All social education starts with the appreciation of justice. Justice seems like a faded lackluster virtue because its demands are at a first glance very modest; that is why it does not arouse enthusiasm. Its fulfillment carries no glory. It is the humblest of all virtues. One can boast of the alms and handouts one has given, but not of not having killed anyone, or of having paid ones debts, or of not having slandered a fellow human being; for such deeds are what one had to do and that is all there is to it.

However, justice is a difficult virtue, a very difficult one indeed, the practice of which requires a large dose of rectitude and humbleness. Many people are willing to do works of charity, found a school, or a club for the people who work for them. They are ready to give their workers a handout in times of trouble. However, such people cannot resign themselves to the only thing they must do which is to pay their workers good and sufficient wages to allow them to live as persons. There are some that enjoy overwhelming their underlings with gestures of kindness, but deny them the most basic sort of justice. And then these same people are shocked to find that their workers do not appreciate all their kind employers do for them, being ungrateful and unhappy as if their employer’s efforts were lost upon them. As paradoxical as it may seem, it is easier to be kind than to be just. However, kindness without justice will not bridge the abyss between employers and workers, teachers and students, husbands and wives. Such kindness based on a lack of justice shall only breed profound resentment.

Those who feel superior enjoy taking on a patronizing air because they derive a delicious sense of being in control from it. Simple justice destroys this illusion leveling them with those they regard as being beneath them. But people, workers in particular, do not want kindness; they seek the acknowledgement of their rights, of their equality as persons. No other substitute can satisfy this need.

This sort of benevolence as Ch. Blüher so accurately points out, reveals an unconscious denial intended to elude justice. It reveals an individual’s unconscious desire to think of himself as a freehanded and generous person, while retaining the benefit of his assets and power. It is like serving God and Mammona at the same time. Those who practice charity while neglecting justice create the illusion of being generous, when all they are really doing is providing an annoying sort of protection, which far from generating gratitude merely provokes rebellion.

Our society may boast of many works of charity. However, as laudable as such a tremendous effort of generosity may be, it will not make amends for the havoc brought on by injustice. Injustice breeds far more wrongs than can be repaired by charity.

Church doctrine on charity is very often misunderstood. It is true that in it, charity is regarded as the most perfect of virtues. However, it is not to be understood as a sort of charity, which disregards justice, nor one, which does for workers what they should do for themselves. Nor should it be understood as the act of giving workers what they are entitled to as a favor, thus trampling on human dignity. Such a concept is naught but a caricature of charity. Charity begins where justice ends. Sometimes people give less than what is due by justice, thinking that in fact they are giving much more.

May the joys of charity not lead us to disregard justice, its humble and simple companion. Let us allow justice to set things right, putting everything in its place, and the generosity of the Christian soul shall follow, fulfilling any needs that cannot be met by justice.

Fortunately, these are times in which there is a claim for justice. After years of oppression, people do not intend to settle for any less than justice, aspiring to attain it even if the social edifice must be blown to pieces in the attempt.

The passion for justice explodes with devastating intensity. In many cases such passion is blind, resorting to ill-fated means. Sadly, as Pio XI deplores, the claim for bread, an absolutely fair demand, is often accompanied by feelings of hatred, which can never be justified.

Amidst their exaggerations, Marxism and totalitarianism have called on the masses to repair the justice violations committed by the free economy. And if these political movements have found a profound echo in the masses it has been due to the spirit of truth, which these doctrines embrace, and to their outcry for justice rather than to the errors attributable to them. The fact that in our days so many workers have distanced themselves from faith has often been due to the mistaken idea that these movements have encouraged, claiming that the Church does not stand unconditionally on the side of justice, using as a pretext the isolated actions of many Catholics lacking in social awareness.

We must counter this chaos with the order of justice, fearing neither upheavals nor catastrophes. People are very understanding when it comes to knowing how to wait for the gradual implementation of what may not be attained overnight. However, what they are not willing to do is to continue putting up with being denied justice and having that to which they are entitled given to them under the guise of mercy and in the name of charity instead. We must be fair before being generous. Injustice breeds far more wrongs than can be repaired through charity.

THE SENSE OF RECTITUDE

The love of justice will imperceptibly turn into a delicate disposition, driving us to avoid even the slightest hint of injustice and to withdraw our collaboration from those who intend to perpetuate abuse.

Each and everyone will practice their professions with impeccable correction towards others. Lawyers will defend the law avoiding any sort of trickery that might be in compliance with the letter of the law but not with its spirit.

Engineers will keep in mind that people differ in nature from machines and are worthy of considerations due to their human dignity. Thus, they shall go out of their way to pay their workers fair wages within the possibilities of their companies.

Farm owners will acknowledge that people are far more valuable than the finest of beasts, and that the considerations a human being deserves are quite different form those that may be given to other beings of material creation. Men and women are our brothers and sisters. Therefore, they are not willing to put up with having crops stored in rooms fitted with concrete walls and flooring, and having racehorses sheltered from winter with keepers who prepare their bedding and food, while the poor due to unfair wages and a lack of social charity are forced to live in huts with dirt floors, and are in practice regarded as being beneath the animals they show off at the fair grounds.

Employees will not use work hours for personal gain. Business people will be honest about the earnings they report. Sub-contractors will not do hasty jobs with poor quality materials, or deliver their work intentionally in bad shape so that they must be called again to repair it. Moneylenders will not demand usurious interests. Stockbrokers will not transfer risky bonds or securities to their clients, nor will they deal in shady operations in the stock market by profiting from ill-gotten information, or by violating confidentiality using insider-information. Hoarding, bootlegging, watered down wine and milk, soil mixed into fertilizers, bales of hemp made heavier by the addition of stones, burned-out light bulbs sold as new... and so many other forms of social fraud.

In dealing with people of humble means, employers will not be suspicious of their intentions, looking out for their interests, as they would do with their own. They will be grateful of the services rendered by their workers keeping in mind that all the gold in the world is worth less than a human action, and that in that sense employers always remain indebted to their workers.

Employers often complain about their workers, claiming that they have so little awareness. Workers miss being treated with a spirit of justice and charity by their employers. Each social class grieves over the lack of social awareness they see in the classes that complement their own. While this social awareness becomes widespread, each of us, either in our roles as workers or employers, should commit ourselves to a firm purpose by claiming: At least I will strive to be a socially aware person!

Thus, as far as possible, believers will keep the integrity of their souls in a world that is falling apart. May their hands remain untainted regardless of how foul their environment might be!


THE SENSE OF SCANDAL

All social actions first exact from each of us the task of spiritual purification. The first condition in this process is that of awakening in our spirits the sense of scandal. All that is required from every citizen is to make even the smallest contribution to suppress misery and unemployment, by giving millions of undernourished people, living the lives of dogs, driven to desperation, enough to eat, healthful housing, and the essential conditions of morality. We cannot change the course of history so rapidly.

Bur one thing does depend on us and that is always possible. Despite accepting evil as a temporarily invincible fatality, let us not justify it as if it were absolute goodness. Constrained by the actions, which are corrupted by our prevailing conditions, we may at least save the purity of our own judgement. And we may do this by asserting that a social architecture that begets misery from abundance, and unemployment from technical ingeniousness, and which renders work a slave and money king, is neither good nor worthy of being crystallized forever. What we are always capable of doing is to be shocked and to suffer. To be shocked and suffer! That is exactly how every Christian must react when seeing misrule replacing justice.

Church doctrine governing acceptance has been widely misinterpreted, as if Catholics should surrender to the course of circumstances, without putting up a struggle. Such a conception would certainly befit the notion of religion as being the opium of the people. However, that has never been the Church doctrine. On the contrary, Catholics must fight with all their might, resorting to any fair weaponry to make justice prevail. It is only when the last resource has been used up that Catholics may claim to have performed their duty. Before any consummated facts, whose avoidance escapes their power, Catholics must surrender, but before any realities that may be avoided or modified they must not give in.

It is necessary to live, accept, yield, and surrender. However, we may at least maintain the painful rebellion of our consciousness, because it is also important to create the psychological environment for progress. For all is lost if man surrenders before evil from the very beginning and employs all his courage and his prudence to live the present moment, failing to save his best efforts to pave the path to the future.

It is admittedly true that economic problems are very complex. What are we to do when no one can see clearly? It could very well be said that the solutions escape the grasp of our poor human intelligence. That is possible. Nonetheless, in the absence of any other weapon, we may at least protest with our consciousness; we may cry out with our voices while there is still breath within ourselves. We are capable of not falling into the habit of injustice. We may reject becoming its accomplices... “The harm that silence over social injustices causes the Church outweighs by far any benefit that grand speeches over the dangers of loggias could have for it.”

Meditation, prayer, and education should always keep our eyes wide open to human pain. They should always make our hearts ache over human suffering fostering our consciousness to rectify in every circumstance the criteria that the horribly leveling mass tries to impose as world criteria, as what is accepted by everyone, as the inevitable. The sense of scandal shall keep us in a state of permanent outcry against evil.

---

This page is archived at
www.mdsj.org/hurtado/hurtado_7.html