Social Justice Isn't What You Think It Is

by Michael Novak

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

  Introduction to Part Two

  1.See Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 (New York: Crown, 2012).

  Chapter 16. Conscience and Social Justice

  1.See Robert P. George, The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2002); and Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2013).

  2.See, for example, the blog site Medicine and Social Justice: http://medicinesocialjustice.blogspot.com/2012/10/conscience-clauses-have-become.html.

  3.See Stephen L. Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006); Joseph Ratzinger, On Conscience (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007); Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Robert K. Vischer, Conscience and the Common Good: Reclaiming the Space between Person and State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

  4.Robert K. Vischer, “The Progressive Case for Conscience Protection,” Public Discourse (March 9, 2011), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/03/2915/.

  5.Ibid.

  6.See, for example, E. Clark, “Spring, and Danger, in the Air,” NASW News 57, no. 5 (May 2012); NASW Legal Defense Fund, Social Workers and Conscience Clauses (Washington, D.C.: National Association of Social Workers, 2010).

  7.George, The Clash of Orthodoxies.

  8.Ward v. Polite et al. See http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/12a0024p-06.pdf.

  9.National Association of Scholars, “The Scandal of Social Work Education” (2007), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.nas.org/articles/The_Scandal_of_Social_Work_Education.

  10.George Cardinal Pell, “Intolerant Tolerance,” First Things (August/September 2009), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/08/intolerant-tolerance.

  11.World Medical Association, Declaration of Geneva Physician’s Oath (1948), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/geneva/.

  12.R. Joseph, Human Rights and the Unborn Child (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2009).

  13.P. A. Tozzi, “Vatican Tells United Nations to Quit Pressuring Countries to Legalize Abortion,” LifeNews (November 28, 2008), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.lifenews.com/int1003.html.

  14.American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists [ACOG], “The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine,” ACOG Committee Opinion, no. 385 (November 2007); Christopher Kaczor, Thomas Aquinas on Faith, Hope, and Love: Edited and Explained for Everyone (Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2008).

  15.Helen Alvaré, “The White House and Sexualityism,” Public Discourse (July 16, 2012), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/07/5757/.

  16.Ibid.

  17.Francis Cardinal George, “What Are You Going to Give up This Lent?” Catholic New World (February 26, 2012), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.catholicnewworld.com/cnwonline/2012/0226/cardinal.aspx.

  18.See George, The Clash of Orthodoxies.

  19.J. Sweifach, “Conscientious Objection in Social Work: Rights vs. Responsibilities,” Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics 8, no. 2 (2011).

  20.American Pharmacists Association, “Code of Ethics for Pharmacists” (1994), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.pharmacist.com/code-ethics.

  21.American Medical Association, “Code of Medical Ethics” (2012), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-ethics/code-medical-ethics.page?.

  22.American Nurses Association, “Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements (Silver Spring, Md.: American Nurses Publishing, 2001), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/EthicsStandards/CodeofEthicsforNurses/Code-of-Ethics.pdf.

  23.L. Harpaz, “Compelled Lawyer Representation and the Free Speech Rights of Attorneys,” Western New England Law Review 20, no. 20 (1998): 49–72, accessed March 18, 2014: http://digitalcommons.law.wne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1247&context=lawreview.

  24.Sweifach, “Conscientious Objection in Social Work.”

  25.Ibid.

  26.N. Linzer, Resolving Ethical Dilemmas in Social Work Practice (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999), 28.

  27.Clark, “Spring, and Danger, in the Air.”

  28.NASW Legal Defense Fund, “Social Workers and Conscience Clauses.”

  29.M. P. Moreland, “Practical Reason and Subsidiarity: Response to Robert K. Vischer, Conscience and the Common Good,” Journal of Catholic Legal Studies 49, no. 2 (2011): 320, accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.stjohns.edu/academics/graduate/law/journals_activities/catholiclegalstudies/issue/49_2.

  30.Herbert McCabe, “Aquinas on Good Sense,” New Blackfriars 67, no. 798 (October 1986), quoted in Moreland, “Practical Reason and Subsidiarity,” 322.

  31.Moreland, “Practical Reason and Subsidiarity,” 322.

  32.Elizabeth Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” in Human Life, Action and Ethics: Essays by G. E. M. Anscombe, ed. Mary Geach and Luke Gormally (Exeter, U.K.: Imprint Academic, 2005), 170.

  33.See M. Pakaluk and M. Cheffers, Accounting Ethics . . . and the Near Collapse of the World’s Financial System (Sutton, Mass.: Allen David Press, 2011).

  34.Elizabeth Anscombe, Human Life, Action and Ethics: Essays by G.E.M. Anscombe, 241.

  35.See Brian Barry, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).

  36.Melissa Moschella, “Taking (Conscience) Rights Seriously,” Public Discourse (June 11, 2012), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/06/5603/.

  37.Ibid.

  38.Ibid.

  39.4 Maccabees 5:3.

  40.Michael Stokes Paulsen, “Obama’s Contraception Cram-down: The Pork Precedent,” Public Discourse (February 21, 2012), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/02/4777/#sthash.gbY3yEUM.dpuf.

  41.“Last-Minute Conscience Rule Grants Protection to Abortion Objectors,” Bioedge (January 2, 2009), accessed March 18, 2014: http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/8433. Here I leave aside the tendentious way in which advocates of abortion, contraception, and sterilization—where these are not medically indicated—describe these interventions as part of “reproductive health care,” although they are antireproductive, seldom have anything to do with the health of either mother or child, and in the case of abortion involve by definition not care but killing one of the patients.

  42.I say “supposed” because it is not clear how the legal right to have an abortion, for example, in itself gives anyone a legal right to demand its provision, let alone legally obliging anyone else to carry it out or pay for it.

  43.See Hadley Arkes, Natural Rights and the Right to Choose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

  44.Council on Social Work Education, “Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards.”

  45.Edmund Pellegrino, The Philosophy of Medicine Reborn: A Pellegrino Reader, ed. H. T. Engelhardt, Jr., and F. Jotterand (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 299.

  46.Harpaz, “Compelled Lawyer Representation and the Free Speech Rights of Attorneys.”

  47.Robert K. Vischer, Conscience and the Common Good, 3.

  48.Ibid., 4.

  49.Moreland, “Practical Reason and Subsidiarity,” 325.

  50.Vischer, Conscience and the Common Good, 4.

  51.N. Gilbert and P. Terrell, Dimensions of Social Welfare Policy, 8th ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson, 2012).

  52.Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, §78.

  Chapter 17. Marriage as a Social Justice Issue

  1.See Jason DeParle, “Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’,” New York Times (July 14, 2012), accessed December 5, 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us/two-classes-in-america-divided-by-i-do.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&utm_source=RTA+Lu
+marriage&utm_campaign=winstorg&utm_medium=email&; Kay S. Hymowitz, Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006); Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010; Robert Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).

  2.Paul R. Amato, “The Impact of Family Formation Change on the Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Well-Being of the Next Generation,” The Future of Children 15, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 75–96.

  3.Paula Fomby and Stacey J. Bosick, “Family Instability and the Transition to Adulthood,” Journal of Marriage and Family 75, no. 5 (October 2013): 1266–87.

  4.Michael Gähler and Anna Garriga, “Has the Association between Parental Divorce and Young Adults’ Psychological Problems Changed Over Time? Evidence from Sweden, 1968–2000,” Journal of Family Issues 34 (June 2013): 784–808. First published on June 14, 2012.

  5.See George A. Akerlof, “Men Without Children,” Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society 108, no. 447 (March 1998): 287–309; Alexandra Killewald, “Reconsiderations of the Fatherhood Premium: Marriage, Coresidence, Biology, and Fathers’ Wages,” American Sociological Review 78, no. 1 (February 2013): 96–116; Alexandra Killewald and Margaret Gough, “Does Specialization Explain Marriage Penalties and Premiums?” American Sociological Review 78, no. 3 (June 2013): 447–502; and also Nicholas W. Townsend, The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men’s Lives (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002).

  6.Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially (New York: Doubleday, 2000).

  7.Norval Glenn, Closed Hearts, Closed Minds: The Textbook Story of Marriage (New York: Institute for American Values, 1997).

  8.Ibid., 4.

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

  10.See Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

  11.J. Brian Benestad, Church, State, and Society: An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 151.

  12.Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 1999).

  13.Edward Feser, “Social Justice Reconsidered: Austrian Economics and Catholic Social Teaching” (Hayek Memorial Lecture delivered at the 2005 Austrian Scholars Conference, Auburn, Alabama), accessed December 5, 2013: http://www.edwardfeser.com/unpublishedpapers/socialjustice.html.

  14.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q. 58, a. 1.

  15.Feser, “Social Justice Reconsidered.”

  16.See chapter 2 of this work; also, Michael Novak, “Defining Social Justice,” First Things (December 2000).

  17.Michael Pakaluk, “What’s Next for Marriage? After the Supreme Court,” National Review Online (June 27, 2013), accessed December 5, 2013: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352158/whats-next-marriage-nro-symposium/page/0/5.

  18.Gaudium et Spes, §24.3.

  19.Michael Pakaluk, “What’s Next for Marriage? After the Supreme Court.”

  20.Anthony Esolen, “The Moral Structure of Pedophilia,” Public Discourse (September 30, 2013), accessed December 5, 2013: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/09/10295/.

  21.For a social-scientific account of the phenomenon, see Elizabeth Marquardt, The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash between Adult Rights and Children’s Needs (New York: Institute for American Values, 2006).

  22.Feser, “Social Justice Reconsidered.”

  23.Pakaluk, “What’s Next for Marriage?”

  24.Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George, “The Supreme Court, You and Me, and the Future of Marriage,” Public Discourse (June 27, 2013), accessed December 5, 2013: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/06/10455/.

  25.Maggie Gallagher, Can Government Strengthen Marriage? Evidence from the Social Sciences (New York: Institute for American Values, 2004).

  26.See Alvaré, “The White House and Sexualityism.”

  27.Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2007).

  28.Ibid., 263.

  29.Ibid., 34.

  30.See Eberstadt, Adam and Eve, and How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization (West Conshohocken, Penn.: Templeton Press, 2013).

  31.Michael Novak, “A Humble and Rousing Shakespeare,” Gyrene Gazette (June 11, 2013).

  32.See Robert P. George, Clash of Orthodoxies.

  33.See “What Does a Faith and Action Circle Meeting Look Like?” Catholics for the Common Good, accessed December 7, 2013: http://ccgaction.org/swc/faithandaction/themeeting; Juan Puigbó and Hilary Towers, “Protecting Marriage: Part 1 of 2: Common Myths About Wedlock and Divorce,” National Catholic Register (June 25, 2013), accessed December 7, 2013: http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/protecting-marriage/%23ixzz2ZA4SiDIW; and also Puigbó and Towers, “Creating Communities Centered on Marriage: Last of a Two-Part Series on Protecting the Institution of Marriage,” National Catholic Register (July 14, 2013), accessed December 7, 2013: http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/creating-communities-centered-on-marriage/.

  34.Nicole M. King, “Norway Rethinks Its Acceptance of Divorce,” MercatorNet (November 6, 2013), accessed December 9, 2013: http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/13055.

  35.Benestad, Church, State, and Society, 151.

  Chapter 18. Practicing Social Justice

  1.Brandon Vogt, Saints and Social Justice

  2.Benjamin Feigenberg, Erica M. Field, and Rohini Pande, “Building Social Capital through Microfinance,” Harvard Kennedy School Faculty Research Working Paper Series (May 2010), NBER Working Paper No. 16018 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010).

  3.Lisa Y. Larance, “Fostering Social Capital through NGO Design: Grameen Bank Membership in Bangladesh,” International Social Work 44, no. 1 (January 2001): 7–18.

  4.Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital.

  5.Michael Matheson Miller, The PovertyCure DVD Series (2012), http://www.povertycure.org/dvd-series/.

  6.Paul Adams and Karin Krauth, “Working with Families and Communities: The Patch Approach,” in Reinventing Human Services: Community- and Family-Centered Practice, ed. Paul Adams and Karin Krauth (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995); Paul Adams et al., Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods: A Community-Centered Approach: Final Report on the Iowa Patch Project to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa School of Social Work, 1995); Paul Adams, “Bringing the Community Back In: Patch and Group Decision-Making” in Family Group Conferencing: New Directions in Community-Centered Child & Family Practice, ed. Gale Burford and Joe Hudson (New York: Aldine de Gruyter: 2000), 105–19.

  7.Adams, “Bringing the Community Back In.”

  8.John Braithwaite, Restorative Justice and Responsive Regulation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

  9.Braithwaite, Restorative Justice; Paul Adams and Susan M. Chandler, “Responsive Regulation in Child Welfare: Systematic Challenges to Mainstreaming the Family Group Conference,” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 31, no. 1 (2004): 93–116.

  10.Family Group Conferencing: New Directions in Community-Centered Child & Family Practice, ed. Gale Burford and Joe Hudson (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2000), xxiii.

  11.See Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).

  12.See Feigenberg, Field, and Pande, “Building Social Capital.”

  13.Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno.

  14.John McKnight, The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits (New York: Basic Books, 1995).

  15.Paul Adams, “Ethics with Character: Virtues and the Ethical Social Worker,” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 36, no. 3 (S
eptember, 2009): 83–105; James W. Drisko, “Common Factors in Psychotherapy Outcome: Meta-analytic Findings and Their Implications for Practice and Research,” Families in Society 85, no. 1 (2004): 81–90; Clay T. Graybeal, “Evidence of the Art of Social Work,” Families in Society 88, no. 4 (2007): 513–23; Bruce E. Wampold, The Great Psychotherapy Debate: Models, Methods, and Findings (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 2007).

  16.See Benestad, Church, State, and Society, 151.

  17.Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990); Adams, “Ethics with Character.”

  18.Braithwaite, Restorative Justice, 32.

  19.Ibid., 33; see also Rob Neff, “Achieving Justice in Child Protection,” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 31, no. 1 (March 2004): 137–54.

  20.Braithwaite, Restorative Justice, 11.

  21.Ibid.

  22.John Braithwaite, “Families and the Republic,” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 31, no. 1 (March 2004): 199–215, at 204–5.

  Chapter 19. From Charity to Justice?

  1.Leo Tolstoy, “Where Love Is, There God Is,” in Walk in the Light and Twenty-Three Tales, trans. Louis and Aylmer Maude (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2003), 188–204. On art as a parable, see Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?, ed. W. Gareth Jones (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011).

  2.Tolstoy, “Where Love Is,” 195.

  3.Ibid., 201.

  4.Adams, “Ethics with Character”; MacIntyre, After Virtue.

  5.Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin, 2003).

  6.John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1983).

  7.Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. M. T. Noble (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995). See also Michael Novak’s discussion of the “first C”—caritas—in chapter 5 above.

  8.Timothy P. Jackson, The Priority of Love: Christian Charity and Social Justice (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003).

  9.With some notable exceptions, it is little discussed. For exceptions, see Peter T. Geach, The Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Deirdre N. McCloskey, Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006).