Wojtyła on Conflict, Justice, and the Social Order

The Catholic Thing

By John M. Grondelski
But first a note from Robert Royal: Dr. Grondelski reminds us today that there are specifically Catholic ways of thinking - and acting - in the public realm that are always relevant, especially in unsettled times like ours as we approach a presidential election. Another chance to learn about such subjects will begin this Thursday with Professor Joseph Wood's online TCT course, "Political Philosophy in a Time of Turmoil." Following the news and assessing issues are, of course, important ways to be a responsible citizen. But it's even more urgent - and perennially so - that we go to the deeper sources of the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity, the human person, and much more that our times desperately need. Please join with all of us seeking to bring about a better public order in what promises to be a stimulating and thought-provoking series of online sessions. Enrolling is easy: Just click here and follow the simple steps. I'm confident that you'll be happy you did.
Now for today's column...
Karol Wojtyła's Ethics Primer (Elementarz etyczny) was a series of 20 articles he wrote in 1957-58 for the Kraków newspaper, Tygodnik Powszechny, in which he brought Catholic ethics to bear on moral questions under debate in his day. They're not mere academic musings. They explained the Catholic worldview over and against the ideological presuppositions about human persons that Marxism was trying to impose on Poland. Those were not just policies: they were a worldview that a "proper citizen" should self-evidently hold.
What Wojtyła did in the Ethics Primer remains relevant today because we again are confronted by social movements that push not just policies but comprehensive, ideological Weltanschauungen for the "proper" citizen in a "democratic" society. It is germane not just as an example of how, pastorally, to challenge the elite's cultural ethos but, in many instances, asks questions critical to tackling today's controversies from Catholic premises.
One such area is "class conflict," to which Wojtyła devotes two essays. "Class conflict" was the soul of Marxist ethics, the engine that moved its "arc of history" towards its self-proclaimed inevitability. Polish Communists running a satellite country in the 1950s pushed a hard model of class conflict. Do we see - especially in electoral seasons today in the West - a softer version being pedaled? One that infers that the wealthy must have somehow gained their money unethically and, therefore, should be forced to pay their "fair share" for the "common good."
Wojtyła rightly notes that you can have an ethic of conflict or an ethic of justice. Against the Marxist default to conflict, he insists that the Christian must build social ethics on justice, which can involve conflict with entrenched and self-protecting special interests. The American politician stumping for "fairness" and "equity" would probably insist that's all (s)he wants: "justice." But the problem is a bit more complex.
Before one gets to dividing up the pie, one needs to address certain preliminary perspectives. First, do we see the other as truly a neighbor? "Who is my neighbor?" is a basic ethical question whose answer does not include income tests. Is the other seen truly as a neighbor in a common social enterprise or really as a shirker who has to be held to account? And how do we verify that our leaders' perspective is honestly one of seeking justice and not simply stoking envy while paying for the goodies they want to hand out?
Second, is my perspective of "fairness" driven by a right moral order? As Wojtyła notes, material goods diminish by division: "they cannot in any measure be simultaneously possessed and used by a great number of people, or by many societies or groups." That's not true of spiritual goods. They, paradoxically, increase by sharing. Six people don't get as much pizza as four, but six people sharing love are richer than four. Without diminishing the importance of the materia...