From the bible to the church's ordinary magisterium: a classical-liberal analysis of the concept of «social justice» in catholic thinking
| Autor | Fernando Hernández Fradejas |
| Cargo del Autor | Universidad de Valladolid |
| Páginas | 176-184 |
— 176 —
FROM THE BIBLE TO THE CHURCH’S ORDINARY
MAGISTERIUM: A CLASSICAL-LIBERAL ANALYSIS OF THE
CONCEPT OF «SOCIAL JUSTICE» IN CATHOLIC THINKING
Fernando Hernández Fradejas
1
Universidad de Valladolid
Introduction
The notion of «social justice» has been one of today’s most widely used terms by
followers of progressivism and political correction in recent decades (Ackerman, 1993;
Rawls, 1986). Yet despite everything
2
, the Catholic religion has not remained oblivious
to the use and interpretation of such a hackneyed expression (Pontificio Consejo «Justicia
y Paz», 2005: 103-104). It is well known that the purpose of the Catholic faith is not to
attain any scientific or intellectual recognition, be it for good or evil, but rather for its
opinions to correspond to modern times and to reflect the majority feeling of society as a
whole (which it is not wrong in doing so). The vocation of the Catholic church is, indeed,
universal
3
. Its actions have also enjoyed a long anti-classical liberal historical tradition
(Mises, 2007: 424-430). Specifically, it was the nineteenth century classical liberals who
contributed to and encouraged the Church’s approach towards left-wing and right-wing
socialism through the so-called Social Doctrine (Rodríguez Braun, 2010: 252-253).
However, they made two fatal errors: the first was the attack on religion, which
propitiated the state’s intrusion into key areas of social life, such as education; the second,
related to the first, was the defence of private property of everything except landholdings,
and which led to state seizure, initially commencing with disentailments but which was
ultimately never to cease. Both events heralded a resounding victory for the enemies of
religion who are often the enemies of freedom (Hayek, 2015: 389-396). The Canadian
born Catholic priest, Richard John Neuhaus, wrote in The naked public square: «once
religion is reduced to nothing more than privatized conscience, the public square has only
two actors in it: the state and the individual» (1986: 82). This process of isolating the
individual in the face of political power referred to by Neuhaus has been accompanied by
a subtle change in the vocabulary of social discourse: the opposition to charity and justice
as excluding terms.
1
Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Alejandro A. Chafuén and Samuel Gregg for their help and assistance
during this project. Any remaining errors are solely the author’s.
2
Certain authors such as Michael Novak, Paul Adams and Elizabeth Shaw in their book Social Justice Isn’t
What You Think It Is (2015) suggest the need to establish a definition of justice –and, by extension, of
«social justice »- in contemporary public debate from a Catholic and liberal approach.
3
From the late Latin catholĭcus, which in turn comes from the Greek καθολικός katholikós 'catholic',
'universal' (Real Academia Española 2014).
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