Distance is essential if we are to clearly see the demands of social justice. World Social Justice Day is held on 20 February.
Social justice is easy to understand. We know what it means when we are treated unjustly. We feel instinctively that people must be treated with respect and equality in all their relationships. These relationships include the economic relationships between employers and staff, cultural relationships between religious and political groups, and international relationships between nations, and human relationships to the environment.
It is not always easy to establish what respect and equality demand in practice. It is easier to point to clear instances where due respect is lacking. The Russian invasion of Ukraine with its cost to human lives and livelihood is a clear example of disrespect in the relationships between nations. The discrimination against persons of Indigenous descent after invasion and conquest is often also clearly lacking in respect. As is the discrimination against Jews and Muslims.
FAILURE TO SEE
The demands of social justice are often seen most clearly from a distance. People who benefit from unjust relationships often find it harder to see. In Australia descendants of settlers often fail to recognise the effects on the descendants of the First Australians of exclusion, misappropriation and discrimination. They may even blame Indigenous people for their predicament. They will naturally resist any claim that the treatment is unjust, still less that its victims should be compensated. Similarly, if a firm recognised that their staff have a right to work and fair remuneration, it would become harder to sack them, and for governments to force people who are unemployed to live below the poverty line. It is easier to call them dole bludgers to whom society owes nothing.
This blindness means that to win the struggle for social justice takes more than rational argument. It also requires of all of us a change of mind and heart that allow us to be open to reality. A passion for justice must be grounded in an attitude that goes beyond self-interest in relationships and sees all our relationships as a gift. When we make decisions about the economy, security, immigration, environment and our health system we must respect the welfare of the persons affected by them as if they were family.
GIFT TO ONE ANOTHER
Pope Benedict XVI made a major contribution to the rich body of Catholic reflection on social justice when he emphasised the gift that we are to one another in all our working relationships. His insight underlies the social bond or licence required of businesses. They are not responsible only to their shareholders or their proprietors but to their society. They must behave in a way that keeps people safe and compensates them for unavoidable damage.
In a world where relationships are increasingly seen as transactions in which the humanity of people matters less than their comparative power, it is easy to lose sight of the common humanity that we share. Social Justice Week reminds us of it.
Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ is an editorial consultant at Jesuit Communications
