Does this Ratzinger quote refute Catholic social justice advocates?

ut Alt! Is social jus­tice real­ly a duty of the State? Come now. Does­n’t Ratzinger say that this is for the pri­vate sec­tor and per­son­al action instead? It’s not a polit­i­cal thing, you know. He says this in Chris­tian­i­ty and the Cri­sis of Cul­tures. He wrote it just before becom­ing Pope Bene­dict XVI. Remem­ber? It’s in the first chap­ter; you left­ist Catholic blog­gers and writ­ers don’t even need to read all that far.”

Okay, then. Let’s check. Here’s Ratzinger:

It is indeed true that a new moral­ism exists today. Its key words are jus­tice, peace, and the con­ser­va­tion of cre­ation, and these are words that recall essen­tial moral val­ues, of which we gen­uine­ly stand in need. But this moral­ism remains vague and almost inevitably remains con­fined to the sphere of par­ty pol­i­tics, where it is pri­mar­i­ly a claim addressed to oth­ers, rather than a per­son­al duty in our own dai­ly life. (27–28)

Yes. I agree with this.

I do wish, though, that when peo­ple come across quo­ta­tions like this one, they would try to put them in con­text. Don’t sub­mit the pope to a proof text. Is that very much to ask? I mean, the Church talks about the state’s duty to ensure “jus­tice, peace, and the con­ser­va­tion of crea­tion” All. The. Time. How does one miss this? Chris­tian­i­ty and the Cri­sis of Cul­tures is not a cri­tique of social jus­tice; it is not a cri­tique of the wel­fare state. It is not a cri­tique of lib­er­al pol­i­tics or “left­ist” blog­gers. It is not a primer on con­ser­vatism, or lib­er­tar­i­an­ism, or the rav­ings of Ayn Rand. It is not the GOP plat­form. Instead it is a cri­tique of Enlight­en­ment ratio­nal­ism. I know this is not the kind of thing read­i­ly reduced to a meme. It is full of sen­tences that do not lend them­selves to cher­ry-pick­ing.

Ratzinger begins his book by not­ing that, “Dur­ing the past cen­tu­ry, the pos­si­bil­i­ties avail­able to man for domin­ion over mat­ter have grown in a man­ner we may tru­ly call unimag­in­able.”

This means that man enters the world, no longer as a gift of the Cre­ator, but as the prod­uct of our own activity—and a prod­uct that can be select­ed accord­ing to require­ments that we our­selves stip­u­late. [Because we have so much pow­er, we think we are the mas­ters.] In this way, the splen­dor of the fact that he is the image of God—the source of his dig­ni­ty and his inviolability—no longer shines upon this man; his only splen­dor is the pow­er of human capa­bil­i­ties. Man is noth­ing more now than the image of man. (26)

Let us unpack this. Man has dig­ni­ty because he is the image of God; but being a crea­ture, not the Cre­ator, he is sub­ject to moral bound­aries. These come from God. But in mod­ern times, the one ques­tion we ask is: Can we do this? Not: Should we do this? If we find we can clone a per­son, we will clone a per­son. In this way we become not the image of God but the image of our­selves, of our own pow­er. But with­out moral lim­its, “the pow­er man has will be trans­formed more and more into a pow­er of destruc­tion” (27). This con­cerns Ratzinger; this is the basis of his cri­tique.

Hav­ing begun his book on that note, he then writes the words about the “new moral­ism” I quot­ed above. He says that “jus­tice, peace, and the con­ser­va­tion of cre­ation” are indeed “essen­tial moral val­ues, of which we gen­uine­ly stand in need.” The prob­lem is when we do not define these val­ues, when we keep them “vague” and “con­fine” them to “the sphere of par­ty pol­i­tics.”

Now that is a nuance we must not miss. These real­ly are moral values—justice, peace, the con­ser­va­tion of cre­ation. Ratzinger does not dis­pute their moral­i­ty; he likes them. He approves of them. (And the Church tells us to pur­sue them, too.) What Ratzinger does dis­pute is that they are polit­i­cal val­ues. He dis­putes that we can reduce to “par­ty pol­i­tics.” He dis­putes they have their ori­gin there.

And I agree. This needs said. Preach it. Amen Amen dico tibi. Jus­tice is jus­tice because it hon­ors the Cre­ator by doing well for his Image. It is not jus­tice when it is a tac­tic for polit­i­cal advan­tage, or an ele­va­tion of man above the Cre­ator, as though the end of man were man.

The sec­ond prob­lem Ratzinger has is when social jus­tice “becomes pri­mar­i­ly a claim addressed to oth­ers, rather than a per­son­al duty in our own dai­ly life.” (That is my own empha­sis.)

Now, Ratzinger is cor­rect here, too. We can’t just be telling oth­ers what they must do if we do not ful­fill those same demands in our own lives. We can’t say, “Well, the State will take care of the poor, I don’t need to give to St. Vin­cent.” Amen Amen dico tibi; I am hap­py to agree with Ratzinger on this.

But in con­text, you will have a hard time of it if you want to use these words to claim that Ratzinger means we must con­fine social jus­tice entire­ly to the pri­vate sphere. Not at all; he is mak­ing a dif­fer­ent point. He says we have lost God and are try­ing to replace Him with utopi­an schemes dressed up as jus­tice. But true social jus­tice is not a utopi­an scheme.

T.S. Eliot once wrote of those who “dream of sys­tems so per­fect that no one will need to be good.” That’s what Ratzinger is get­ting at. The quest for Utopia becomes more impor­tant than “the dig­ni­ty of the indi­vid­ual” (28) and ends up sup­plant­i­ng it. What begins as a hunger for jus­tice results in injus­tice. The rea­son for this is because the utopi­an dream­ers nev­er prop­er­ly define “jus­tice.” Nor do they acknowl­edge God as the source of man’s rights and dig­ni­ty. We yearn for gen­uine moral val­ues; but if we do not acknowl­edge their source, if we do not say that man is invi­o­lable because he is made in the image of God, then we achieve the oppo­site of what we say we want. We are not pur­su­ing jus­tice but utopia and power—the glo­ry of man rather than the glo­ry of God.

•••

But must we con­clude that Ratzinger thinks the State has no duty to seek social jus­tice?

The short answer is: No. By no means. In fact, no one who makes an hon­est study of his words as Pope Bene­dict XVI could pos­si­bly con­clude that. An hon­est study of his words would make any self-respect­ing lib­er­tar­i­an’s head explode.

Let’s look.

Here are some pas­sages from Deus Car­i­tas Est:

26. It is true that the pur­suit of jus­tice must be a fun­da­men­tal norm of the State and that the aim of a just social order is to guar­an­tee to each per­son, accord­ing to the prin­ci­ple of sub­sidiar­i­ty, his share of the com­mu­ni­ty’s goods. This has always been empha­sized by Chris­t­ian teach­ing on the State and by the Church’s social doc­trine.

Indeed so. This goes back in the social doc­trine at least to Leo XIII; and we will see anon that Bene­dict cites St. Augus­tine on the duty of the state to pur­sue jus­tice.

28. The just order­ing of soci­ety and the State is a cen­tral respon­si­bil­i­ty of pol­i­tics. As Augus­tine once said, a State which is not gov­erned accord­ing to jus­tice would be just a bunch of thieves.

St. Augus­tine. Told you so. But he was prob­a­bly a Com­mu­nist. He was prob­a­bly a left­ist the­olo­gian.

28. Jus­tice is both the aim and the intrin­sic cri­te­ri­on of all pol­i­tics. Pol­i­tics is more than a mere mech­a­nism for defin­ing the rules of pub­lic life: its ori­gin and its goal are found in jus­tice, which by its very nature has to do with ethics.

Its ori­gin and its goal is jus­tice. It is not some cum­ber­some accre­tion.

28. Build­ing a social and civ­il order, where­in each per­son receives what is his or her due, is an essen­tial task which every gen­er­a­tion must take up anew. As a polit­i­cal task, this can­not be the Church’s imme­di­ate respon­si­bil­i­ty. Yet, since it is also a most impor­tant human respon­si­bil­i­ty, the Church is duty-bound to offer, through the purifi­ca­tion of rea­son and through eth­i­cal for­ma­tion, her own spe­cif­ic con­tri­bu­tion towards under­stand­ing the require­ments of jus­tice and achiev­ing them polit­i­cal­ly.

 

28. A just soci­ety must be the achieve­ment of pol­i­tics, not of the Church.

Wait, did he just say that?

I’m afraid he did. Deus Car­i­tas Est 28; look it up.

29. The direct duty to work for a just order­ing of soci­ety, on the oth­er hand, is prop­er to the lay faith­ful. As cit­i­zens of the State, they are called to take part in pub­lic life in a per­son­al capac­i­ty. So they can­not relin­quish their par­tic­i­pa­tion “in the many dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic, social, leg­isla­tive, admin­is­tra­tive and cul­tur­al areas, which are intend­ed to pro­mote organ­i­cal­ly and insti­tu­tion­al­ly the com­mon good.” The mis­sion of the lay faith­ful is there­fore to con­fig­ure social life cor­rect­ly.

So here’s where that part about “per­son­al duty in our own dai­ly lives” comes in. But let us inter­pret right­ly. It is from the Church that we learn what the demands of jus­tice are. These come from God and it is the duty of the Church to make them known. And it is the duty of all Catholics to pro­mote jus­tice. It is their “mis­sion.”

But it is not just a mat­ter of pri­vate char­i­ty. Note how Bene­dict XVI con­tin­ues in Deus Car­i­tas Est 30:

The Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil right­ly observed that “among the signs of our times, one par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­thy of note is a grow­ing, inescapable sense of sol­i­dar­i­ty between all peo­ples.” State agen­cies and human­i­tar­i­an asso­ci­a­tions work to pro­mote this, the for­mer main­ly through sub­si­dies or tax relief, the lat­ter by mak­ing avail­able con­sid­er­able resources. The sol­i­dar­i­ty shown by civ­il soci­ety thus sig­nif­i­cant­ly sur­pass­es that shown by indi­vid­u­als.

The state has the resources to do more. Now, pri­vate char­i­ty and pri­vate action are a duty. Of course; and Bene­dict XVI goes on to dis­cuss it. He says that it “must be inde­pen­dent of par­ties and ide­olo­gies.” And he says that no one should want a state that can give us all things. All that is true. It’s impor­tant to say this. But one must dis­tin­guish: To say it must be “inde­pen­dent of par­ties and ide­olo­gies” does not mean that it is not the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the State. The State is not the Par­ty; the Par­ty is not the State. We can argue about how much should be the job of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and how much can be left to local and state gov­ern­ments. That is a fair dis­cus­sion. But we must make dis­tinc­tions.

•••

Next I turn to Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate:

6. On the one hand, char­i­ty demands jus­tice: recog­ni­tion and respect for the legit­i­mate rights of indi­vid­u­als and peo­ples. It strives to build the earth­ly city accord­ing to law and jus­tice.

If the state is to pur­sue jus­tice, the state must itself be just.

32. The dig­ni­ty of the indi­vid­ual and the demands of jus­tice require, par­tic­u­lar­ly today, that eco­nom­ic choic­es do not cause dis­par­i­ties in wealth to increase in an exces­sive and moral­ly unac­cept­able man­ner, and that we con­tin­ue to pri­or­i­tize the goal of access to steady employ­ment for every­one.

Wealth dis­par­i­ty is a real con­cern for Pope Bene­dict; so much so, that he even calls for redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Com­mon­weal picks up on that. For the 45th World Day of Peace in 2012, his top­ic was “Edu­cat­ing Young Peo­ple in Jus­tice and Peace.” There he said:

Peace, how­ev­er, is not mere­ly a gift to be received: it is also a task to be under­tak­en. In order to be true peace­mak­ers, we must edu­cate our­selves in com­pas­sion, sol­i­dar­i­ty, work­ing togeth­er, fra­ter­ni­ty, in being active with­in the com­mu­ni­ty and con­cerned to raise aware­ness about nation­al and inter­na­tion­al issues and the impor­tance of seek­ing ade­quate mech­a­nisms for the redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, the pro­mo­tion of growth, coop­er­a­tion for devel­op­ment and con­flict res­o­lu­tion.

“Redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth” hard­ly means “pri­vate char­i­ty.” If you think that, I would­n’t know what to say to you.

But I return to Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate.

35. The mar­ket is sub­ject to the prin­ci­ples of so-called com­mu­ta­tive jus­tice, which reg­u­lates the rela­tions of giv­ing and receiv­ing between par­ties to a trans­ac­tion. But the social doc­trine of the Church has unceas­ing­ly high­light­ed the impor­tance of dis­trib­u­tive jus­tice and social jus­tice for the mar­ket econ­o­my, not only because it belongs with­in a broad­er social and polit­i­cal con­text, but also because of the wider net­work of rela­tions with­in which it oper­ates. In fact, if the mar­ket is gov­erned sole­ly by the prin­ci­ple of the equiv­a­lence in val­ue of exchanged goods, it can­not pro­duce the social cohe­sion that it requires in order to func­tion well.

 

37. The Church’s social doc­trine has always main­tained that jus­tice must be applied to every phase of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, because this is always con­cerned with man and his needs. Locat­ing resources, financ­ing, pro­duc­tion, con­sump­tion and all the oth­er phas­es in the eco­nom­ic cycle inevitably have moral impli­ca­tions. Thus every eco­nom­ic deci­sion has a moral con­se­quence.

Right. You may not divorce pol­i­tics from the moral law, as if it’s a safe space of some kind. And the moral law includes social jus­tice.

And now watch, because Bene­dict XVI is about to call for an inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion to ensure social jus­tice.

67. To man­age the glob­al econ­o­my; to revive economies hit by the cri­sis; to avoid any dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the present cri­sis and the greater imbal­ances that would result; to bring about inte­gral and time­ly dis­ar­ma­ment, food secu­ri­ty and peace; to guar­an­tee the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment and to reg­u­late migra­tion: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world polit­i­cal author­i­ty, as my pre­de­ces­sor Blessed John XXIII indi­cat­ed some years ago. Such an author­i­ty would need to be reg­u­lat­ed by law, to observe con­sis­tent­ly the prin­ci­ples of sub­sidiar­i­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty, to seek to estab­lish the com­mon good, and to make a com­mit­ment to secur­ing authen­tic inte­gral human devel­op­ment inspired by the val­ues of char­i­ty in truth. Fur­ther­more, such an author­i­ty would need to be uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized and to be vest­ed with the effec­tive pow­er to ensure secu­ri­ty for all, regard for jus­tice, and respect for rights.

What a rad­i­cal left­ist. This is a goal of the left, right? They always want to give up our sov­er­eign­ty to one world gov­ern­ment schemes. How do we get these com­mie popes who focus on social sins rather than the way of sal­va­tion?

•••

But I will show you more. Pope Bene­dict gave his mes­sage for the 43rd World Day of Peace in 2010 the title “If You Want to Pro­mote Peace, Pro­tect Cre­ation.” No, that’s not just some lefty Soros-Oba­ma-Bergoglio-Smoke Of Satan thing. John Paul II said that; Paul VI said that. Bene­dict has their quo­ta­tions in his text. You can look it up.

Some high­lights:

4. Can we remain indif­fer­ent before the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with such real­i­ties as cli­mate change [He believed in that too.], deser­ti­fi­ca­tion, the dete­ri­o­ra­tion and loss of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in vast agri­cul­tur­al areas, the pol­lu­tion of rivers and aquifers, the loss of bio­di­ver­si­ty, the increase of nat­ur­al cat­a­stro­phes and the defor­esta­tion of equa­to­r­i­al and trop­i­cal regions? Can we dis­re­gard the grow­ing phe­nom­e­non of “envi­ron­men­tal refugees”, peo­ple who are forced by the degra­da­tion of their nat­ur­al habi­tat to for­sake it – and often their pos­ses­sions as well – in order to face the dan­gers and uncer­tain­ties of forced dis­place­ment? [He believed in our duty to refugees, too.] Can we remain impas­sive in the face of actu­al and poten­tial con­flicts involv­ing access to nat­ur­al resources? All these are issues with a pro­found impact on the exer­cise of human rights, such as the right to life, food, health and devel­op­ment.

Imag­ine that. Bene­dict XVI speaks of the right to life in the same breath with the right to food and the right to health. And indeed: How can one live with­out food and health?

8. Uni­ver­sal sol­i­dar­i­ty rep­re­sents a ben­e­fit as well as a duty. This is a respon­si­bil­i­ty that present gen­er­a­tions have towards those of the future, a respon­si­bil­i­ty that also con­cerns indi­vid­ual States and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

 

9. “This means that tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced soci­eties must be pre­pared to encour­age more sober lifestyles, while reduc­ing their ener­gy con­sump­tion and improv­ing its effi­cien­cy. At the same time there is a need to encour­age research into, and uti­liza­tion of, forms of ener­gy with low­er impact on the envi­ron­ment and “a world-wide redis­tri­b­u­tion of ener­gy resources, so that coun­tries lack­ing those resources can have access to them.

And peo­ple said it was an out­rage that Pope Fran­cis would tar­get air con­di­tion­ers. Turns out Bene­dict shared those same con­cerns.

11. Edu­ca­tion for peace must increas­ing­ly begin with far-reach­ing deci­sions on the part of indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ties and states. We are all respon­si­ble for the pro­tec­tion and care of the envi­ron­ment. This respon­si­bil­i­ty knows no bound­aries.

“We are all respon­si­ble.” So yes, it is true: Jus­tice is a “per­son­al duty in our own dai­ly lives.” But it is a duty of the State also, accord­ing to Bene­dict, who is only telling us what the Church has long told us.

•••

It was not so much my intent to whelm you with quo­ta­tions; though their sheer num­ber says much. You can see: This kind of talk goes on and on and on with Bene­dict XVI. And to tell the truth, it goes on and on with John Paul II and Paul VI. And John XXIII. Well, go back to Leo XIII. Go back to St. Augus­tine! This stuff abounds, online, for free. All you need to do is read what the texts actu­al­ly say. Tolle lege.

And what, in the end, of those words from Chris­tian­i­ty and the Cri­sis of Cul­tures? My answer is: Hermeneu­tic of con­ti­nu­ity. What you can’t do is say it is some­how at odds with the rest that Ratzinger said as Pope Bene­dict XVI. As pope he tells us that the pur­suit of social jus­tice is a pri­ma­ry duty of the state. He says it is a “fun­da­men­tal norm of the State.” It is the “cen­tral respon­si­bil­i­ty of pol­i­tics.” There is no get­ting rid of those words.

What he did mean, in his book, is that we can not pur­sue “jus­tice” in the abstract, apart from the moral demands God makes upon us. We are respon­si­ble to him. Jus­tice is the prop­er aim of the State, but the mean­ing of jus­tice does not orig­i­nate in the State. Nor does it orig­i­nate in man. Our rights come from God; our rights belong to us because we are made in His image. That is the con­text of Ratzinger’s cri­tique. Of course social jus­tice is a respon­si­bil­i­ty of all peo­ple, in what­ev­er sphere of life they hap­pen to be involved in. It can not be left to the State alone. But nei­ther can it be left to pri­vate action alone. That’s a false dichoto­my. Catholics are a both-and peo­ple. We are all respon­si­ble, and our duty to social jus­tice must also be embod­ied in the polit­i­cal order.