Yes, I’m a Social Justice Warrior. Why aren’t you?

self-appoint­ed Catholic sage (for indeed we must have them) writes: “Once they get start­ed down the SJW trail, they just keep going.” (They here means the so-called “Catholic left, and the Catholic left is the bogey­man.) It’s a nov­el con­cept indeed: Social jus­tice as a sort of gate­way drug to more and more extreme forms of dis­sent. But that is not how the Church under­stands it. The acronym “SJW” is meant to be a pejo­ra­tive, and I used to bris­tle at it. But when I read the above dic­tum from The Sage, I won­dered why I ever should have: because social jus­tice is an impor­tant part of Catholic teach­ing. Of course I’m a war­rior for Catholic teach­ing. That’s a com­pli­ment.

Even Dave Arm­strong, Trump apol­o­gist and self-described con­ser­v­a­tive, has said he is “very pas­sion­ate” about social jus­tice. And so the left-right dichoto­my, which some insist on in this dis­cus­sion, is strange. Why should being pas­sion­ate about social jus­tice mean you are a left­ist? That makes lit­tle sense. Is Trump apol­o­gist Dave Arm­strong a left­ist? Is he a dis­senter? Bet­ter still, was Bene­dict XVI? He wrote Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate, you may remem­ber.

Nev­er­the­less, The Sage dis­missed the New Pro Life Move­ment (NPLM) sev­er­al years ago on the grounds that it was pri­mar­i­ly a social jus­tice group and less focused on sav­ing babies from abor­tion. (As though sav­ing babies from abor­tion is some­thing dif­fer­ent than social jus­tice; or as though being pro-life is only about abor­tion and noth­ing else. These are wild views and St. John Paul II would find them very strange indeed.) But, cried The Sage, the NPLM is no more than a laun­dry list of the Demo­c­rat Par­ty plat­form. Fake Site News echoed the wery same line and called the NPLM agen­da “lib­er­al boil­er­plate.” As I point­ed out, how­ev­er, every sin­gle item on that agen­da belongs to the Mag­is­te­r­i­al teach­ing of the Church. But sages and char­ac­ter assas­sins must have their myths, like prized pos­ses­sions.

Now, you may, if you like, search my archives for every­thing I’ve ever writ­ten about social jus­tice. If you thus do more due dili­gence than the sages, you will find that every time I write about it, I quote Church doc­u­ments, and only Church doc­u­ments. I don’t quote the Demo­c­rat plat­form or the Repub­li­can plat­form or Tony Esolen. And by “social jus­tice” I mean what the Church means, nei­ther more nor less.

Indeed the Cat­e­chism has a whole sec­tion (§1928–1948) on social jus­tice. Some don’t know this, or they pre­tend not to, which may amount to the same lazi­ness. It is part of “life in Christ,” mean­ing that with­out social jus­tice we are not in Christ. “What is at stake,” the Cat­e­chism says, “is the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son, whose defense and pro­mo­tion have been entrust­ed to us by the Cre­ator.

To be a war­rior for social jus­tice is to be a war­rior for the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son. The human per­son is the ulti­mate end of soci­ety. A per­son­’s rights under social jus­tice, the Cat­e­chism con­tin­ues, “are pri­or to soci­ety and must be rec­og­nized by it. They are the basis of the moral legit­i­ma­cy of every author­i­ty: by flout­ing them, or refus­ing to rec­og­nize them in its pos­i­tive leg­is­la­tion, a soci­ety under­mines its own moral legit­i­ma­cy.”

To have “moral legitimacy”—pay atten­tion here—a soci­ety must ensure these rights “in its pos­i­tive leg­is­la­tion.” Did you get that? So no one may retreat to the line that “social jus­tice is just a mat­ter of pri­vate char­i­ty, it’s not the gov­ern­men­t’s job.” By no means. Behold, I told you before.

“But Alt” you will say. “The Cat­e­chism also says that Catholics must sep­a­rate the wheat from the chaff and dis­tin­guish real rights under social jus­tice from ‘false claims.’ See, that’s in CCC 1930!”

Yes, and I am glad you said it. Back in Feb­ru­ary of 2017, Michael Hichborn—who calls him­self the Lep­an­to Institute—attempted to link social jus­tice to Judas Iscar­i­ot. And so I wrote this post in which I point­ed out, once again, that social jus­tice is part of the Mag­is­te­r­i­al teach­ing of the Church. And in that post, I list­ed every­thing that the Church names as a human right under social jus­tice. All of it came from the Com­pendi­um of the Social Doc­trine of the Church. (Yes, the word is doc­trine.)

• the right to life
• the right to reli­gious free­dom
• the right to work
• the right to a just wage
• the right to income equi­ty
• the right to strike
• the right to orga­nize unions
• the right to food and drink­able water
• the right to hous­ing
• the right to one’s own cul­tur­al her­itage
• the right to con­science
• the right to truth
• the right to self-defense
• the right to social secu­ri­ty
• the right to a pen­sion
• the right to safe work­ing envi­ron­ment
• free­dom from from geno­cide
• free­dom from slav­ery

All of these things are human rights under social jus­tice, accord­ing to the Mag­is­teri­um of the Church. They pre­cede human soci­ety and gov­ern­ments must ensure those rights if they are to have any moral legit­i­ma­cy.

I am a war­rior for Catholic teach­ing, and because I am, I am a social jus­tice war­rior. The real ques­tion is this: If you are Catholic, if you count your­self among the faith­fulest Catholics of the faith­ful, then why aren’t you?