Question of Justice

TO present day Catholics, Pope Leo XIII's 1891 Rerum Novarum is accepted as the modern Christian charter of the spiritual and moral rights (hence, too, social rights) of the workers of the industrial revolution.
Bernanos, in the "Diary of a Country Priest," brilliantly evoked its impact: "You read it today, skimming through it, like any Lenten pastoral. But when it came out, my friend, we seemed to feel the earth rock under our feet. Talk about enthusiasm! 1 was parish priest of Norenfontes then, right in the coalfield. That simple idea that labour is not a commodity subject to the law of supply and demand, that it is wrong to speculate in wages or men's lives as if they were wheat or sugar or coffee—believe me, it shook people's consciences!"
Yet Rerum Novarum did not suddenly flash on the world. The way of the Church is not normally to present charters of Christian teaching out of the blue. Years of study and growing realisation of new problems precede the official pronouncement that carries to the whole world the Church's official instruction and lead. More than 40 years before Rerum Novarum, Bishop Ketteler of Mainz was preaching to his countrymen the principles of the Catholic social movement very much as we know it today.
TODAY, a century after Bishop Ketteler and nearly 70 years after Rerum Novarum, the battle for the Christian defence of the rights of the workers within the developed democratic states of the world has in principle been won. But, with the ever changing movement of history, the Christian social principles find fresh fields demanding fresh applications.
Last week in this column we wrote: "If nations or groups of nations, as well as classes within nations, continue to think of themselves first and last, the potentialities of the new scientific techniques will be very limited . . . It is not the nation or the social group which is the proper object of new enrichment; it is man, the human being as such . . . Are we ready to recognise that the good of any and every human being in the world is prior to the indefinite enrichment of privileged nations and classes?"
In other words. the social problem as it affected the new industrialised worker of the 19th and early 20th century has now in our "one world" to be applied to the underdeveloped nations and peoples who today are as much our neighbours as were the oppressed classes within any industrialised sovereign nation in the past.
To put the point in another way — the Christian is called upon by the principles of his faith to give to the world the social instruction and lead which will give birth to the charter of the undeveloped nations as 70 years ago it gave the charter of the rights of the workers within the industrialised separate nations.
We dare not, as Christians, think of this pressing problem as just another political problem with Christian overtones. We must learn to think of it as a directly spiritual and moral problem heavily pressing on our Catholic consciences.
It is the realisation of this all important truth which has recently given birth in Louvain University to the "Association for International Social Justice" and the quarterly publication of the review "World Justice" in an English and a French edition (100, Avenue des Allies, Louvain, Belgium).
The association and its review hope to draw upon the services of the most distinguished theologians, political leaders, scientists, and experts in all relevant technical problems from all over the world.
' The basic subject is "international social justice" in its contemporary application to our "one world": "Moral, juridical, political, economic, sociological, demographic, and even missiological problems will have to be faced."
IN the first (September) issue Canon Louis Jannsens, professor of moral theology in Louvain, offers a basic exposition of the true Catholic meaning of the right to property which has sometimes in the past been unduly restricted:
"The right to property in general has not only an individual but also a social character by reason of the common right of use . . . The right of use vested in the needy people can be exerted upon the surplus goods of the wealthy countries."
He also quotes Catholics who "hold that economic riches and the means of production are not absolutely and permanently subjected to the exclusive jurisdiction of certain communities but must. in the final analysis, be subjected to legal regulations by means of international action."
Our own Cohn Clark in his article "The Earth Can Feed Its Own People" has some startling things to say about the basic nutritional and industrial needs of man and the means of providing them in conditions of present technique and economy.
In this country the interested reader will find it easier to obtain information from the "Sword of the Spirit"—or better still to join it. A valuable and easily obtainable recent pamphlet published by the Sword is "My Brother's Keeper" by Barbara Ward.
No doubt, the expert study of this question is not for the great majority of us, but, if we claim to be Catholics with an enlightened conscience, we should realise that the problem of sharing with the needy of underdeveloped countries is not basically a political question but a moral one which imposes its obligations in justice on the Christian conscience. We should wish to be in on a great 'and growing Catholic movement that one day will be comparable to the movement which led to Rerum Novarum and the other social encyclicals.