Recently, the pastor of my church\u2014a priest who I love and who my wife and I requested to marry us\u2014gave a homily on the relationship between \u201cjustice\u201d and \u201ccharity.\u201d\u00a0 Sadly, this sermon supplied none of the inspiration of which his other sermons were ridden.<\/p>\n
This, though, isn\u2019t to say that it wasn\u2019t provocative; unfortunately, however, what it provoked\u2014or what it provoked in me\u2014was a melancholic effect.<\/p>\n
My pastor\u2019s homily was but the latest confirmation of that what many an astute observer has long observed: the \u201cprogressivism\u201d of secular leftism has made sizable inroads into the Catholic Church.\u00a0 This is no mean feat.\u00a0 In fact, the significance<\/em> of the left\u2019s infiltration into this <\/em>institution has gone largely unnoticed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whatever one may think of its theology and ecclesiology, the cold heart fact of the matter is that the Catholic Church is not <\/em>just one more institution among others.\u00a0 Structurally and doctrinally, it is the <\/em>emblem par excellence <\/em>of the ancient world, a continual reminder to our generation that its life did not begin yesterday, and that Western civilization would be unrecognizable, and probably nonexistent, without it, the Catholic Church reminds us as well that we are living off of a cultural capital that was millennia in the making. Its unabashed affirmation of the centrality of tradition to right conduct, its hierarchical conception of authority, its exclusion of females and homosexuals from the priesthood, and its demand that its clergy take a vow of celibacy are some of the more salient respects in which the Catholic Church has not only distinguished itself from the leveling impulses of our age, but resisted them.\u00a0<\/p>\n In other words, the Catholic Church is the most formidable line separating what we may call, on the one hand, \u201cthe traditional morality\u201d of which it is has always been the preeminent bulwark and, on the other, \u201cthe secular morality\u201d that is forever striving to drive it into extinction.\u00a0 If the Church permits itself to be subjugated by the left\u2019s moral vision, then it is inevitable that every other institution will be wholly consumed by it also.<\/p>\n Make no mistakes about it, the issue that my pastor addressed is an invaluable one.\u00a0 And it seems to me that there can be no question that the position to which he gave expression\u2014the position that, in spite of what we may uncritically suppose, charity is in reality a form of justice\u2014is indeed the only position to which a Christian can subscribe.\u00a0<\/p>\n What concerns me, though, is that he insisted upon equating \u201cjustice\u201d with \u201cequality.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, \u201cequality\u201d is a term ridden with ambiguity.\u00a0 Like the \u201cjustice\u201d in conjunction with which my pastor spoke of it, it is a \u201cconcept\u201d susceptible to multiple \u201cconceptions,\u201d to use Ronald Dworkin\u2019s distinction.\u00a0 And some of these conceptions of \u201cequality\u201d are mutually incompatible.<\/p>\n As conservatives and classical <\/em>liberals have usually understood the concept, \u201cequality\u201d refers to a formal procedure (or set of procedures) to which all members of a legal association (\u201ca state\u201d or \u201csociety\u201d) are equally <\/em>bound.\u00a0 These procedures are laws, <\/em>and they are theoretically consistent with more than one kind of constitution: neither monarchy, oligarchy, aristocracy, democracy, nor some combination of such arrangements preclude equality in this sense. It is also consistent with much individual freedom or very little of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the leftist\u2019s account of it, equality is a substantive condition in which material discrepancies between \u201cclasses\u201d of people are resolved, a condition to be imposed <\/em>by government through any number of \u201credistributive\u201d schemes.\u00a0 This understanding of equality is not only different from that held by the conservative and the libertarian, it is radically incompatible with it, for it is necessary that people be treated according to different sets of standards if the leftist\u2019s dream of equality is to come to pass.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is a third conception of \u201cequality\u201d according to which all human beings are equal by virtue of being made in the image of God.\u00a0 But it only those who take exception to its theological ground who would want to quarrel with it; it is logically compatible with both <\/em>of the forgoing statements of equality. Thus, my pastor must have had one or the other of them in mind when coupling \u201cequality\u201d with justice in his sermon.<\/p>\n Although \u201cthe rule of law\u201d is an immense historic achievement, it is the freedom <\/em>or liberty <\/em>that it makes possible\u2014not the equality <\/em>intrinsic to it\u2014that has made it the stuff of sermons and speeches (even if mostly in times past).\u00a0 In identifying \u201cjustice\u201d with \u201cequality,\u201d it was clearly the leftist\u2019s vision of equality with which my beloved pastor was sympathizing.\u00a0 His reference to the \u201croot causes\u201d of poverty which Christians have a \u201cduty\u201d to address is the one clue that dispels all doubt.<\/p>\n Yet in all of my readings of the New Testament, to say nothing of the Old Testament, I at no time recall Jesus or any of His apostles commanding \u201cequality.\u201d\u00a0 He demands of us that we attend to the needy, for sure, but it is far from clear that His commandment to love neighbor as oneself arises from a desire to see material inequalities <\/em>ameliorated.\u00a0 If my neighbor has a more lucrative job and bigger home than me, these are inequalities, but they certainly don\u2019t oblige him to part with his legitimately acquired goods so that he and I can be on the same material footing.\u00a0 Even if I had no resources while my neighbor possessed more than anyone could need for a lifetime, this in itself still wouldn\u2019t constitute an injustice: while he would have a duty to try to help me to help myself, he would have no <\/em>duty to divest himself of his holdings just to satisfy some abstract criterion of equality.\u00a0 <\/em>To suggest otherwise is to read back into Scripture a bias that it doesn\u2019t possess and which is arguably anathema to it.<\/p>\n The left has penetrated the Catholic Church. This I have known for quite some time.\u00a0 What saddens me, however, is that among its carriers are genuinely good men and fine priests like my pastor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently, the pastor of my church\u2014a priest who I love and who my wife and I requested to marry us\u2014gave a homily on the relationship between \u201cjustice\u201d and \u201ccharity.\u201d\u00a0 Sadly, this sermon supplied none of the inspiration of which his other sermons were ridden. This, though, isn\u2019t to say that it wasn\u2019t provocative; unfortunately, however,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n