Insist on ‘Justice’ in ‘Social Justice’: No ‘Health Care Reform’

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) – It was the controversialist comedian and social commentator, the late Lenny Bruce, who once said: “In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.” He was referring to his contention that he was being treated unfairly by the US justice system during over his use of questionable language in some of his routines. I now offer a variation on the quote as I address the issue of “Social Justice” in this article. “Where is the ‘Social Justice’ in Social Justice Circles these days?” Let me explain what I mean.

As we approach a vote on a massive reform of the delivery of health care services in the United States there is a raging debate over many important issues which such a huge change would entail. In the midst of it all some are insisting that the failure to provide health care to all is a failure of our obligation to make an authentic commitment as a Nation to “Social Justice”. This claim is causing a very interesting divide among many Catholics and other Christians. After all, doesn’t our obligation in solidarity call us to give what the Church and the Gospel (see, e.g., Matthew 25) properly calls a “love of preference” to the poor? Doesn't "Social Justice" require that we find a way to provide health care to all of our neighbors?

However, good Catholics and other Christians can, and do, disagree on just how this obligation in solidarity can best be discharged. For example, the principle of subidiarity is an ordering principle in Catholic social teaching. It affirms that governance is best when it is exercised by the smallest mediating group, starting with the family as the first government and moving out from there. It properly prefers the utilizing of smaller mediating institutions over centralized solutions which seem to prefer starting with the central or federal government. There is a very real and valid concern being raised in the debate over the current health care plans being offered as it relates to the application of this principle in any real reform.

However, the most important issue which must be addressed is lost in the charged rhetoric over all of this "justice talk". That is the glaring fact that many who use the “Social Justice” arguments in this debate also support the intrinsically evil and utterly indefensible inclusion of abortion as a “health care service” in all of the current proposals for health care reform. Abortion is the intentional killing of children - our first neighbors - in the first home of the whole human race. Medical science confirms what the Natural Law has already revealed to all of us, that little boy or girl whom we now routinely operate on in the womb is one of us, our neighbor. The evil of killing him or her by dismemberment or suction or chemical weapons which was once hidden by the sophistry of the language of “choice” has been revealed for the horror that it really truly is. It is always and everywhere wrong to allow anyone to "choose" to kill the innocent.It is, in fact, criminal.

Sadly, we are not having this debate. The very foundation of all “Social Justice” is the recognition of dignity of every human person, from conception throughout all of life, at every age and stage, up to and including a natural death. We human beings are always “in development”. “Me” at almost 55 is a very different human being than “Me” at 5. However, I am now and have always been a human person and, as such, I have fundamental rights, the first of which is to the right to life and the freedom to not be killed by someone else in the name of “choice”. We are obligated - precisely because we are human persons together - to look out for one another. We all truly are our brother/sister’s keepers. This self evident truth then, that life is the first and fundamental human right, and further the derivative obligation to be good neighbors to one another and not kill each other is the very heart of “Social Justice”. Yet, sadly, many people, including many Catholics and other Christians, are not even using this obvious and essential argument to oppose the current versions of so called “Health Care Reform”.

That brings me to what my dear late father use to call, my “pet peeve”; the misunderstanding, misuse or even the rejection of the expressions “Social Justice Catholics” and "Peace and Justice Catholics" among many of my fellow Pro-life Catholics. First, let me make this point; I claim that I am both. That is right, I am a “Social Justice” and a “Peace and Justice” Catholic Christian. And you my readers, if you insist that children in the womb are our first neighbors and must be protected against being killed as a matter of justice and solidarity, are also. It is time we took these terms back from some who have wrongly claimed them exclusively as their own.

Over the decades I have been involved in what absolutely is the fundamental human rights struggle of ...

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