I recently read that Herbert, the great 17th-century Anglican poet and clergyman, was a man of social commitment as well as penetrating spiritual insight. He was briefly a member of Parliament before leaving his seat in 1624 to become a rector in small country parishes. Scholars suggest that he had entered public service, with a vision of the "Christian commonwealth" in mind, to try to support efforts to preserve peace with Spain. But he resigned in disillusionment when the pro-war faction succeeded in dissolving the treaty.
"The Passion"
Since blood is fittest, Lord, to write
Thy sorrows in, and bloody fight;
My heart hath store; write there, where in
One box doth lie both ink and sin:
That when sin spies so many foes,
Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes,
All come to lodge there, sin may say,
No room for me, and fly away.
Sin being gone, oh fill the place,
And keep possession with thy grace;
Lest sin take courage and return,
And all the writings blot or burn.
"Redemption"
Having been tenant long to a rich Lord,
Not thriving, I resolved to be bold,
And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancell th' old.
In heaven at his manour I him sought:
They told me there, that he was lately gone
About some land, which he had dearly bought
Long since on earth, to take possession.
I straight return'd, and knowing his great birth,
Sought him accordingly in great resorts;
In cities, theatres, gardens, parks, and courts:
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
Of thieves and murderers: there I him espied,
Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.
Back in March I posted a few thoughts on legal education and Catholic legal theory by raising some questions about the elusive meaning of “social justice.” During and since that time, I have been working on a paper—actually a series of papers—on this frequently appearing phrase that liberally punctuates many documents addressing Catholic social thought.
The term first appears in the papal literature in 1931 in Pius XI’s encyclical letter Quadragesimo Anno which commemorates the fortieth anniversary of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. In the 1931 encyclical, Pius XI employs the term at least nine times, but he does not define it. It might be assumed that, given the context and content of QA, its meaning is restricted to something dealing with reform of the socio-economic conditions of the laboring class. However, that interpretation or reading, in my estimation, would be incorrect.
For social justice to mean something, especially in the contexts of Catholic social thought and legal theory that bears the same modifier, it must be understood in terms that extend beyond ideas concerning warfare or tensions between or among economic classifications of persons. In fact, Pius XI provides vital insight into the meaning of the term six years later in his 1937 encyclical Divini Redemptoris (On Atheistic Communism). In essence, the key to understanding social justice in a Catholic sense is to understand that it is not really about economic, social, or political institutions; rather, it is about the human person himself or herself. It is, when all is said and done, a concept dealing with the reform and proper formation of the human person as it deals with the appropriation and cultivation of virtue in the life of the individual human person. In short, there cannot be a Christian sense of social justice without there first being a transformation of the human person. As Pius XI states,
just as in the living organism it is impossible to provide for the good of the whole unless each single part and each individual member is given what it needs for the exercise of its proper functions, so it is impossible to care for the social organism and the good of society as a unit unless each single part and each individual member—that is to say, each individual man in the dignity of his human personality—is supplied with all that is necessary for the exercise of his social functions. If social justice be satisfied, the result will be an intense activity in economic life as a whole, pursued in tranquility and order. This activity will be proof of the health of the social body, just as the health of the human body is recognized in the undisturbed regularity and perfect efficiency of the whole organism. [DR, N. 51]
Thus, what is necessary for this “organism” to function properly—for society to achieve the common good—is if each member cultivates in one’s personal life the virtues of: wisdom, courage, prudence, temperance, justice, faith, hope, and love. Without these virtues, each individual’s public acts can become governed by an autonomous will that is often the source of the tension and warfare between and among peoples.
My work on this topic continues, but it is my hope here that this small thought might be a source of encouragement for others to think and pray over this term that is often encountered but not often understood well.
In the meantime, a blessed Triduum and happy Easter to my colleagues and friends here at the Mirror of Justice and to our readers around the world.
RJA sj
This looks like an interesting paper by two Dutch philosophers from Tilberg University, Johan J. Graafland and Bert W. van de Ven:
Starting from MacIntyre's virtue ethics, we investigate several codes of conduct of banks to identify the type of virtues that are needed to realize their mission. Based on this analysis, we define three core virtues: honesty, due care and accuracy. We compare and contrast these codes of conduct with the actual behavior of banks that led to the credit crisis and find that in some cases banks did not behave according to the moral standards they set themselves. However, notwithstanding these moral deficiencies, banks and the professionals working in them cannot be fully blamed for what they did, because the institutional context of the free market economy in which they operated left little room for them to live up to the core values lying at the basis of the codes of conduct. Given the neo-liberal free market system, innovative and risky strategies to enhance profits are considered desirable for the sake of shareholder's interests. A return to the core virtues in the financial sector will therefore only succeed if a renewed sense of responsibility in the sector is supported by institutional changes that allow banks to put their mission into practice.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
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Today would be the Feast of St. Anselm, if it were not Holy Week. This passage from the Proslogion struck me as a good piece for reflection as we wait in darkness for the coming of Easter.
What shall he do, most high Lord, what shall this exile do, far away from you as he is? What shall your servant do, tormented by love of you and yet cast off far from your face? He yearns to see you and your countenance is too far away from him. He desires to come close to you, and your dwelling place is inaccessible; he longs to find you and does not know where you are; he is eager to seek you out and he does not know your countenance.
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Along the course of any little writing project, one may come across thought-provoking material that does not necessarily fit within the scope of the project itself. That has certainly happened to me lately. My project has been in part to understand Sir James Fitzjames Stephen's ideas about criminal punishment. Stephen was a towering figure in late-Victorian criminal law as well as the law of evidence, and a powerful political writer as well.
Here he is on a subject near and dear to Catholic Social Thought -- inherent human dignity, or the "sacredness" of human life -- offering some interesting though surely controversial thoughts (from an article by the same title in "The Saturday Review," June 25, 1864):
Few phrases are oftener on our lips than "the sacredness of human life." It is used on both sides, for instance, in the argument about capital punishments, and on almost all occasions it passes muster as the expression of an accredited maxim which it is impossible either to misunderstand or to deny to be true. It is not, however, easy to assign to it a meaning which fulfills both these conditions by plainly asserting an indisputable truth . . . . [jump through for more]
Continue reading
"Spain ends church control over religion teachers' married lives," The Guardian proclaims. (This is probably not quite the way I'd frame the issue, but put that aside.) The key point in the story, as I see it, is that these religion teachers were working in and for the state's schools. Maybe the Guardian would write pretty much the same story, celebrating the Church's loss of "control", if the teacher had been working in a Catholic school, I don't know. But, for purposes of religious freedom generally -- and the "ministerial exception" more specifically -- this distinction seems to matter a lot.
The Supreme Court handed down a case yesterday on religion...sort of. The issue in Sossamon v. Texas was whether the the sovereign immunity of the states against private suits for money damages under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) is waived when they accept federal funding. Religious freedom groups, including the Becket Fund, the National Association of Evangelicals, Prison Fellowship, and Christian Legal Society were lined up for Sossamon (the prisoner-plaintiff) and against the states. In a 6-2 decision (Justice Kagan was recused), the Court held, per Justice Thomas, that the states do not consent to waive their sovereign immunity under RLUIPA. Two offhand thoughts:
- Eleventh Amendment state sovereign immunity is always a sore subject. Federalism skeptics think it's bizarre. Some conservatives aren't sure how to square the text and original meaning of the Eleventh Amendment with the cases. Our own Patrick Brennan is not a fan (see his "Against Sovereignty" over on the sidebar), but I'm sympathetic to some of Rick Hills's arguments in "The Eleventh Amendment as Curb on Bureaucratic Power," 53 Stanford Law Review 1225 (2001).
- With the departure of Justice Souter (who penned lengthy and elaborate dissents in Seminole Tribe v. Florida and Alden v. Maine), perhaps the opposition to state sovereign immunity is losing some steam. Justice Sotomayor's dissent is a narrow argument that the phrase "appropriate relief" in RLUIPA should be interpreted to include suits for money damages, but she does not undertake a root-and-branch criticism of state sovereign immunity. It's noteworthy that Justice Ginsburg--who dissented in Seminole Tribe, Alden, and College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid--was in the majority yesterday, but she did not write separately to indicate why state sovereign immunity under RLUIPA should be viewed differently than in the prior cases.
