Last week we looked at the question of “justice as love.” This week we look at the question of “social justice”. This will baffle many people today, because they think they have already answered the question, and the answer they have is that something called “social justice” replaces and transcends both justice and charity as traditionally understood.
People who think that are mistaken. Social justice does not and cannot either transcend or replace traditional concepts of either justice or charity. Instead, just as charity fulfills and completes justice, making true justice possible, social justice fulfills and completes charity, making true charity possible.
We see this in the Mishna Torah, when Moses Maimonides lists the eight orders of charity. The lowest form of charity consists of giving money unwillingly — involuntary redistribution, such as carried out through government welfare. The eighth and highest form of charity is to give someone a loan so he can go into business and become productive, thereby meeting his needs and those of his dependents, repaying the loan, and gaining the ability to become charitable himself.
But what if the institutions of society inhibit or prevent someone from making a loan for a productive purpose or another from obtaining such a loan? That is where social justice comes in.
The task of social justice in this instance is to reform the institutions of society to make it possible for people who want to make loans for productive purposes to make such loans, and for people who want to obtain loans for productive purposes to be able to obtain them. This is also the goal of the Economic Democracy Act.
Pope Pius XI
This, of course, applies in other areas as well, such as working conditions, payment of just wages, fair treatment of immigrants (or anyone else), and virtually every other social situation you can imagine. That is, in fact, how Pope Pius XI explained the role of social justice. Using wages as his example, in § 71 of Quadragesimo Anno he said,
In the first place, the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family. . . . Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to meet ordinary family needs adequately. But if this cannot always be done under existing circumstances, social justice demands that changes be introduced as soon as possible whereby such a wage will be assured to every adult workingman.
You see the “catch” in the passage? It doesn’t say what most people think it says, i.e., that social justice demands the payment of “a wage to support [the worker] and his family.” No. If you think that, read it carefully again, especially the portion in red. It clearly states what social justice demands is changes be introduced to make such a wage possible, NOT that social justice demands the payment of such a wage! Something completely different!
Social justice therefore enables justice and charity; it does not replace or transcend either justice or charity. If the functioning of justice and charity in a society is flawed or non-existent, social justice doesn’t mandate coercive imposition of results somebody in power or anyone else might demand. Instead, what social justice demands is for people to organize and introduce changes into the system to make it possible for justice and charity — and all the other virtues — to function properly.
We now have the context to understand the third part of Guy Stevenson’s essay on Fulton Sheen’s view on the meaning and purpose of life. Again, we issue a caveat: CESJ is not a religious organization, and the Just Third Way is not a religious movement. Guy Stevenson is simply noting the congruence of Fulton Sheen’s thought, and that of the Catholic Church as Sheen understood it, especially as expressed in the “Just Third Way edition” of Sheen’s Freedom Under God, with the principles of the Just Third Way:
The Question That Burns
III. What is Social Justice?
By Guy C. Stevenson
What is social justice if God transcends social constructs? If God is justice — and God transcends all human systems — then what becomes of social justice, a term rooted in societal frameworks?
Social justice, as commonly understood, refers to the fair distribution of wealth, opportunity, and privilege. It is a human endeavor, shaped by laws, institutions, and cultural norms. But if God does not operate within these constructs, then justice, by divine standards, must be something more than equity — it must be rightly ordered love.
Justice begins not with systems, but with souls. Social justice, then, is not merely about correcting external imbalances. It is about aligning society’s affections with divine truth. It is not just about fairness — it is about faithfulness.
This understanding of justice demands that each of us have the courage to ask ourselves:
· Are our social justice efforts rooted in love of God, or love of ideology?
· Do we seek justice to glorify God, or to glorify ourselves?
· Is our activism an act of worship — or a performance of power?
If God is justice, then social justice must reflect divine order — a society where love flows outward from God to neighbor, not inward toward preference or pride. It must be a liturgy of love, not a ledger of grievances or injustices.
Augustine of Hippo
This is not a conclusion — it is a call to dialogue. Share it. Wrestle with it. Ask boldly: Can justice be truly social if it is not first spiritual, i.e., fulfilled and completed by charity after being enabled by social justice?
If we preserve St. Augustine’s definition of justice — love serving God alone — then the clearest biblical articulation of both individual and social justice is found in Christ’s own words: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30–31.)
This is not a dual ethic — it is a single flame with two directions. Love that rises to God must also radiate outward to neighbor. Justice, then, is not a negotiation between interests — it is a consecration of affections. It is not the balancing of power — it is the ordering of love.
As a “Transitional Reflection”, consider that before we can confront the war against forgetting, we must first recognize its symptoms. Fulton J. Sheen saw them clearly: a civilization where hatred outpaces love, where hypocrisy is baptized as virtue, and where truth, justice, and human dignity are traded for error, violence, and the supremacy of the State. He wrote: “Because we have forgotten the reason for living… because we have forgotten truth… because we have forgotten justice… because we have forgotten man…”
This is not merely a cultural crisis — it is a spiritual collapse. Social justice, severed from divine order, becomes a theater of grievance rather than a sanctuary of righteousness. And when the soul forgets its Maker, society forgets its meaning. The next question, then, is not political — it is personal: Why have we forgotten?
And “the Maker’s Answer”? That is what we will look at in the fourth part of this article.
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