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宿务亚典耀圣心学校

SACRED HEART SCHOOL-ATENEO de CEBU


H. Abellana Street, Canduman, Mandaue City

OUTLINE: MODERN CATHOLIC TEACHINGS CONCERNING JUSTICE


By David Hollenbach, S.J.

I. 1971 Synod Statement: Actions on behalf of justice as constitutive dimension of the


preaching of the Gospel

II. Crucial Issues at Stake with the Declaration:


a. How should “justice” be properly understood, considering that there is a “wide array of
definitions of justice”?
b. The fear that actions on behalf of justice may be identified with the mission of the Church in
a reductive manner

III. Aim of the Paper:


a. place the Synod’s statement in the context of discussions of social justice in the Catholic
Tradition in the last 100 years

b. clarify the meaning of the Synod’s statement and the fundamental social and political
obligations

IV. Synod’s statement and the discussions of social justice in Catholic Tradition in the last 100
years
Rerum Novarum shows that its goal was “to specify principles which truth and justice
dictates” by defining “the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and the poor, of capital
and labor”

Starting from Rerum Novarum, therefore, Catholic Tradition has understood that justice
lies in the relative rights and mutual duties of individuals within society.

A. On Relative Rights.
“Though justice demands respect for human rights as the imperious claim of individual
dignity and worth, these rights are relative.”

To say “these rights are relative” is to mean that a person’s rights can “neither be
specified nor understood apart from the web of social interdependence which entails
mutual obligation and duty. One’s rights and other claims from it, therefore, cannot be
asserted alone by itself and in total isolation. Rather, it stands side by side the demands
of the rights of others.

Thus, in the Catholic tradition of understanding justice, what is emphasized is not the total
independence of individual persons but the INTERDEPENDENCE among individuals in the
community or society.

B. On Interdependence.
a. Philosophical foundation: Rooted in the Aristotelian concept of man being essentially
social in nature. Thus, interdependence is not something foreign or new because it is
essentially part of who we are as human persons.

b. Theological foundation: The bond of love which lies at the root of the obligations of
justice
1. stresses concern for individual persons in their uniqueness and their concrete needs
2. calls for social relationship and a kind of social organization that open the way to the
fulfillment of the person which can only occur in unity and solidarity with others

What is due to a person or a group is to be determined not by the kind of


suitable social or political structure (communism, feudalism, capitalism, federalism,
democracy, monarchy) but “by the kinds of relationships which shape and influence
the life and action of that person or group…The justice… of these relationships is to
be judged in terms of the way they promote human dignity by enhancing mutuality
and genuine participation in community…”

V. Ethical Guidelines for Socio-Political Structure in Pursuit of the Norm of love manifested in
mutuality and participation
The task of theological and ethical work becomes that of finding a justification both
for religious belief and for moral decisions which do not deny the relativities of history, but
which provide an objectivity short of absolute claims. (James Gustafson)

“Christian faith has no stake in defending a specific social model, be it feudal,


capitalist, socialist, or liberal democratic, unless this model either especially promotes or
especially threatens the basic Christian ethical conviction concerning the normative character
of social interdependence and reciprocal love.”

A. The Three Modalities of Justice as the Catholic tradition’s ethical norm of evaluation for
social structure:

1. Commutative Justice
-Concerns the claims which exists between individuals and individuals or between
groups which are essentially private and non-political
- demands fidelity to agreements, contracts, or promises; fairness in exchange

2. Distributive justice
- specifies the claim which all persons have to some share in those goods which are
essentially public or social
- refers to goods such as: utility of land areas, economic productivity, health care, and
the likes; demands to the state and all members in a society to provide opportunities
for everyone’s participation in the common good

3. Social Justice
- referring to the creation of patterns of mutual action and interdependence which are
necessary to bring about the realization of distributive justice
- call for obligations both to the citizens and the state:
a. Citizens: participate actively in the creation of a society in which the concerns for
the concrete needs of persons and creation of reciprocal interdependence
are established
b. State: promote distributive justice and protect the legal claims on all citizens

Christian faith, thus, does not stick to one social structure. It should consider the
historical relativity of every community. What makes a society or a community address the demands of
justice is how the norm of love as manifested in mutuality and participation is effectively made evident
within the context of the varying socio-cultural and political structure of a given society or community.

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