To Give a Defense
Many there are who have become so jaded by liberal politics that they recoil at any use of the term “social justice.” Brandon Vogt quotes one such person at the start of his valuable book
I beg you, look for the words “social justice” or “economic justice” on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! … If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop and tell them [sic], “Excuse me, are you down with this whole social justice thing?” I don’t care what the church is. … [I]f they say, “Yeah, we’re all in that social justice thing,” I’m in the wrong place.”
That was Glenn Beck in 2010.
While the phrase “social justice” has indeed been hijacked by Marxists in order to advance a malodorous political agenda, the problem with Glenn Beck’s blanket approach to the subject, as Mr. Vogt points out in his Introduction, is that “those exact phrases appear no less than 115 times on the Vatican’s website [and] in the Church’s official teachings and texts.” And the Catholic Church certainly is no advocate of Marxism or communism (see CCC 2425 and its surrounding passages).
But the Church is certainly “down with this whole social justice thing” because “social justice” is a Catholic concept in the first place. Those be our words.
And the reason you should read Mr. Vogt’s fine book is that it very skillfully helps us to distinguish between “social justice” in the true, Catholic sense and “social justice” in the false, politically exploitative sense. For just because a false and atheistic political ideology has demagogued the poor does not mean that we have no real obligation to the poor. This book points us in the right direction.
One of the things I admired most about The Saints and Social Justice is that Mr. Vogt spends very little time in technical, obtuse discussion of the concept of “social justice.” He spends some time on it at the outset, but only to orient the reader. This is not a work of scholarship, but a very accessible and readable profile of fourteen saints who embody one aspect or another of social justice as the Church understands it.
True social justice involves these things: defense of the life and dignity of the human person; our obligation to family and community; political rights as well as responsibilities; the option for the poor and most vulnerable (Mr. Vogt explains what that phrase means); the dignity of work and the rights of workers; solidarity with the oppressed; and care for all of creation. For each of these, Mr. Vogt chooses two saints who, in his view, embody that value.
And he has chosen a very diverse group of saints, from the tiny and smiling Mother Teresa to the burly and somber St. Damien of Molokai; from the retiring Frances of Rome to the publicly active Thomas More; from the monastic Benedict to the spitfire activist Dorothy Day.
But all of them saints (or should-be saints) and all of them witnesses to the moral obligation to which the Church calls us. Mr. Vogt does not preach social justice as much as he allows the saints to show it in action and in the witness of their own lives.
I learned things I’d not known, and met some new friends among the Church Triumphant (my favorite was Damien of Molokai), by reading this book. Dear reader, get it yourself and read it too. Even Glenn Beck.
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