INTRODUCTION: Getting beyond DichotomiesINTRODUCTION: Getting beyond Dichotomies

When I first encountered Michael Novak’s work on social justice, I was immediately struck by two of its main characteristics. First, his mind seems always to proceed by the method of both/and. That is my own favorite method, too, as the reader is about to see in the next five chapters. That shared characteristic may be what most fueled our collaboration.

Second, I saw immediately how the concept of social justice as a virtue, internalized by individuals, brilliantly articulates a key, if often overlooked, insight in my own field of specialization, the theory and the practice of social work.

It is not enough, social workers have learned through long experience during this past century, to do things for people. One must also help them to internalize certain basic social habits and skills—that is, virtues—of their own, so that they become the chief agents of their own destiny. There is no real success in rendering them totally dependent—on social workers or anybody else. Such dependency is no cure for what ails them; it is the condition from which they suffer.

Thus, the profession of social work identifies social justice as a core value, central to its ethics and identity. Social work aims to translate social justice into practice at every level, among individuals, families, and communities. It even tries to think through and to promote reform in economic, social, and cultural structures. But too often thinking in our field falls into dichotomies. We see conscience pitted against social justice, individualism against collectivism, charity against justice, informal associations against state-run programs.

Often our terms are conceived of as mutually exclusive—we have to choose either A or B. For instance, either respect the rights of conscience or promote social justice. Conscience, the protection of which was once a foundational value, has today been reduced to mere personal preference, always to be trumped by the claims of “social justice.” But conscience is itself a matter of social justice: irreducibly social in nature, a key bulwark of civil society against the Leviathan. Conscience always makes claims about what is actually true about a given situation—it is either just or unjust, and (at least in large part) an evil or a good. Conscience always involves judgment about the right course of action to take in these particular circumstances. Thus conscience, rightly understood and rightly formed, cannot stand in opposition to social justice.

Another false dichotomy, individualism versus collectivism, often lies disguised in debates about conscience. But as Catholic social teaching has consistently emphasized, these are twin evils. Individualism—whether the expressive individualism of the sexual revolution or the economic individualism of nineteenth-century “liberals” or contemporary libertarians—offers no alternative to statist collectivism, but actually depends on and foments it. Consider the state of contemporary marriage, an unprecedented collapse that has done immense harm to the poorest and most vulnerable.¹ Here the proper response to the dichotomy of individualism versus collectivism is also both/and: The “moral ecology” of the civic order must support the personal commitment of one person to another.

Subsidiarity and solidarity are another fraught pair, often seen as opposite poles between which some correct midpoint must be identified. Subsidiarity—the principle that higher bodies should not interfere with or substitute for lower ones when those are capable of fulfilling their functions—is sometimes understood as an expression of individualism and laissez-faire. Solidarity—the principle of love and our responsibility for one another—then becomes the collectivist pole, the duty of the state as agent of collective responsibility. But both subsidiarity and solidarity—both/and—are needed at every level: in the family, in the community, and in state and supranational bodies.

Last, but most important, we must resist the opposition between charity and justice—“justice, not charity,” as one theorist puts it. The last two chapters of this section take up the question of how we understand both charity in its double sense (works of mercy and caritas) and social justice. Justice needs caritas and charity needs justice—both/and.

In the field of social work, the term “social justice” is probably used more often than in any other field. As Novak notes more generally, in this field, too, the term is hardly ever defined. But once we do define it as a virtue (a strength, a skill) internalized by individuals—and also a skill properly described as social—we gain a very useful and practical tool indeed. We cast quite brilliant light on what, without ever having defined it, we have actually been trying to do for some time. In this respect, Novak’s contribution in Part One above is actually quite a boon to our own field of social work. That is what drew me into this collaboration.