A Catholic and Protestant Response
A Catholic and Protestant Response
In chapters four and five of Six Theories of Justice, a concept of justice is defined within the Catholic tradition and through a Protestant alternative. A key factor in the Catholic understanding of justice is the social teachings which “yield a striking continuity at the level of moral principles, and hence of understanding the demands of justice”(Lebacqz, 67). The ground of the Catholic teachings is God and the foundation of social structures within society is based upon the dignity of all people, whom are created in God’s image. Similar to the idea’s demonstrated in Nozick’s theory of justice, the Catholic notion of justice holds that people have rights that cannot be violated. Within the Protestant alternative, Reinhold Niebuhr uses God as the ground to claim that the most important principle of Christian ethics is love. “Perfect justice would be a state of “brotherhood in which there is no conflict of interests” (86). However, neither perfect justice nor love can exist because it is constantly hindered by sin and the self-interest of others. Niebuhr recognizes that justice can never be perfectly achieved but is instead constantly capable of improvement. Even though the Catholic response and the Protestant one draw their principles from separate grounds, both are similar in their acknowledgment of certain rights of the individual that must be protected and used to regulate society.
Catholic tradition on social teachings is rooted in three main principles including: the inviolable dignity of the human person, the essentially social nature of human beings and the abundance of nature and of social living given for all people. Under these social teachings, popes have consistently rejected any economic system that doesn’t uphold the dignity and positive rights of every person. Positive rights refer to the active perusal of individual liberties, as is the case with the Catholic bishops’ active perusal of rights for the poor.
In chapters four and five of Six Theories of Justice, a concept of justice is defined within the Catholic tradition and through a Protestant alternative. A key factor in the Catholic understanding of justice is the social teachings which “yield a striking continuity at the level of moral principles, and hence of understanding the demands of justice”(Lebacqz, 67). The ground of the Catholic teachings is God and the foundation of social structures within society is based upon the dignity of all people, whom are created in God’s image. Similar to the idea’s demonstrated in Nozick’s theory of justice, the Catholic notion of justice holds that people have rights that cannot be violated. Within the Protestant alternative, Reinhold Niebuhr uses God as the ground to claim that the most important principle of Christian ethics is love. “Perfect justice would be a state of “brotherhood in which there is no conflict of interests” (86). However, neither perfect justice nor love can exist because it is constantly hindered by sin and the self-interest of others. Niebuhr recognizes that justice can never be perfectly achieved but is instead constantly capable of improvement. Even though the Catholic response and the Protestant one draw their principles from separate grounds, both are similar in their acknowledgment of certain rights of the individual that must be protected and used to regulate society.
Catholic tradition on social teachings is rooted in three main principles including: the inviolable dignity of the human person, the essentially social nature of human beings and the abundance of nature and of social living given for all people. Under these social teachings, popes have consistently rejected any economic system that doesn’t uphold the dignity and positive rights of every person. Positive rights refer to the active perusal of individual liberties, as is the case with the Catholic bishops’ active perusal of rights for the poor.