Social Justice Isn't What You Think It Is

by Michael Novak

  6.Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1969), 517.

  7.Hayek, The Mirage of Social Justice, 151.

  8.Novak, The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: The Free Press, 1993), 62–88.

  Chapter 5. Sixteen Principles of Catholic Social Thought: The Five Cs

  1.The term “principle” tends to be understood as a rule or a law or an axiom. What needs stressing is its action as a source of energy, an inner drive and impulse.

  2.Samuel P. Huntington, “Democracy’s Third Wave,” Journal of Democracy 2, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 13.

  3.Etymologists suggest that caritas derives from carus or cara, meaning expensive, dear. But I suspect that theologians were following a different etymological path, linking caritas to the Greek charis meaning gratuitous, gifted, grace (think charism and charisma). In that line of thinking, caritas is a gratuitous gift of God—a participation by us in God’s own form of love, beyond our natural capacities to love. Thus, to love one’s enemies is not natural, but a gift of God.

  4.Aristotle, Physics 2.8, in The Basic Works, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Modern Library, 2001): 213–394, at 251.

  5.“The god who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” In Thomas Jefferson, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” Document 10 in vol. 1 of The Founders Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), accessed March 13, 2014: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch14s10.html.

  6.Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, trans. John J. Fitzgerald (1946; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 20.

  7.Thomas Aquinas, “On Charity,” in Disputed Questions on Virtue, trans. Jeffery Hause and Claudia E. Murphy (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2010), 113.

  8.John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chapter 5, “Of Property.” Nowadays, of course, there is a lively debate about the most recent forms of genetically modified seeds. Down through history there has always been ardent opposition to new discoveries and new procedures. Sometimes these debates have had merit, often not. In our day, it is good that such debates proceed and that evidence be patiently examined. It is not necessary to pronounce on these particular inquiries to recognize the principle that new wealth has often been created through the acquisition of new know-how and new knowledge.

  9.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §32.

  Chapter 6. The Five Rs

  1.James Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” (1785).

  2.Albert Einstein, “Why Socialism?” Monthly Review (May 1949).

  3.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §13.

  4.Ibid., §34.

  Chapter 7. The Six Ss

  1.My own extended study of what I call a philosophy of self-discovery or intelligent, critical subjectivity is in Michael Novak, Belief & Unbelief: A Philosophy of Self-Knowledge (1965; New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1994). Cf. Elizabeth Shaw, “Intelligent Subjectivity: Into the Presence of God,” in Theologian & Philosopher of Liberty: Essays of Evaluation & Criticism in Honor of Michael Novak, ed. Samuel Gregg (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Acton Institute, 2014), 1–9.

  2.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §48.

  3.See Hedrick Smith, The Russians (London: Sphere Books, 1976).

  Chapter 8. Leo’s XIII’s Rerum Novarum

  1.Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Karl Rahner et al., vol. 4 (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969), 204.

  2.Rodger Charles, The Christian Social Conscience (Hales Corners: Clergy Book Services, 1970), 25.

  3.Johannes Messner, Social Ethics (St. Louis: Herder Books, 1965), 320–21.

  4.William Ferree, Introduction to Social Justice (Dayton, Ohio: Marianist Publications, 1948).

  5.Thomas Patrick Burke, The Concept of Social Justice.

  6.Ernest Fortin, “Natural Law and Social Justice,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 30, no. 1 (1985): 1–20.

  7.See Antonio Rosmini, The Constitution under Social Justice, trans. Alberto Mingardi (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).

  8.Anyone interested in further discussion of these details would do well to consult Burke’s text. He closely documents the main point, that at its origins the term social justice was nothing more than an extension of the ordinary understanding of justice—namely, as a quality of human actions, not of states of affairs—to society as a whole. In addition to Taparelli’s conservative usage and Rosmini’s liberal one, Burke notes a third: that of the Christian Socialists. Summarizing these three, he writes: “For the conservative Taparelli . . . social justice demanded acceptance of the existing constitutional arrangements of society, the inherited and established rights, and powers of the existing authorities, including the church; and injustice consisted in the forcible rejection of those rights and powers by persons who attempted to set up alternative forms of government. . . . For Rosmini, social justice was a quality of the constitutional arrangements of society in so far as they governed the distribution of the common good. . . . The great test of social justice for Rosmini was the inviolability of property, the protection given by the laws to individual ownership, such that no political majority could use its power to dispossess the minority. In other words, social justice was a quality of the laws, which of course are actions of persons, for which they can be held accountable, even if they act collectively. For the Christian Socialists, again, social justice consisted in “a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work.” . . . The original concept of social justice, therefore, was simply an extension of ordinary justice into the new arena of society as a whole.” See Thomas Patrick Burke, The Concept of Social Justice, chapter 3.

  9.Messner, Social Ethics, 320–21 (emphasis added).

  10.Joseph Cardinal Höffner, Christian Social Teaching (Cologne: Ordo Socialis, 1983), 71.

  11.Jean-Yves Calvez and J. Perrin, The Church and Social Justice: Social Teaching of the Popes From Leo XIII to Pius XII, trans. J. R. Kirwan (London: Burns and Oates, 1961), 153.

  12.Normand Joseph Paulhus, “The Theological and Political Ideals of the Fribourg Union,” Ph.D. dissertation, Boston College, 1983.

  13.Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve, accessed March 20, 2014: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/ch4_06.htm.

  14.Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, §§4–19.

  15.Ibid., §34.

  16.Ibid.

  17.Ibid., §15.

  18.Ibid., §5.

  19.Ibid., §6.

  20.Ibid., §7.

  21.Ibid., §10.

  22.Ibid., §14.

  23.Ibid., §18.

  24.Ibid., §38.

  25.Ibid., §17.

  26.Ibid., §19.

  27.Ibid., §21.

  28.Ibid., §34.

  29.See Peter L. Berger, The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions about Prosperity, Equality, and Liberty (New York: Basic Books, 1986).

  30.“You know . . . that the Encyclical of Our Predecessor of happy memory had in view chiefly that economic system, wherein, generally, some provide capital while others provide labor for a joint economic activity. . . . With all his energy Leo XIII sought to adjust this economic system according to the norms of right order; hence, it is evident that this system is not to be condemned in itself. And surely it is not of its own nature vicious. But it does violate right order when capital hires workers, that is, the non-owning working class, with a view to and under such terms that it directs business and even the whole economic system according to its own will and advantage, scorning the human dignity of the workers, the social character of economic activity and social justice itself, and the common good” (Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, §§100–101); Nell-Breuning, Reorganization, 251.

  Chapter 9. Forty Years Later: Pius XI

  1.Nell-Breuning, Reorganization, 251.

  2.Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, §42.

  3.“Discourse of 15 May 1926,” as quoted in William J. Ferree, Introduction
to Social Justice, 3.

  4.Cited in Ferree, Introduction to Social Justice, 7.

  5.Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, §§57, 58, 71, 88, 101, 110, and 126. Social justice is referred to, but not named, in §§74 and 88.

  6.Ibid., §71.

  7.Nell-Breuning, Reorganization, 250.

  8.Ibid., 250–51.

  9.John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, §34.

  10.Nell-Breuning, Reorganization, 250.

  11.Ibid.

  12.Ibid.

  13.Ibid., 247–48.

  14.As found ibid., 248. Nell-Breuning is quoting Pius XI: “Therefore, it is most necessary that economic life be again subjected to and governed by a true and effective directing principle” (Quadragesimo Anno, §88).

  15.Ibid., 248–50.

  16.See Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, §25.

  17.Nell-Breuning refers to Lincoln in “Social Movements: Subsidiarity,” Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Karl Rahner (New York: Herder & Herder, 1968–70), 6:115.

  18.Nell-Breuning, Reorganization, 251.

  19.The Sherman Act set limits, restrictions, and necessary conditions on business corporations, bringing them under the rule of law.

  20.Cf. Heinrich Pesch, Teaching Guide to Economics, 5 vols., ed. and trans. Rupert J. Ederer (1905–23; Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002); Franz Herman Mueller, The Church and the Social Question (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1984); Normand Joseph Paulhus, “The Theological and Political Ideals of the Fribourg Union.”

  21.This did have repercussions on FDR’s New Deal through Msgr. John A. Ryan, who earned the nickname “The Right Reverend New Dealer.” On this nexus, see also Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (New York: Doubleday, 2008).

  Chapter 10. American Realities and Catholic Social Thought

  1.Cited above at chapter 9, n. 17.

  2.Abraham Lincoln, “Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions,” Jacksonville, Illinois (February 11, 1859), in Speeches and Writings: 1859–1865 (Washington, D.C.: Library of America, 1989). Cited in Michael Novak, The Fire of Invention: Civil Society and the Future of the Corporation (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 54.

  3.Cited in Novak, The Fire of Invention, 54.

  4.Ibid.

  5.Ibid., 55.

  6.Ibid.

  7.Ibid., 56.

  8.Ibid., 57.

  9.Ibid.

  10.Ibid., 58.

  11.Lincoln, “Address at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania” (November 19, 1863) in Speeches, 405.

  12.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §32.

  13.Ibid.

  14.Ibid.

  15.Ibid., §31.

  16.Fred Warshofsky, The Patent Wars: The Battle to Own the World’s Technology (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1994), 3.

  17.Ibid.

  18.John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §42.

  19.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §49.

  20.Ibid., §51.

  21.Ibid., §60.

  22.Ibid.

  23.Ibid., §53.

  24.John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §15.

  25.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §13.

  26.Ibid., §54.

  27.Ibid., §25.

  28.Ibid.

  29.Ibid.

  30.Ibid.

  Chapter 11. Centesimus Annus: Capitalism, No and Yes

  1.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §48.

  2.Ibid., §42.

  3.Ibid., §32.

  4.Ibid., §37.

  5.Ibid., §43.

  6.Ibid.

  7.John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, §15.

  8.Lincoln, “Annual Message to Congress” (December 3, 1861) in Speeches, 320–27, at 325–26.

  9.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §31.

  10.Ibid.

  11.Ibid., §32 (emphasis added).

  12.Ibid.

  13.Ibid.

  14.Ibid.

  15.Ibid.

  16.Ibid., §35.

  17.Ibid.

  18.Ibid.

  19.Ibid.

  20.Ibid. §33.

  21.Ibid.

  22.Ibid.

  23.Ibid., §34.

  24.Ibid., §33.

  25.Ibid.

  26.Ibid., §35.

  27.Ibid.

  28.Ibid.

  29.Ibid.

  30.Ibid.

  31.Ibid., §42.

  32.Ibid., §40.

  33.“At the root of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies an anthropological error, which unfortunately is widespread in our day. Man, who discovers his capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets that this is always based on God’s prior and original gift of the things that are” (ibid., §37).

  34.Richard P. McBrien, The Progress (June 30, 1991).

  35.“After Communism,” Commonweal 118 (June 1, 1991): 355.

  36.Jim Hug, “Centesimus Annus: Rescuing the Challenge, Probing the Vision,” Center Focus, no. 102 (August 1991): 1 ff.

  37.Ibid., 3.

  38.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §33.

  39.Ibid., §42.

  40.David Hollenbach, S.J., “Christian Social Ethics after the Cold War,” Theological Studies 53, no. 1 (March 1992): 95.

  41.Ibid., 83.

  42.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §33.

  43.United States Catholic Conference/National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (November 13, 1986), §77.

  44.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §33.

  45.Ibid.

  46.Michael Ignatieff, “Suburbia’s Revenge,” The New Republic (May 4, 1992): 11.

  47.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §43.

  48.Thomas L. Pangle, “The Liberal Paradox,” Crisis (May 1992): 18–25.

  Chapter 12. Benedict XVI and Caritas in Veritate

  1.Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §57.

  2.Ibid., §60.

  3.Ibid., §67.

  Chapter 13. Pope Francis on Unreformed Capitalism

  1.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §58.

  2.Ibid., §33.

  3.Cf. Friedrich Hayek, The Counterrevolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1952).

  4.Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §51.

  5.See, for example, this report of the UN Millennium Project, accessed March 20, 2014: http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/resources/fastfacts_e.htm.

  6.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §42.

  Chapter 14. A New Theological Specialty: The Scout

  1.Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972). The eight specializations are research, interpretation, history, dialectic, foundations, doctrines, systematics, and communications.

  2.Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy: The Rights of Man and Natural Law (1942; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011).

  3.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §§5–11.

  4.Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts (October 11, 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull (New York, 1848), 265–66.

  5.John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §§31–32.

  Chapter 15. Needed: A Sharper Sense of Sin

  1.Quoted in Austin Ruse, “The Gaying of America,” Crisis Magazine (May 9, 2014), available at: http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/the-gaying-of-america/reilly-cover-graphic-2.

  2.Robert R. Reilly, Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior is Changing Everything (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014).

  3.Mary Eberstadt, Adam and Eve after the Pill (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 12.

  4.John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §101.

  5.See, for example, The Federalist 6: “A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they mi
ght be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.” And The Federalist 51: “But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

  6.See, for example, Xiang Yan, “A Two-Prong Approach to Spike Entrepreneurship in Latin America,” South American Business Forum, accessed March 20, 2014: http://www.sabf.org.ar/assets/files/essays/A%20Two-Prong%20Approach%20to%20Spike%20Entrepreneurship%20in%20Latin%20America2.pdf; Gabriel Zinny and James McBride, “Reshaping Education in Latin America through Innovation,” Brookings Institution, September 27, 2013, accessed March 20, 2014: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/education-plus-development/posts/2013/09/27-reshaping-edu-innovation-latin-america-zinny.

  7.See Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital (New York: Basic Books, 2000); and Nancy Truitt, “Peru’s Hidden Resources,” The Tarrytown Letter (September 1985): 8–9.

  8.Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, §75.

  9.Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation,” §IV.15.

  10.This section draws from Angela Winkels, “The Structures of Sin” (unpublished paper, Ave Maria University, 2013).

  11.John Paul II, Reconciliation and Penance, §16.

  12.Ibid.

  13.Ibid.

  14.Ibid.

  15.Ibid.

  16.Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, §74.