Christian Principles of Justice
(From Bringing Forth Justice, Bishop Daniel Pilarczyk)
Justice, First definition: “The strong and firm will to give each what is his or her due”. It is
concerned with rights, duties, receiving, giving, owing, claims, obligations, balance, fairness, etc.
From the RC perspective, Justice is not primarily a “human convention that is agreed upon”.
Rather, it is something that is a “natural consequence of what God has created us to be”.
There can be more than one kind of justice, depending on where one starts, or what basic
principles one starts with. Systems can be built to reflect and enact the basic principles. It is even
possible for different people to accept the same basic principles but interpret them in different
ways and so build different actual systems or structures. However, there are limitations and/or
possibilities based upon what one believes the basic principles to be. “Principles” form a
“foundation for justice”, but they are, after all, “principles”. How the general principles are put
into practice or applied is a different issue.
Justice is not only laws, rules, or customs. Such things are secondary. What is primary is “acting
in accord with the way things were made to be”. There is an entire theology or philosophy that
underlies one’s system of justice depending on what one takes to be the real, or the order of
nature, or human nature. Given all that, Pilarczyk details 5 Principles of Justice from the
Christian perspective. By rights, they all fit together and are of a piece, such that undermining or
enhancing one tends to undermine or enhance the others. On the other hand, the order of the
principles is important in this case, at least so far as the first principle is concerned. It comes first
and the others follow from it.
1. First Principle: God’s Creation (and what follows from that).
Christian Justice begins with a belief that “Creation is God’s doing (not our own), and this
creation is good”. Creation is made for God’s purposes. Humans are tenants; God the landlord.
Creation belongs to God. We are part of creation, and it is there for our use, but not for our
abuse.
Yet, creation is for humans to enjoy – in accord with God’s love for us and for creation.
Therefore, we have a responsibility to creation. We hold the world “in trust”. We are “stewards”.
There is the question in this about Private Property. Can there be such a thing? The answer is
‘Yes’. Private ownership is both necessary and good, and something that leads to good. The
world where no once could say this is my house, car, jacket, or business would not be a just
world. It would be chaos. However, there are proper limits to private ownership: where it
violates the rights and flourishing of others who also, by the grace of God, are entitled to their
share of the good things of creation.
--------------------------------------1. What is the general difference between a Principle of Justice, and how justice is put into actual
practice? ______________________________________________________________________
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2. If creation is God’s, and if it is good, that belief could be used to justify being environmentally
responsible in that we should be stewards of creation and not abusers of it. But it should also
have an ‘everyday’ application. Say how being a good steward would apply to your own self,
other people you meet, and the small part of the created universe that is Villanova University:
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2. Second Principle: Human Dignity and Rights that follow from that
This is a specification of the 1st principle. Since we are created in God’s image and likeness, the
human being has an inherent worth or value. That worth/value is given from God. It is attached
to the person (like a fingernail is attached to a finger). Dignity and worth are “part of the
package” for the human being. As such, this basic dignity and the rights that flow from it can
neither be conferred by others, nor taken away by others. In an even deeper sense, one could not
even give away one’s own dignity and worth if one tried to. It is a thing put their by God.
This worth/dignity does not depend on achievement. This is not to say that there is not a kind of
value placed on achievement, etc. – but not this basic and primary kind. Another way to say this
is that human beings are “ends in themselves”, and never “means to ends”. No human being is
expendable, or can be thrown away.
Dignity, then, calls for respect: for others, and also for ourselves. Justice, therefore, means that
“respect and reverence is due every human being”. When justice is systematized in a legal code
for example, its most basic purpose should be to “protect and foster human dignity”. That does
not mean that is its only purpose. It means it is the most basic one.
The sorts of things that we owe ourselves and others are things like: personal inviolability (of
body, mind, emotions…), the right to life, privacy, self-respect, a good name, housing, medical
care, education, etc. This is not to deny that there would be real argument, discussion, nuance,
and so on to the limits of each, or the meaning of each of those in the concrete actual world. It
means that certain general basic rights should apply.
It is probably worthwhile repeating at this point that undermining the basic principles (especially
these first two) tends to undermine the “rights” that flow from it. If the person really does not
have an inherent dignity, given by God as an aspect of their creation, then the natural rights
attached to the person will diminish.
---------------------------1. What is the difference between having a right given to you by God, and one given to you by
some other person or group? ______________________________________________________
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2. Pick three of the rights above and say what a violation of them would be (example, a violation
of the right to a good name would be gossip intended to harm): ___________________________
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3. Human Responsibility (that goes with rights, above)
With rights, come responsibilities. Not taking responsibilities into account tends to undermine
the rights that responsibilities are attached to. Rights and responsibilities are two sides of the
same coin. If they don’t go together, the result will be injustice for the individual or the group.
Ordinary human beings are “agents of God in bringing forth justice”. That is, we are
acting/doing beings. We have responsibilities attached to us, and it is in the first case an
expression of our dignity that we do. A responsibility may be a burden, but that is not the first
thing that it is. It is first a thing of worth and value. The person who has a responsibility has it
because they are a worthy being – and all persons are worthy beings. They should do something
because they are the kind of being who has the worth to do it. The human person is the created
being worthy of doing good things. Take parenting. The one who has the responsibility for it has
it exactly because they are the good and worthy being who had the child.
There are different responsibilities depending on whether we are considering Democratic
Society, Family, Church, Friends, or temporary associations like School or Work. A first
approach to any of those areas is to say we are responsible for exhibiting a “basic human
neighborliness”.
There is an important sub-principle – the Principle of Subsidiarity - worth mentioning here,
although it really applies in many other areas than responsibility. Subsidiarity is the idea that
Justice is “best looked after at the most immediate level”. In its short form it means that Justice
begins at home. This really should be taken strictly, and almost literally, in the first sense. One’s
first home is really one’s own self. Therefore, justice begins in self-respect, in claiming one’s
God-given rights and dignity. It begins in fulfilling one’s basic responsibilities as well. The best
justice is usually the one taken care of by one’s own self, and the others one knows, is closest to,
or working with. That small community varies throughout the day, let alone throughout life – but
there is one person common to whatever it is: one’s own self. From “home” the idea is that
justice extends outward, from nearest to most remote (from family, to town, state, region,
country, world, etc.). This is the normal manner. It does not mean that there is not always a
relation of some sort even to the remote, or that in some cases a central power might not have to
intervene on the local level. The principle stands as a warning, however, to both ends of that
spectrum. If the individual or small group is unjust “at home”, and is always working for justice
on the remoter, global level, something may be out of balance. On the other side is the
management style that is too top-down, or heavy-handed, or interfering. Sometimes, such a thing
is necessary. But if that becomes the norm, Christian justice can at least say that something is
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wrong or imbalanced. The basic point is that people have their own responsibility and freedom –
and they should take care of it where possible, even though recognizing the wider concerns.
--------------------------------1. Why is responsibility, in the first sense, more like a gift than a burden? __________________
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2. Imagine a world where there are all kinds of rights, but no sense of responsibility at all. Would
the rights in such a world, if it existed, be actual rights or only theoretical rights? Explain by
naming one example: ____________________________________________________________
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3. Imagine a world where there are only responsibilities and no rights at all. Is that a just world?
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4. What is the principle of Subsidiarity? _____________________________________________
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5. What do you think about this statement from a Judge (paraphrased), “A society where
everyone runs to a judge to settle their claims is already broken on a basic level, and there is only
so much a judge could do to repair it”. Is the judge describing a just society? How is this related
to the principle of subsidiarity? ____________________________________________________
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4. Human Solidarity
In Christian justice, the “basic neighborliness” (from principle 3) extends to every other human
being (See the parable of The Good Samaritan in the NT as the paradigm example).
On the other hand, there is a kind of natural and logical progression here: We start “at home”
with ourselves, then family, friends, neighbors, community, work, country, world, etc. The
principle of subsidiarity works in the case of human solidarity too.
The principle of solidarity presumes human “interdependence” in the order of creation. There is,
then, a mutual solidarity in the created order, all the way to a “universal inclusiveness” for all of
humanity (in principle). That is, if any one person or group is left out or excluded so that others
may be included, something is wrong. That may sound like an abstract ideal for Never-never
Land. It isn’t really. It’s something of what the Kingdom of God will be like, and in the real
world it may have real consequence. Take Martin Luther King, for example. He argued (from a
jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama of all places, and using Augustine and Aquinas among others
to make his case) that injustice in one place means that there is some degree of injustice in every
place. Justice has a logic - a Logos - to it. In the Christian mindset this logic rightly extends to
the entire universe, and everyone in it. There is here, then, a logical/religious commitment to the
“common good”. This is not to say that there is not such a thing as real individual, or a proper
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spirit of “individuality”. It is closer to saying that true individuality comes into being in its full
sense in a situation of solidarity and the common good.
------------------------------------1. Think of a family, where each person in it is a unique individual. Then apply the principle of
solidarity to it. What does it look like? ______________________________________________
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2. Think of the same family, where each person is a unique individual. Then say that there is no
sense of solidarity at all in that family. What does it look like? ___________________________
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3. Imagine the same comparison, except this time think of Villanova, or Philadelphia, or the US,
or the World. Pick one and say what the difference would be, and which you think would be the
more just one: __________________________________________________________________
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5. Preferential Option for the Poor
The “poor” are those who lack. They lack basic necessities of life, and are, for whatever reason,
incapable of doing anything about it. They are the “marginalized”, the “powerless”.
Why a “preferential option”? The reason the poor deserve special care is because they do not
have their share of the “blessings” of God’s creation. That is, in the real natural order of God’s
creation, they should have certain things. In the actual order, they do not have them. Therefore,
something is wrong.
This principle reveals a positive and negative sense of responsibilities. Being responsible means
(as a first approach) “Do no harm”. That is important, but it is not quite full justice. In its primary
(positive) sense justice is “doing positive good”. There is a difference between not further
harming, and doing positive good. At the same time there is a warning: be careful, in doing a
positive good, not to harm someone more than helping them in the process. Even the injunction
to “do good” brings to light another distinction that is there in Christian justice: There is a
difference between doing the good, and doing the better, and doing the best. The implications
and challenges of that idea are enormous. It all depends on the specifics. There is a danger in
taking this the wrong way, but we all probably know those times when we did the good, and did
not do the better – and we were aware of the difference. Christian justice, even when it concerns
doing the good, is never a minimalist thing. We do not want equality of the lowest common
denominator. We want the equality of Kings and Queens and Nobility. Why? The answer is
because that is what we are. There may be real nobility in suffering poverty, but that’s not the
way it is supposed to be. Each one of us is really supposed to be the exalted thing. Jesus did say,
‘The poor you will always have with you’. What he meant was that that is the problem.
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The poor are not “bad persons”. On the contrary, it was Jesus who also said, ‘Blessed are the
poor’. If there is moral culpability to be assigned or judgment to be made, a good place to take
the “measure of a society’s health” is “how it treats the poor”.
On the other hand, every person is “poor before God”. Every person suffers from a lack. The
acceptance of that fact is itself a key virtue, so far as it enables us to have compassion for others.
In some ways, the rich need the poor as much as the poor might need the rich. We don’t want to
justify poverty by saying it is therefore a good thing, but there is a way in which that assertion is
true. There might be something that some person, or the world, needs. There is also some person
who needs to give it, if that person has it to give, in order to be the person they are supposed to
be. Charity has always been known as a virtue – the kind of thing that makes us better persons.
Why? Because being charitable is part of what we are. This does not mean emptying your
pockets all the time. It means being willing to give something away when something is needed.
Being spiritual might mean giving a push to the poor sod whose car is stuck in the snow. There
are two kinds of societies we could have. There is the one where people help other people get out
of snow drifts. There is the other where they are just left there to fend for themselves. One looks
like a just society. The other is lacking a certain amount of basic justice.
-------------------------------1. Who are the poor? ____________________________________________________________
2. Why is there a preferential option for the poor? _____________________________________
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3. Let’s say that you have to live either in the society that pushes other people’s cars out of the
snow or the one that doesn’t. And that in this case, you live in the one that pushes other people’s
cars out of the snow. This means that you sometimes have to be the one to actually push the car
out of the snow. Is that a big deal? _________. Is it sometimes a pain? ______. Do you want a
lot of praise for it? _______. Are you a better person if you push the car out of the snow, a worse
one, or it doesn’t matter? ___________________________. What if you lived in the society that
doesn’t push cars out of the snow? Forget about the people in the cars stuck in the snow for a
minute. Would you be a better person, a worse one, or it doesn’t matter for not pushing cars out
of the snow? _______________________. Who gets to decide whether you live in the society
that pushes cars out of the snow, or the one that doesn’t? _______________________________.
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