Social Justice: Intersecting Catholicism, Citizenship, and Capitalism

Without doubt, social justice is one of the most politically charged issues in American politics today. Social justice essentially looks toward attending to the needs of individual citizens. Contemporary commentators and activists see social justice through a variety of different perspectives. Although most current American policies address the material needs of less-fortunate citizens, this paper argues that any effective approach to the social justice question must also encompass spiritual and civic elements that go well beyond a simple materialist response. Any consideration of social justice should address the whole of each individual human experience rather than simply the redirection of the goods and services of economic production. Social justice is about individual human beings, not about the distribution of economic output. This is precisely why consideration of individual life purpose, political activity, and economic well-being potentially serves as a useful lens to consider how social justice can be achieved as fully as possible in light of humanity's inherent limitations. Technical dictionary definitions of the term social justice include examples such as "a state or doctrine of egalitarianism" (Webster's) or "justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities and privileges within a society" (Oxford Dictionary). However, these technical definitions do not necessarily provide clarity given the number of competing interpretations. For example, Michael Novak notes that "[s]ocial justice is really the capacity to organize with others to accomplish ends that benefit the whole community" (2000, 13). He adds that "[o]ne happy characteristic of this definition of the virtue of social justice is that it is ideologically neutral. . . . [However] we must rule out any use of 'social justice' that does not attach to the habits (that is, virtues) of individuals. Social justice is a virtue, an attribute of individuals, or it is a fraud" (2009,1). At the opposite end of the spectrum, Catholic theologian Gustavo Gutierrez states in his work A Theology of Liberation that "[c]harity is today a 'political charity.'. . . [I]t means the transformation of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. This transformation ought to be directed toward a radical change in the foundation of society, that is, the private ownership of the means of production" (1988, 116). Novak's and Gutierrez's definitions