Hichborn meme attempts to link social justice to Judas Iscariot.

n Feb­ru­ary 13, I post­ed an arti­cle about a meme you will still find on the Lep­an­to Insti­tute’s Face­book page. The meme makes the intel­lec­tu­al­ly lax claim that Judas is the “patron saint of social jus­tice.” (The actu­al patron saint of social jus­tice, Mary Pez­zu­lo points out, is St. Mar­tin de Por­res.)

I point­ed out in my ear­li­er post—and I will repeat below—that social jus­tice is long-estab­lished Catholic doc­trine. The Church goes as far as to call it one of the non-nego­tiables. To some­how try to con­nect it to Judas is con­trary to Catholic think­ing.

I removed the post after Michael Hich­born, who I take to be the one who cre­at­ed the meme, post­ed the fol­low­ing com­ment:

You say that you are defend­ing social jus­tice as a Catholic teach­ing while also under­stand­ing that there is a dis­tinc­tion between true and false social jus­tice. Had you both­ered to under­stand, rather than accuse, it would­n’t have tak­en you long to real­ize that the social jus­tice intend­ed in the meme is the false kind.

Okay. I have no real rea­son to doubt this, and thus my removal of a post that bore as its (some­what hyper­bol­ic) title “Lep­an­to Insti­tute Aban­dons Catholi­cism.” And yet Mr. Hich­born’s meme remains as it was, with no clar­i­fi­ca­tion as to what he means by “social jus­tice.

If the meme pro­mot­ed con­fu­sion rather than clar­i­ty before, it pro­motes con­fu­sion rather than clar­i­ty still. I under­stand that nuance is not in the nature of a meme, but that is what a lede is for. Or per­haps social jus­tice is too com­plex and seri­ous a top­ic to reduce to a meme.

If Mr. Hich­born finds him­self at odds with some­one’s false under­stand­ing of social jus­tice, then he needs to clar­i­fy how he is using the term and how that dif­fers from social jus­tice as the Church under­stands it. He has not done so.

•••

The clos­est Mr. Hich­born comes is when he says that Judas “ele­vat­ed social action (ser­vice to the poor) above ado­ra­tion and ser­vice to God.” He is attempt­ing to exegete John 12:1–8, in which Mary of Bethany (the sis­ter of Lazarus) anoints Jesus with spike­nard and Judas objects: “Why was this oint­ment not sold for three hun­dred denarii and giv­en to the poor?”

There are three defi­cien­cies in Mr. Hich­born’s exe­ge­sis.

First, he miss­es the point of the sto­ry, which is not that Judas some­how put ser­vice to the poor at some height­ened lev­el of impor­tance above the wor­ship we owe God. Verse 6, which Mr. Hich­born does not men­tion, clar­i­fies. “This [Judas] said,” John writes, “not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and as he had the mon­ey box he used to take what was put into it.”

Judas does not want to give the mon­ey to the poor; he wants to keep it for him­self and pre­tend he gave it to the poor. He does not prac­tice social jus­tice here at all.

The sec­ond prob­lem is that thiev­ery from the poor does not match any def­i­n­i­tion of social jus­tice, true or false, that I know. If Mr. Hich­born thinks it does, he needs to point us to who defines it in any such way. And even there is such a def­i­n­i­tion float­ing around some­where, Mr. Hich­born does not say: Judas is the patron saint of social jus­tice because he stole from the poor. He says: Judas is the patron saint of social jus­tice because he thought ser­vice to the poor was more impor­tant than wor­ship of God. These are two sep­a­rate things.

If some­one claims to advo­cate social jus­tice, how­ev­er defined, but in real­i­ty diverts mon­ey meant for the poor to his own use, isn’t that in fact a betray­al of social jus­tice?

Third and final­ly, to posit that “ser­vice to the poor” and “wor­ship of God” are dif­fer­ent things, or that they are in con­flict with each oth­er, is to make a false dichoto­my. Ser­vice to the poor is wor­ship of God. We can not rend them in twain.

Jesus says, “What­ev­er you do for the least of these you do for me” (Matt. 25:40).

St. John Chrysos­tom says, “If you can­not find Christ in the beg­gar at the Church door, you will not find him in the chal­ice.”

Far from telling us that social jus­tice is for­eign to the true wor­ship of God, a lega­cy of Judas Iscar­i­ot’s betray­al of Christ, the Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith names it as one of the non-nego­tiables. (And you thought there were only five, did­n’t you? There are more.)

Accord­ing to the CDF, social jus­tice is a “moral prin­ci­ple that do[es] not admit of excep­tion.” We may not blithe­ly brush it aside.

•••

But what is it—in the Church’s under­stand­ing? Accord­ing to the Cat­e­chism (§1928), “Soci­ety ensures social jus­tice when it pro­vides the con­di­tions that allow asso­ci­a­tions or indi­vid­u­als to obtain what is their due, accord­ing to their nature and their voca­tion. The CCC goes on:

1929. Social jus­tice can be obtained only in respect­ing the tran­scen­dent dig­ni­ty of man. …

 

1930. Respect for the human per­son entails respect for the rights that flow from his dig­ni­ty as a crea­ture. These rights are pri­or to soci­ety and must be rec­og­nized by it.

The Cat­e­chism goes on to say (§1931) that it is the Church’s duty to tell peo­ple about these rights.

But what are they?

The Com­pendi­um of the Social Doc­trine of the Church goes into much detail on this point. Here are a few.

• The right to life. This is “the first among all rights and the con­di­tion for all oth­er rights of the per­son.” (CSD 552)
• The right to reli­gious free­dom. “The dig­ni­ty of the per­son and the very nature of the quest for God require that all men and women should be free from every con­straint in the area of reli­gion.” (CSD 421)
• The right to work. “Work is a good belong­ing to all peo­ple and must be made avail­able to all who are capa­ble of engag­ing in it. “Full employ­ment” there­fore remains a manda­to­ry objec­tive for every eco­nom­ic sys­tem ori­ent­ed towards jus­tice and the com­mon good.” (CSD 288)
• A just wage. “They com­mit grave injus­tice who refuse to pay a just wage or who do not give it in due time and in pro­por­tion to the work done” (CSD 302).
• Income equi­ty. “An equi­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of income is to be sought on the basis of cri­te­ria not mere­ly of com­mu­ta­tive jus­tice but also of social jus­tice that is, con­sid­er­ing, beyond the objec­tive val­ue of the work ren­dered, the human dig­ni­ty of the sub­jects who per­form it. Authen­tic eco­nom­ic well-being is pur­sued also by means of suit­able social poli­cies for the redis­tri­b­u­tion of income which, tak­ing gen­er­al con­di­tions into account, look at mer­it as well as at the need of each cit­i­zen.” (CSD 303)
• The right to strike. “The Church’s social doc­trine rec­og­nizes the legit­i­ma­cy of strik­ing “when it can­not be avoid­ed, or at least when it is nec­es­sary to obtain a pro­por­tion­ate ben­e­fit,” when every oth­er method for the res­o­lu­tion of dis­putes has been inef­fec­tu­al.” (CSD 304)
• The right to orga­nize unions. “Such orga­ni­za­tions, while pur­su­ing their spe­cif­ic pur­pose with regard to the com­mon good, are a pos­i­tive influ­ence for social order and sol­i­dar­i­ty, and are there­fore an indis­pens­able ele­ment of social life.” (CSD 304)

The Com­pendi­um dis­cuss­es many oth­ers.

• Food and drink­able water.
• Hous­ing.
• Free­dom from geno­cide.
• Free­dom from slav­ery.
• One’s own cul­tur­al her­itage.
• Con­science.
• Truth.
• Self-defense.
• Social Secu­ri­ty.
• A pen­sion.
• A safe work­ing envi­ron­ment.

•••

In Quadra­ges­i­mo Anno, Pope Pius XI describes social jus­tice, broad­ly, as “the norms of the com­mon good” (58). He says it is a “lofty and noble prin­ci­ple” (88). It is con­sis­tent with “the mind of the Church” (126).

All that said, it is, at best, mis­lead­ing for the Lep­an­to Insi­tute to lead oth­ers into the belief that those who advo­cate for social jus­tice have Judas as their patron saint and put less impor­tance on our duty to wor­ship God. At worst, it caus­es con­fu­sion and scan­dal. It need­less­ly casts Catholic social jus­tice advo­cates in a neg­a­tive light they do not mer­it. At a min­im­i­mum, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion is in order. How is the term being used? Social jus­tice in what sense?

That ser­vice to the poor is dif­fer­ent from wor­ship to God, that it has it place only to a point, is not what the Church teach­es. It is not Catholi­cism.

The popes from Leo XIII for­ward have writen a great num­ber of encycli­cals explain­ing social jus­tice. They have said that it is a right of all human beings which may not be ignored.

Do not lis­ten to the Lep­an­to Insti­tute. Lis­ten to the Church. Lis­ten to all her teach­ing.