)
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