The Encyclical on Social Justice

The long-missing specific and direct act of Social Justice is used as the title of the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno: “On the Reconstruction of Social Order.” This title occurs in the heading of the Letter; the words “Quadragesimo anno,” being simply the first two words of the Letter itself. This document is a truly masterly treatise on the whole virtue of Social Justice, though the applications of the theory are made mostly to the economic order, which is only one aspect, though a “most important” one, of social life.

The term “Social Justice” is used ten times in this encyclical, and there are many other passages where the same idea occurs, but without the technical name. Yet very few commentators seem to have realized that this is the subject, and the most important point, of the Papal teaching. They discuss the living wage, the family wage*, property, labor, capitalism, competition, monopoly, class war, Communism all the details that are used for explanation and illustration but miss the great subject of the whole Encyclical! It would be a very salutary practice to refer always to the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno as “The Encyclical on Social Justice.” Thus attention would be drawn to the central idea, instead of to the supporting details and illustrations.

Common Misunderstanding

Let us give an example of how the Encyclical’s great message can be misunderstood. In paragraph 71, the Holy Father says:

Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to meet common domestic needs adequately. But if this cannot always be done under existing circumstances, Social Justice demands that changes be introduced into the system as soon as possible, whereby such a wage will be assured to every adult workingman.

Now if we were to hand this quotation to a number of people, and ask each one of them what Social Justice demands in it, almost every one of them would answer, “A family wage.” They would all be wrong! Look again at the syntax of the sentence: the direct object of the predicate “demands” is the clause “that changes be introduced into the system.” The Pope’s teaching on the family wage is that it is due in commutative or strict justice to the individual worker; what Social Justice demands is something specifically social: the reorganization of the system. For it is the whole system which is badly organized (“socially unjust”) when it withholds from the human beings whose lives are bound up in it, the power to “meet common domestic needs adequately.”

Very Clear Teaching

The Holy Father later summarized the teaching of Quadragesimo Anno in several paragraphs of Divini Redemptoris (“On Atheistic Communism”). In Paragraph 53 of this latter document he gives a very clear example for his teachings:
 
It happens all too frequently, under the salary system, that individual employers are helpless to insure justice, unless, with a view to its practice, they organize institutions whose object is to prevent competition incompatible with fair treatment of the workers. Where this is true, it is the duty of contractors and employers to support such necessary organizations as normal instruments enabling them to fulfill their obligations of justice.

Here the two levels of justice are clearly distinguished. On the level of commutative or individual justice the employer is helpless, and note that this happens “all too frequently.” Now evidently,
if he is really helpless to do full justice, he does not sin when out of sheer necessity he falls short of justice. In individual justice the case is closed, for the employer can do nothing about it; and the injustice must be allowed to continue out of sheer inability to stop it.

Above this field of individual justice, however, there is the whole field of Social Justice, and in this higher field the case is never closed. The “helplessness” of individuals comes from the fact that the whole industry is badly organized (“socially unjust”). Social Justice demands that it be organized rightly for the Common Good of all who depend upon it for their welfare and perfection. Therefore employers have the duty the rigid duty of Social Justice which they cannot disregard without sin to work together (socially) to reorganize their industry. Once this reorganization (act of Social Justice) has been accomplished by group (social) action, then the employers will no longer be helpless in the field of individual justice, and will be under obligation to meet their strict duties in this latter field.

Something Solid

From the example given by the Holy Father, it will be seen immediately that Social Justice is not at all the vague and fuzzy “blanket word” that gets into so many popular speeches. It is an absolutely clear and precise scientific concept, a special virtue with definite and rigid obligations of its own. But there is no use looking to anyone earlier than Pope Pius XI for a definition and description of it complete enough to include the specific act (organizing) by which Social Justice is directly practiced. There are suggestions and partial glimpses, of course, in every work that ever dealt with social problems; but if anyone before Pope Pius XI ever put all the pieces together in one coherent theory, he has succeeded in keeping his secret remarkably well!