Diocesan Social Action Office www.catholic-action.org
SOCIAL JUSTICE – WHAT IS IT?
As Catholics and parishioners of Divine Word parish, we all should have at some point heard the term “social justice”.
What does this term mean?
What does social justice entail?
How are we called to be responsible for a just society for all?
Let’s take a look.
As stated above, social justice is basically a term that refers to a society where all living beings are treated in a just and fair manner, which is achieved through the people who live in those societies. People of faith are particularly responsible to strive for equality and justice for all. Leaders of the Catholic Church have been laying the ground work for us to do so beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of Labor), which set the stage for social justice encyclicals for many other Church leaders including John Paul II. Evolving from these encyclicals, the church gathered a collection of teachings that are designed to reflect the Church’s social mission in response to the challenge of the day. This collection of teachings is referred to as Catholic Social Teaching and includes the seven following themes:
1. LIFE AND DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON…Made in the image and likeness of God, all persons are sacred. Belief in the sanctity of human life and inherent dignity of each person is the foundation of all our social teachings. Today this value is threatened by abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia, the death penalty and the many ways people are treated with disregard for their human dignity.
2. CALL TO FAMILY, COMMUNITY AND PARTICIPATION…The human person is social as well as sacred. Our catholic tradition teaches that human beings grow and achieve fulfillment in community. The family is the central social institution. Family life needs to be supported by other institutions and governments.
3. RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES…People have a fundamental right to life and to those things necessary for human decency, such as food, shelter, health care, education and employment. People have a right to participate in decisions that affect their lives. Corresponding to these rights are duties and responsibilities to respect the rights of others and to work for the common good.
4. OPTION FOR THE POOR AND VULNERABLE…Catholic teaching proclaims that the moral test of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members. This calls us to look at public policy decisions in terms of how the affect the poor.
5. THE DIGNITY OF WORK AND THE RIGHTS OF WORKERS….. People have a right to humane working conditions, productive work and fair wages. The economy exists to serve the people, not the other way around.
6. SOLIDARITY…We are all one human family and we are responsible for the well-being of each other. This responsibility reaches across national, racial, ethnic, economic and ideological differences.
7. CARE FOR GOD’S CREATION…..All of creation is a gift from God and should be respected as such. We show our respect by the way we care for the earth as stewards of all that has been entrusted to us. We need to examine how our excessive consumerism and poor environmental practices are exploiting the earth and take measures to correct our destructive patterns.
In light of the all-encompassing stance of Catholic Social Teaching, it is evident that social justice is more than providing assistance to those in need of food, housing, clothing, etc., as important as that may be. Social justice is also in seeking the root causes that contribute to poverty, environmental degradation, war and disease and so on and in working together in community to affect the common good of all. In other words, social justice does not just call us to maintain a poor person with our charitable acts, but also to work toward a society where no one is impoverished. For this to be accomplished, we must all get in on the act!!!