Social Justice on Our Terms

One of the surprising achievements of the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI was his masterful ability to address contemporary concerns with perennial wisdom, especially as found in Scripture and Tradition. Although he was not the first to address the issue, most Popes since the Second Vatican Council, in one way or another, often obliquely, referenced the importance of stewardship of the environment. This insight is not unique to the Popes of the 20th century, or even simply to Catholics. Love of the created order is a well known hallmark of a contemplative mindset. Whether it was Tertullian describing the morning song of the birds as prayer, or Saint Francis preaching to the fishes, the love of God’s good earth fills the annals of the Church’s history. In popular culture, JRR Tolkien enshrined the Catholic love of nature in his Lord of the Rings mythos. The forces of evil are often depicted as industrial, artificial, and parasitical to the natural world. The forces of good are depicted as living in harmony with nature, while also using nature for legitimate and humane ends. Tolkien’s contemporary, C.S. Lewis, was deeply disturbed by the forward march of mechanization and industrialization and its capacity to indiscriminately destroy human lives and livelihoods; the technological horrors of the First World War, above all, drove this point home to many leading European Intellectuals. These people expressed horror at the machine gun and mustard gas; what would they say about drone strikes and phosphorus bombs?

Returning to the Benedict XVI, Newsweek, of all things, had done a piece on him in 2008, in which they noted his growing reputation as “The Green Pope” and his advocacy of a “human ecology”. Yet even they noticed something which limited their praise: “Benedict may not be a typical environmentalist in the modern secular sense. The Vatican won’t say whether he tries to save gas on the Vatican grounds or uses devices like energy-saving light bulbs. For him the green issue seems to be more about being a steward to God’s creation.” Surprisingly, such an assessment by the author, Daniel Stone, was both accurate and sympathetic. Mr. Stone noted that Benedict XVI, to use our terminology, did not view the environment or environmental issues as strictly goods in themselves, but instead viewed them as necessary to insure a fair distribution of the world’s resources; in other words, a reiteration of Catholic Social Teaching on the Universal Destination of Goods. It was clear, even to the secular media, that Pope Benedict was using a Christian vocabulary and Christian motivations to find common ground on a very contemporary issue. In this, as the Roman Pontiff, he was most fittingly and admirably suited.

Pope Francis has largely continued this trajectory, condemning a “culture of waste” and other problems with the modern economy. In an interesting and insightful turn of thought, he has linked this same ‘culture’ with other moral evils like abortion and human trafficking, and so shows how unwillingness to protect creation and the natural order is part of the same moral landscape as neglecting the poor and the vulnerable. He has largely done this without equivocating the grave evil of abortion with other social issues like abuse of the environment. In fact, the Holy Father’s typical verbiage regarding things like abortion and transgender ideology could be regarded as borderline incendiary. Even recently, he repeated a line he has used before, comparing abortion to hiring a “hitman” to solve a problem. It is relatively clear that Pope Francis is performing a difficult balancing act of trying to proclaim Catholic teaching on the value of human life and its connection to being a part of the natural world. However, there have been in the past decade some troubling signs that this attempt to find common ground with the reigning moral consensus is beginning to dilute our uniquely Christian witness, in favor of anthropologies and ideologies inimical to our own theological commitments.

One of the first public signs of this was the nighttime illumination of the facade of Saint Peter’s Basilica with a picture show, sponsored in part by the World Bank, of features of animals and plants, with an explicit aim to highlight the “interdependency of nature, humanity, and climate change.” This was done on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception that year, which was also the beginning of Pope Francis’ Year of Mercy. This display in my mind was appropriately criticized by several Catholic voices as submitting the Church’s sacred patrimony to secular ends. The very constitution of a sacred person, place or thing means that it cannot any longer be used for another end. A good Catholic would never dream of using a chalice to drink Budweiser or a tabernacle to store copies of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. The further the use of a consecrated thing is from its original sacred intention, the more it may be labeled not just merely imprudent or improvident, but profane and sacrilegious. This has been happening for some time, as many Catholics, both lay and clerical, lose the sense of the sacred and think more in accord with the spirit of the age, than with the “mind of Christ.”

This phenomenon is most lamentable when the Sacred Liturgy is abused, but it is also sad when the Church tries to ally herself with certain movements and fashions which are, in their very essence, completely hostile to the Christian Religion. In the 1960s, committed Christians marched in favor of civil rights for minorities, and explicitly influenced the public moral discussion regarding real racism in our society. The anthropological vision was fundamentally Christian: all people, no matter their ethnicity, are created equally in dignity and value by a benevolent Creator, and we have a duty to treat people equitably, both in our private conduct, and under the law. In 2020, we were subjected to the spectacle of some Catholic leaders marching under the aegis of BLM and other movements, whose philosophical underpinnings are Marxist, atheistic, and materialistic. Ironically, by supporting them, Christians undermine the very basis of a coherent argument against racism. Instead, they just exchange one social tyranny for another. It is crucial that Catholics, and especially Catholic leaders, be especially cautious about indiscriminately endorsing popular movements which subvert both our witness to the Gospel, and the Judeo-Christian basis of our civilization.

The same problem is occurring presently with our tenuous alliance with secular initiatives regarding human development and the environment. It is understandable, and perhaps even praiseworthy, to seek the common good with people who do not share our religious beliefs. This may be a case where “he who is not against us, is for us.” Yet, if we uncritically endorse these working arrangements, we run the risk of our “salt losing its savor” in an increasingly tasteless world. This problem is becoming increasingly acute on both the global and the local level.

This is a moment in history when we especially most avail ourselves of the Holy Spirit’s gift of Counsel. Counsel, to remind us, is the supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit which perfects the Christian’s virtue of prudence, submitting and perfecting our understanding and judgment of practical ends in the light of supernatural ones. Counsel is extremely important when we have difficulty discerning between competing goods, and the proper way of attaining them. A Christian and a secularist may join forces to save the rainforest or an endangered species, but it is a dangerous and naive fantasy to think that common cause for an external end makes us friends. As the postmodern world continues to manifest the intellectual and moral vacuum which lies at its heart, its leaders continue to grasp for any institution or idea which will give them moral legitimacy. Because a secularistic worldview is essentially nihilistic, it cannot but cynically utilize the traditional institutions of Western Civilization. But any such alliance is corrosive to the core. It has, to borrow from Saint Paul, “a form of godliness while denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). I find it interesting that the Prophet Daniel’s description of the archetypal Antichrist is the man who, in his own words, “…shall give no heed to the gods of his fathers, or to the one beloved by women; he shall not give heed to any other god, for he shall magnify himself above all. He shall honor the god of fortresses instead of these; a god whom his fathers did not know he shall honor with gold and silver, with precious stones and costly gifts” (Daniel 11:37-38). The spirit of godlessness, the spirit of Antichrist, is that which worships a “god of fortresses”. In other words, the worship of power and conquest is its hallmark, in tandem with a sort of deification of man independent of the power of grace.

We as Christians do well to recognize these forces at work, and be very wary of our alliances with secular powers. And this is not only because worldly power is unstable, and all possess feet of clay; but more that, at the end of it all, their goal is to subject the world to some idol, and not to the reign of Christ. The Church may seek common cause for peace and justice with many different types of people, but we must insist that Social Justice, and our pursuit of it, be on our terms, not on worldly ones.