Social Justice Isn't What You Think It Is. Paul Adams
constitution on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes, in which the Council Fathers affirm that God created man for his own good and that he “cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”10 Mutual gifting plays an indispensable social role in human life.
There are Catholic writers of the left and right who cite such considerations as evidence that the Church, and Catholic social teaching in particular, is unalterably and consistently opposed to capitalism. But the Church is committed to the defense of private property, as well as to the fundamental duty of Catholics as individuals and as a body to help the poor. Moreover, it is a significant fact that, beset as it is with cronyism and corruption, capitalism is the greatest tool of social advance and economic development ever known. In the last few decades alone, it has lifted hundreds of millions out of dire poverty.11
In John Paul II’s hands, this immense benefit to humanity is not simply a utilitarian or materialistic matter. The social dislocations and harsh conditions for workers and families that accompanied industrial development were a central concern of Leo XIII and subsequent Catholic social teaching. These social failures needed to be criticized in strong terms; they were never seen as an acceptable trade-off for economic growth.
Moreover, like the other popes, John Paul II rejects capitalism wherever the liberty and full development of the human person is impeded or injured:
If by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.12
Exploring these issues here, we distinguish capitalism as an economic system from the ideology that attached to it from its beginnings—what Patrick Deneen, for example, calls the “radical individualistic presuppositions of capitalism.”13 This individualist-liberal ideology, to the extent it finds practical expression in selfish behavior, ignores the needs of others and acts as if the individual lived, or could live, in splendid isolation from family and community, law and custom, tradition and culture. But this ideology is, we suggest, incompatible not only with human flourishing but also with a flourishing capitalist economy. Capitalism as an economic system cannot thrive when it is unbridled, unfettered, uncircumscribed by a strong juridical framework that is at its core ethical and religious. As an economic system, capitalism or the inventive economy requires and builds up the social virtues, and languishes in their absence. It presupposes in practice the moral norms, networks, institutions, and relationships that Robert Putnam defined as social capital.14 It requires freedom and order in the political and cultural spheres, not just the economic. It depends on trust, reciprocity, and the rule of law.15 In practice, the institutions of capitalism are social through and through—not individualistic.
Our book, then, is not a defense of unfettered capitalism or individualism against statism or collectivism in its various forms. Patrick Burke, working from a strong libertarian perspective, has written a thorough-going critique of the term social justice as commonly used.16 Like us, he sees social justice, rightly understood, as a personal virtue. But unlike us, he places blame for the term’s socialistic misuse squarely on the popes from Pius XI on. In the name of justice, Burke’s book makes a decisive break with Catholic social teaching, whereas ours is consistent with it. In common with the Catholic tradition that emphasizes the mediating structures or voluntary associations that comprise the “rich social life” of the associations,17 we reject any interpretive framework that understands political or policy choices or tendencies solely in terms of individualism or collectivism. The autonomous, unencumbered individual and the all-encompassing state are not mutually exclusive alternatives, but reinforce each other, to the detriment of the common good of all.
The first and most substantial part of this book, by Michael Novak, examines these issues in three sections. The first deals with definitions and contexts, reviewing the range of uses of the concept of social justice and its place within the larger context of Catholic social teaching. The second examines the contributions of five popes with regard to social justice: Leo XIII, Pius XI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. The third section of Novak’s part addresses both the special function of the theologian as social scout and explorer of new social terrain, and also some challenges to social justice, such as the role of sin in an adequate understanding of social justice.
We judged that if social justice is better understood as a virtue than a state of affairs, then it is necessary to show what that virtue looks like in practice and how seeing social justice this way casts light on how we should think about helping others. This is the subject of Part Two of the book. I had the task, as a lifelong social-work educator, of developing this aspect of the argument, and in my chapters I reflect on the following themes.
Conscience and the rights of conscience, held in the highest regard by the American founders, progressives, and people of faith, have come under increasing attack by today’s liberal elites. Those, including social workers, who once championed conscience and conscience rights as a defense against the overweening state, have now abandoned not only the protection of conscience but also any coherent understanding of the concept.
Marriage also needs consideration as an issue of social justice. Why? Because its disintegration and redefinition (above all among the poorest parts of the population but increasingly among the middle class, too) are linked to almost every social problem that social workers are called to address. Neither individuals nor the state can make marriage as attainable to many as it once was.
Another practical consideration stems from the fact that social justice is officially a core value of social work. But social work has become tied to the state, in funding and the strings attached to it and in the legal mandates it follows in areas like child welfare. How does the coercive power of the state that lies behind child protection square with the helping and empowering self-image of the profession? What does it mean to practice the virtue of social justice in this setting?
Finally, I dwell on some issues that arise from the fact that social work evolved out of attempts in the nineteenth century to organize charity, to make it more responsive to the needs of the individuals and families it served. In spite of these origins, the profession has sought to distance itself from its own history ever since. What is the relation of social justice to charity? Notwithstanding the centrality of charity as a theological virtue (caritas) and as the daily practice of helping the poor, it remains in both senses something of an embarrassment for professional social work. Unlike “justice,” charity appeals neither to social work’s professional practices (treatment, psychotherapy) nor to its activist tendencies.
How then are we to understand the relation of charity to justice, and to social justice in particular? The last two chapters of Part Two try to disentangle the two senses of charity, and the relation of social justice to charity. Like all my chapters, they seek to address, however indirectly, the fundamental question at the heart of social work and all professional helping: What is the proper relation of formal to informal helping (or care and control), of the bureaucratic-professional state to the traditional ways long preceding the state, through which communities and families have addressed and resolved problems and conflicts? How do empowering and coercive aspects—common to all care and control, including the most informal parenting—relate to each other? How then do we understand social justice as the virtue of that large social space between individual and state, the flourishing of which is vital to the health of both?
Michael Novak and I have in mind as readers intelligent inquirers who are thoughtful citizens, often practitioners and not just scholars. Most will have some acquaintance with conventional uses of the concept of social justice, since the term has become ubiquitous in the political discussion of social and economic issues. We discuss these uses briefly, but hope to cast a brighter light on neglected aspects of these questions. The concept and the virtue of social justice have indispensable work to do.