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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Social justice

by

1855 days ago
20200624

The pop­u­lar phrase mak­ing the round these days is “so­cial jus­tice.” What is this? The in­ter­net dic­tio­nary de­fines so­cial jus­tice as “jus­tice in terms of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, op­por­tu­ni­ties, and priv­i­leges with­in a so­ci­ety.” It adds fur­ther that with­in the frame­work of that so­cial con­struct that: “in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty gives way to the strug­gle for so­cial jus­tice.” The con­cept of ‘so­cial jus­tice’ arose pri­mar­i­ly as a moral re­ac­tion to the pover­ty caused by so­ci­etal in­jus­tice in the Latin Amer­i­can con­text and achieved promi­nence in the 1970s and 1980s. It seems iron­ic that the term seemed to have been coined by a Pe­ru­vian priest, Gus­ta­vo Gutiér­rez, who wrote one of the move­ment’s most fa­mous books, A The­ol­o­gy of Lib­er­a­tion (1971). I say iron­ic be­cause the most vo­cal cham­pi­ons of so­cial jus­tice to­day are, for the most part, those who ap­pear to have ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly lit­tle to do with re­li­gion and even less to do with Catholi­cism.

As I un­der­stand it, so­cial jus­tice as a con­cept im­plies that we all have a ‘right’ to equal up­ward mo­bil­i­ty, equal re­sources and even fi­nances, and a right to equal so­cial priv­i­lege. In­her­ent in the de­mand for ‘so­cial jus­tice’ then, is a de­mand for cir­cum­stances in­trin­sic to our lot in life, oth­er than that which we have re­ceived. Those who em­brace and evoke that con­cept log­i­cal­ly be­lieve that ei­ther they them­selves or oth­er seg­ments of so­ci­ety that they deem dis­ad­van­taged have been “treat­ed un­fair­ly” by so­ci­ety. They, there­fore, see them­selves as ‘vic­tims’ of an ‘un­just’ sys­tem. They think they have been some­how de­prived of priv­i­leges in the cul­ture to which they be­long, priv­i­leges of pow­er, po­si­tion, and of prop­er­ty. They, there­fore, lament that there is no ‘so­cial jus­tice’ for them. His­tor­i­cal­ly, every seg­ment of so­ci­ety that cries out for so­cial jus­tice has been one that sees it­self as ‘vic­tim.’ Thus, women see them­selves as vic­tims, the poor see them­selves as vic­tims, eth­nic groups – not nec­es­sar­i­ly mi­nor­i­ty groups – and sex­u­al­ly de­viant groups see them­selves as vic­tims of so­cial in­jus­tice. All of these are vic­tim cat­e­gories, and to­day, any com­ment – in­no­cent or oth­er­wise made to any mem­ber of one of these cat­e­gories, when that com­ment is not fa­vor­able, it is seen as ‘hate speech’ or a form of ‘mi­cro-ag­gres­sion.’

To­day there is an ever-in­creas­ing mass of bel­liger­ent ‘vic­tims.’ When God asked Eve why she dis­obeyed Him, she said, “the ser­pent made me do it.” When God asked Adam why he was dis­obe­di­ent, he said, “the woman You gave me” made him do it. So here we have – whether you be­lieve it or not – an en­tire world filled with just two peo­ple, and nei­ther of them would will­ing­ly ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their be­hav­ior. They both shift­ed blame for their fail­ures! More deeply, how­ev­er, they both are blam­ing God Him­self! For who made the ser­pent? Was it not God? Adam could just as well have been say­ing: “I was fine un­til You gave me a woman.” “You put her here, and I didn’t ask for her to come!” Ul­ti­mate­ly, they both blamed God for their poor choice in their dis­obe­di­ence. Nei­ther was will­ing to ac­cept in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their ac­tions. They both shift­ed “blame” to some­where else! They suf­fered for that as we are suf­fer­ing from that and we are still “blam­ing oth­ers” for the “so­cial in­jus­tice” we con­tin­ue to suf­fer be­cause of our in­di­vid­ual stu­pid­i­ty!

The ‘Griev­ance gen­er­a­tion’ - gen­er­a­tion G - will have a prob­lem with every­thing - past, present and fu­ture. I am not a ‘vic­tim’ of any­one else’s ‘sin.’ I am my own man. I am re­spon­si­ble for my­self and my life, through the choic­es I make. Those choic­es in­formed by sound moral­i­ty will see me to suc­cess. I and I alone must ac­count for my ac­tions and my life. What is with all this blam­ing of every­one else, every oth­er gen­er­a­tion for the fact that I think I am dis­ad­van­taged. Get over it! Se­ri­ous­ly!

Steve Smith, FR­CP (Ed.)

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