The wrongheaded wedge between "social issues" and social justice"

The National Catholic Reporter passes on the news that, according to a new study, "Catholics would prefer bishops to focus on social justice issues even if it means less emphasis on abortion. While that view is held strongly by Catholics who attend church only occasionally, 'the most striking finding, and one that may surprise many leaders in the church, is that Catholics who attend church once a week or more also express a strong preference for an emphasis on social justice over abortion,' the report states."

The study goes on to report some other findings about Catholics' political plans and preferences.  It is, in my view, unfortunate that so many Catholics appear to have internalized a distinction -- one that might be politically useful for one "side" in American politics, but is not true to the Gospel or to Catholic Social Teaching -- between the Church's "social justice" teachings, including the preferential option for the poor, and the Church's clear (if less popular in some quarters) insistence on the equal dignity and inviolability of every person, no matter how small.  A society that spends lots of money feeding the poor, while legally classifying some vulnerable people as less-than-people, and as unprotected from others' violence, is not a just society (just as a society that had a just abortion-law regime but ignored the real needs of the poor would be an unjust society).