There has been a spate of memes in the social media recently ostensibly quoting the late Fulton Sheen to the effect that Judas is the patron saint of social justice. This does not ring true for a couple of reasons. Most obviously, Sheen, “the American Chesterton,” was a master of language and witty repartee, skilled at making an otherwise subtle nuance plain, albeit in a clever manner. The statement is just too crude and blunt; it is not Sheen’s style.
 |
| Fulton J. Sheen |
So, after seeing it continue to pop up, we did a little investigation. Not surprisingly, despite the infallibility of the internet, it turns out Sheen never said it, at least so far as we could determine. (You cannot prove somebody did not do something, i.e., prove the existence of non-existence!) He did mention Judas and social justice, but not quite the way those posting the apocryphal quote would have liked. In one of his radio broadcasts, quoted in Through the Year with Fulton Sheen (2003), he said,
What our Lord says to Judas, he says to the world today: You seemingly are very interested in social justice. Why are you not concerned about individual justice? You love your neighbor, why do you not love God? This is the attitude of the world today. We have swung away from a period in which we were concerned with individual sanctification to the neglect of the social order. Now we have gone to the extreme of being immersed with social justice, civil rights, and so forth, and we are not the least bit concerned about individual justice and the duty of paying honor and glory to God. If you march with a banner, if you protest, then your individual life may be impure, alcoholic, anything you please. That does not matter. Judas is the patron saint of those who divide that universal law of God: Love God and love neighbor.
In other words, Sheen implied Judas is the patron saint of the intellectually and spiritually lazy and the arrogant, of the “either/or,” not “and.” Sheen’s doctoral thesis, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy (1925) investigated the effects of separating faith and reason and trying to make one do the job of the other instead of working together without contradiction. Separating faith and reason is one aspect of what the Catholic Church has, perhaps misleadingly labeled “modernism,” which it calls “the synthesis of all heresies.” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, § 39.)
That is why the first article in “the Oath Against Modernism” declares the primacy of the intellect: “[F]irst of all, I profess that God, the origin and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of reason from the created world, that is, from the visible works of creation, as a cause from its effects, and that, therefore, his existence can also be demonstrated.” (Canon 2.1 of the First Vatican Council states this as well, as does the encyclical Humani Generis in §2. It’s also covered in the first Question of the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas)
The bottom line for Sheen was that faith and reason must be consistent, and you cannot change either to fit the other. Reconciling faith and reason is hard work, and intellectually and spiritually lazy people and those with interested motives (such as Judas) as well as the arrogant find it easier to go the either/or route.
Aside from misquoting Sheen, however, the problem is how to combine faith and reason into a consistent approach to life which respects human dignity. We think Thomistic Personalism does that . . . but what is Thomistic Personalism? In our book, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person (2020); free download in .pdf available here, which was recently issued an imprimatur by the Catholic bishop of Arlington, Virginia (not an endorsement, just a certification that there is nothing in the book that contradicts Catholic faith or morals) we explain what we mean by Thomistic Personalism.
The Question of the Person
(Extracted from Michael D. Greaney and Dawn K. Brohawn, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person. Arlington, Virginia: Justice University Press, 2020, 1-3, edited.)
 |
| Karol Józef Wojtyła |
In February 1961, while still Auxiliary Bishop of Kraków, Karol Józef Wojtyła (Pope John Paul II) startled the intellectual community with his paper, “Personalizm Tomistyczny” (“Thomistic Personalism”), defining personalism as any school of thought, or any intellectual movement, that focuses on the reality of the human person and each person’s unique dignity. (Karol Wojtyła, “Personaolizm Tomistyczny,” Znak 13 (1961): 664-675.) In the short article presenting personalism as an alternative, he countered ideologies that shift dignity and power away from the human person.
Suggesting some later interpretations of the documents were not consistent with the original intent, during the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Wojtyła contributed to Dignitatis Humanae (“Decree on Religious Freedom”) and Gaudium et Spes (“Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”). Wojtyła and the other Polish bishops also submitted a draft for Gaudium et Spes which, while influential, was not adopted as the base text.
In Wojtyła’s thought, the concept of solidarity holds an important place. As he would later state — putting the word in quotes — solidarity is a “virtue,” the habit of doing good, but not in the same sense as, for example, justice and charity. In his encyclical issued as pope on the twentieth anniversary of Populorum Progressio he explained that solidarity —
. . . is above all a question of interdependence, sensed as a system determining relationships in the contemporary world, in its economic, cultural, political and religious elements, and accepted as a moral category. When interdependence becomes recognized in this way, the correlative response as a moral and social attitude, as a “virtue,” is solidarity. (Solicitudo Rei Socialis, § 38.)
 |
| Karol Józef Wojtyła |
Specifically, solidarity, a characteristic of groups per se, is a principle that fulfills and completes that general justice which permeates all virtue, a sort of “general social charity.” Solidarity appears to relate to social charity as legal justice relates to social justice, viz, a general virtue as it relates to a particular virtue. It is not a particular virtue, nor does it exclude non-Christians. (A “particular virtue” is defined by a specific “act” directed at a specific “object.” A general virtue, unlike a particular virtue, does not have a defined, “particular” act or a direct object.)
Solidarity is a virtue Christians necessarily have, not one exclusive to Christians: “Solidarity is undoubtedly a Christian virtue. In what has been said so far it has been possible to identify many points of contact between solidarity and charity, which is the distinguishing mark of Christ's disciples.” (Ibid., § 40.)
In the context of Wojtyła’s Thomistic personalism, then, solidarity describes an awareness of rights and duties within a particular group that define how sovereign individuals relate as persons to one another and to the group as a whole. All people as members of a group have solidarity when they have that awareness and can participate fully as members of that group.
 |
| David Émile Durkheim |
Solidarity in Wojtyła’s thought is an essential prerequisite for social justice, for only members of groups can carry out acts of social justice. By this means cooperation is achieved, not by absorbing people into the group or collective, but by mutual interaction and give-and-take in exercising rights and attaining the common goals and aspirations of the group.
Solidarism as conceived by Wojtyła is in sharp contrast to that of, e.g., the sociologist David Émile Durkheim (1858-1917). Durkheim, whose conception of God was a “divinized society” (Fulton J. Sheen, Religion Without God. New York: Garden City Books, 1954, 54), held that only the collective has rights. Individual ethics are merely expedient and necessarily give way before the demands of social ethics. As Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) put it, for Durkheim, “religion is the group’s worship of itself.” (Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954, 794.)
Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld
A common mistake today is to assume social rights and virtues are rights and virtues society, or humanity has by nature. This is impossible. “Society” and “humanity” are abstractions, things created by human persons. Things have only such rights as human beings delegate to them.
A social right or virtue is a right or virtue that human persons have with respect to society, not that society has with respect to persons. Cf. the distinction between a right in personam, a right a human person has with respect to himself, and a right in rem, a right a human person has with respect to a thing. (Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1946, 65-114. William Winslow Crosskey also covered this in his discussion on Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), and the Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873), in his book, Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1953.)
Together, Wojtyła’s concepts of solidarity and Thomistic personalism provide more than an esoteric academic discussion, but a practical means for applying the principles of Catholic social teaching to many of today’s otherwise overwhelming problems. Solidarity motivates our care for the common good. Personalism focuses our actions on promoting the dignity of every human being and on how each person can relate fully to society and to the common good. Combined, the two concepts offer a holistic paradigm for problem solving that puts even the most monumental tasks within the reach of every person acting in free association with others.
 |
| Thomas Aquinas |
Today, many people throughout the world are forced to serve the State or a political or economic elite that controls the social tool of the State. This puts the most basic human needs, including subsistence and security, under the control of some who wield the State’s monopoly over coercion. Because of the way institutions and laws have been structured, the elite are able to monopolize power and benefit themselves at the expense of others.
Ultimately, every issue in religious, political, or family life concerns human dignity. What does it mean to be a person? Who should have power and thus control over the life and even the soul of the human person? Are human beings mere things to be owned by others, the State or a political or economic elite? Or are human beings born with equal worth and inalienable rights, and thus meant to have the power and means to pursue their own higher ends or destinies?
[End of edited extract.]
Obviously, this only scratches the surface of a very important subject. Even our book, Economic Personalism, which is currently being translated into Spanish with plans for other major languages, serves as a bare introduction to a topic of immediate and critical importance to the world today for people of all faiths and philosophies. That is why we and other people and groups concerned with the study of truth and the condition of the world today are discussing the possibility of organizing with others to have an international and inter-religious/inter-philosophical or ecumenical conference or seminar in the near future, perhaps in Rome.
 |
| Alberto Martén de Chavarría |
The focus of such a conference/seminar/learning experience would probably be on Solidarism and the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism. This could revive the vision of Alberto Martén de Chavarría (founder of Solidarismo Costarricense and a national hero in Costa Rica), restore, preserve, and extend the legacy of Pope John Paul II’s social thought, and integrate the thought of Louis Kelso, originator of binary economics and inventor of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).
The financing techniques and broad-based ownership of the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism as applied in the Economic Democracy Act could be used (for example) to fund the rebuilding of Ukraine in a way that builds capital ownership into all Ukrainians without foreign loans or grants, redistribution of existing wealth, or reliance on government debt. Ukraine would then have an effective means to inhibit or prevent future hostile incursions, reduce or eliminate domestic corruption, economically empower every child, woman, and man in Ukraine, and provide a model for solidaristic economic and social development for the world.
It's something to think about — and, in our opinion, we think Fulton Sheen would approve.
Share the link to this posting among your social networks. Feel free to print it out and distribute it (with credit, of course), so long as you remove all the images except that of the book Economic Personalism (which may be removed, but it is not obligatory to do so) and don’t change any of the text. Progress in this project will be reported in “News from the Network,” posted every Friday on this blog. So, stay tuned!
#30#
