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| Aristotle |
Today we come to
the sixth characteristic of social justice, and the final installment in our
series on the laws and characteristics of social justice. Appropriately, this characteristic is that
you cannot simply refuse to participate in social justice; you cannot take your
ball and go home. That might sound
harsh, especially given what most people think of as “social justice” these
days, but it’s a necessary aspect of what it means for human beings to be (as
Aristotle called us) “political animals.”
The fact is,
social justice has no place for anarchists, individualists, collectivists, or
totalitarians. This is not simply
because anarchists don’t recognize any law greater than themselves (might makes
right), individualists don’t recognize anything greater than themselves (might
makes right), collectivists don’t recognize anything greater than the
abstraction of the collective (might makes right), and totalitarians don’t
recognize anything greater than the State (might makes right) . . . although
that is a big part of it.
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| Everyone has the same natural rights. |
Being political
means recognizing that every human being has inalienable rights that define him
or her as a “person.” That does not mean
that I have rights and you have none just because I do, or that you don’t have
any because you are inferior and I am superior in some way. That’s just another way of saying might makes
right.
No, being
“political” means that you and I both
have rights absolutely, but the fact that we both have rights absolutely
automatically means that neither of us can exercise his or her rights
absolutely. The exercise of even
absolute rights necessarily implies that they must be limited, or my exercise
could easily result in your lack of exercise.
That means the
exercise of rights or the functioning of any social tool whatsoever must be
defined in such a way that results in the optimal benefit being received by the
right holder, and the minimal detriment on whomever the duty is imposed — and
it goes both ways. Others may not
exercise their rights in any way that imposes on me a duty greater than that
which is imposed on them by my exercise of the same right, nor confer greater
benefit on them than what I enjoy by the exercise of the same right.
That makes every
law and institution in society a matter of personal concern to every single
human being on earth — and thus social justice is something that is of
immediate concern to everyone. When
institutions are flawed, it becomes everybody’s business to fix them so that they
function justly once again. Thus, as
Father Ferree explained,
Sixth Characteristic: You Can’t “Take It Or Leave It Alone”
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| Father Ferree |
Another corollary of this characteristic of Social Justice (that it
is never finished) is that it embraces a rigid
obligation. In the past when it was not seen very clearly how the duty of
reform would fall upon the individual conscience, the idea became widespread
that reform was a kind of special vocation, like that to the priesthood, or the
religious life. It was all very good for those people who liked that sort of thing,
but if one did not like that sort of thing, he left it alone.
All that is changed! Since we know that everyone, even the weakest
and youngest of human beings, can work directly
on the Common Good at the level where he lives, and since each one “has the
duty” to reorganize his own natural medium of life whenever it makes the
practice of individual virtue difficult or impossible, then every single person
must face the direct and strict obligation of reorganizing his life and the
life around him, so that the individual perfection both of himself and of his
immediate neighbors will become possible. This idea should not be taken alone,
it should be held only in conjunction with the characteristics we have already
seen, namely, that one cannot practice Social Justice alone as an individual,
but only with others; and that the realization of Social Justice takes time.
This concludes
our brief series on the laws and characteristics of social justice. It does not, however, conclude all possible
discussion of social justice. All this
is just a start; it guides us in the right direction and gives us a handle on
understanding social justice, not the sum total of everything that can be known
about it.
Nor is it
anything particularly new, as Father Ferree pointed out. As he ended his pamphlet, Introduction
to Social Justice,
The theory of Social Justice which has been outlined in this
pamphlet is tremendously important and far-reaching. No mere pamphlet could
hope to outline the whole theory or to explore all its consequences. That is
why this pamphlet is called only an introduction
to Social Justice.
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| Pope Pius XI |
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.”
When all that is admitted, there is still something tremendously new
and tremendously important in this work of Pope Pius XI. The power that we have
now to change any institution of life, the grip that we have on the social
order as a whole, was always there
but we did not know it and we did not know how to use it.
Now we know.
That is the difference.
#30#
