Social Justice Isn't What You Think It Is. Paul Adams

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Novak sought to rescue social justice from its ideological uses and to define and use the concept in a way that met four criteria. First, it should be consistent with Catholic tradition and the social encyclicals. Second, it should take account of the new things of the modern age, both the breakdown of traditional patterns of work and family and the American experience of democratic capitalism. Third, it needed to withstand the criticisms of those who considered the concept to be irretrievably incoherent. Fourth, it must be nonpartisan, and recognize both left and right (and other) uses of the specific habits and practices that constitute social justice rightly understood, namely, skills in forming associations to improve the common good of local communities, nations, and indeed the international community. Both left and right may compete to see who better accomplishes the common good in specific areas.

      It was my immense privilege and joy to find in Michael Novak a new neighbor when my family moved to Ave Maria, Florida, where a new university was springing up as a center of Catholic learning and culture. I conceived the project of gathering the various pieces he had written on social justice over the years, some chapters in books on Catholic social thought and democratic capitalism, and some occasional articles or pieces for invited lectures or speeches at award dinners. I urged him to pull this work together into a full and current statement of his argument addressed to a wider audience interested in social justice than might have discovered these disparate pieces produced over four decades.

      He agreed, and as we worked together over the next two years, it became apparent that these pieces could not simply be collected with some light editing into a book of essays. There was too much overlap—the story of Novak’s family history as Slovak serfs and the new economic, political, and cultural freedoms they encountered in the New World, although compelling, could be told only once in the projected book.

      More importantly, there was a need to expand the existing work into a comprehensive vision that situates social justice in a context of Catholic teaching, especially its social teaching as a whole, and also in the context of democratic capitalism and the American experience. This last point was especially important to understanding the profound contributions to Catholic social doctrine of Pius XI and John Paul II, who lived much of their lives and most of their reigns under the shadow of European fascism and communism. Catholic social teaching prior to John Paul II tended to be Eurocentric, ignoring or misunderstanding the American experience of economic, political, and cultural freedom, even in official documents. The American experiment was the first to lift a large majority of its poor (largely immigrants) out of poverty within a generation, and to keep on doing so. The United States was, as it were, the laboratory for how undeveloped peoples break through the chains of centuries of poverty. It was the first developing nation.

A WORD IS NECESSARY about the nature of Catholic social teaching itself, which is subject to two key distortions. The first is the problem Novak identified in a different but related context: namely, the tendency among the opponents of reform in the Second Vatican Council toward what he called “nonhistorical orthodoxy.” This tendency neglects history and contingency, as if Catholic social teaching constitutes a single and unchanging body of doctrine, in no need of development or adaptation to new circumstances.

      This is not the way the popes themselves have read and interpreted the Church’s social teaching. Leo XIII initiated the series of papal social encyclicals by both affirming permanent principles and providing an analysis “of the new things” (Rerum Novarum) of his day. In commemorating Leo’s encyclical forty years after its publication, Pius XI, in Quadragesimo Anno (1931), both reaffirmed core principles of Catholic social teaching and offered his analysis of how conditions had changed. He reiterated the evil of socialism in all its forms, but now in the context of actual experience of Communism in Russia and the rise of National Socialism in Germany and Fascism in Italy.

      Commemorating the centennial of Rerum Novarum in 1991, John Paul II faced an even larger task of interpreting the signs of the times in light of the large historical changes wrought by the hypertrophy of the state under Nazism and Communism and the collapse of both. He had lived his entire adult life under the shadow of National Socialism or Communism, and he now faced the task of considering the alternatives, a question often asked of him by other survivors or former admirers of the Communist system. Answering them required a careful distinction between what is a permanent part of the Magisterium, the principles of Catholic social teaching that all popes have upheld, and what constitutes the fruits of a particular pope’s pastoral responsibility in his own time and place.

      In his great encyclical Centesimus Annus (1991), John Paul II proposes a rereading of Rerum Novarum—a looking back, a looking around, and a looking forward. He reiterates those principles enunciated by Leo XIII which belong to the Church’s doctrinal patrimony, but he distinguishes his own analysis of recent events “in order to discern the new requirements of evangelization,” without passing definitive judgments, since doing so does not fall within his authority.

Insisting on this distinction between principles and their application in a specific historical context, John Paul follows the Council Fathers of Vatican II, who had emphasized the responsibility of the informed laity. The popes and the Church have no specific expertise in matters of economic or social policy but call on lay members who do to contribute to the discussion.

      Treating Catholic social teaching as a “nonhistorical orthodoxy,” a body of doctrine independent of time and place, not subject to doctrinal development or rereading in the light of the “new things” of the time, can lead to a peculiar kind of clericalist rigidity. In place of serious and open discussion in light of core principles, too often it shuts down discussion, dismissing opponents as ignorant of the texts or heretical, and resorts to “proof-texting” by citing quotations from the papal documents out of context. Catholic scholar and blogger Andrew M. Haines offers an implicit rebuke of this tendency:

      Simply put, the Church’s social teaching is valuable because it offers examples of how to think through the types of problems associated with making good social decisions. It is not valuable because it provides all the answers to every particular social question ever raised. Nor is it valuable because it instructs on the inviolable dignity of all human life. (Once again, that’s another kind of doctrine.) Instead, I venture, Catholic social teaching is a sort of praxis rather than simply a set of theories—a very public praxis, conducted by those whose teaching authority is well established. Certainly it is not a set of absolute propositions that hold true always and everywhere. This is the case even for strongly worded and oft-repeated themes, since the significance of terms—especially politico-economic ones—is wont to shift almost overnight.⁹

      Novak and I approach Catholic social teaching and the light it casts on social justice in this same spirit. It is always a work in progress, not one in which basic principles are up for grabs or that helps score points in partisan battles of the day. Instead it challenges us to think through the problems we face and how this rich body of teaching—based on firm Christian principles and developed over millennia in light of the new things that have come and gone—may guide us in responding to the urgent social needs of our time.

The second, related distortion that bedevils much discussion of Catholic social teaching is the tendency to use it in a partisan way to support specific policies or programs that are under debate at a given moment. One constant of Christian teaching from the time of Christ on earth to the present is concern for the poor. All those who write on Catholic social teaching give this concern a central place. But the principle does not warrant a moral mandate to support any particular policy or party line on how best to help the poor.

      Some writers on social justice, especially on the left, are particularly prone to this error. If the issue of the day is, say, raising the minimum wage or rejecting proposed cuts in Food Stamps (neither of which existed until the last century and neither of which is common even in the most generous welfare states today), it is not enough to express concern for the poor and then draw a direct line to the policy you favor. It is necessary to СКАЧАТЬ