Defining Social Justice By: Msgr. George Higgins

In the current issue of the monthly magazine First Things, Michael Novak, the pre-eminent proponent of “democratic capitalism,” says that the term “social justice” is seriously defective on several grounds. In effect, he seems to be saying that we should drop the term from our vocabulary. In making this point, the only authority Novak cites is the late Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek.

He quotes Hayek approvingly as having written that “whole books and treatises have been written about social justice without ever offering a definition of it.” As quoted by Novak, Hayek says that “the minute one begins to define social justice, one runs into embarrassing intellectual difficulties. It becomes, most often, a term of art whose operational meaning is, ‘we need a law against that.’ In other words, it becomes an instrument of ideological intimidation, for the purpose of gaining the power of legal coercion.”

Neither Hayek nor Novak identifies by name any of their targets. It is well known, however, that the term “social justice” is common parlance in Catholic social teaching and is used frequently in official church documents. Accordingly, I have taken the trouble of testing the Hayek-Novak argument against these documents.

First, the term “social justice” is in fact defined in several church documents, including Pope Pius XI's 1937 encyclical on communism and Vatican Council II's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. The definition of the term in Pius XI's encyclical reads as follows: “It is the function of social justice to require of each individual that which is necessary for the common good. Consider a living organism: The good of the whole is not being properly secured unless arrangements are made for every single member to receive all that it needs to fulfill its own function. The same is true of the constitution and government of a community: The common good of a society cannot be provided for unless each individual member, a human being endowed with the dignity of personality, receives all that he needs to discharge his social function.”

It should be noted that the term “social justice” is also defined in several leading commentaries on Catholic social teaching, notably, for example, “The Church and Social Justice,” by Calvez and Perrin, and also in the late Father John Cronin's “Catholic Social Principles.”

Second, and more important, Catholic social teaching as propounded in official church documents and in commentaries of the type mentioned above most emphatically does not regard social justice as “an instrument of ideological intimidation for the purpose of gaining the power of legal coercion.” That's a misreading of Catholic social teaching that borders on the absurd, especially in light of the heavy emphasis in the corpus of Catholic social teaching on the principle of subsidiarity.

There are other statements in the Hayek-Novak criticism of the term “social justice” which I find hard to reconcile with the actual wording of official and unofficial church documents on Catholic social teaching. I am not arguing that Hayek, a non-Catholic, and Novak, a Catholic, are not entitled to question the use of the term “social justice” in official and unofficial church documents. I am simply saying that Catholic social teaching should be presented accurately and in full context.

Catholic social teaching, which is not static and must constantly be refined and brought up to date, stands to benefit from constructive criticism. To proscribe this kind of criticism would be a disservice to the church. My complaint is that the Hayek-Novak criticism of the term “social justice” is too superficial to quality as constructive criticism.

The Catholic - Labor Network

Documents & Articles which concern Catholic and Labor Issues

The Catholic-Labor Network E-Mail List

Some Catholic and Labor Links

Defining Social Justice

By Msgr. George G. Higgins

The Yardstick

January 1, 2001