In the first part of this article we examined the popular interpretation of Quas Primas, Pius XI’s 1925 encyclical that instituted the Feast of Christ the King. We discovered that, contrary to the impression that many people have, Pius XI was far from mandating a divine right monarchy as the only legitimate Catholic form of government.

Not so. Not only is a divine right monarchy (or any other specific form of government) not mandated in Quas Primas, it appears that Pius XI presents a definite doctrine of individual sovereignty. If anything, taking the political philosophy of Saint Robert Cardinal Bellarmine as our lead, we must construe the encyclical as “mandating” a form of government that is democratic in substance.

From the point of view of Pius XI, however, Bellarmine’s political philosophy had a few difficulties. These were overcome when Pius XI obviated Bellarmine’s insertion of the collective between God and man, and between man and the state. The pope did this by substituting a completed doctrine of social virtue in place of Bellarmine’s perceived necessity for the collective.

That is, formerly it was believed that only the state in the person of the leader had indirect access to the common good, and that certain rights were delegated to the leader after being vested by God in the collective. Using hints given by Saint Thomas Aquinas, however, Pius XI posited a doctrine of social virtue by which each human person— not the people as a whole—gains direct access to the common good.

Within the context of social virtue as the concept was developed by Pius XI, the implicitly or explicitly chosen leader changes from an authoritarian to a “servant leader.” The leader is not the servant of God (in the way that all human beings would be were it not for Christ’s redemption of us on the Cross), but the servant of those on whose behalf he exercises the functions of government.

The function of government is to care for and maintain the common good as a whole. This is a general function. The specific care of each level of the common good, however, is the particular responsibility of the people who subsist within that level of the common good.

How Pius XI reconciled these two seemingly incompatible areas of responsibility can be found in how Aquinas treated legal justice—the justice that Aristotle claimed was the only virtue that had anything to do with the common good. The Angelic Doctor did this almost casually. He merely noted that there are two types of legal justice.

One of these types of legal justice is a general virtue, just as Aristotle had claimed. The other, however, is a particular virtue. This is a concept directly contrary to Aristotle’s whole idea of general justice and its application to the common good in the form of legal justice.

THE ROLE OF THE STATE

Saint Thomas restricted the general type of legal justice to what Aristotle meant by the term, that is, the passage and enforcement of laws by the state—an identifiable (though not particular) application of Aristotle’s conception of “general justice” or “virtue entire.” Passing and enforcing laws are acts of distributive and commutative justice. These have a direct effect on individuals, but only an indirect effect on the common good.

Saint Thomas’ reformulation of Aristotle, however, included the idea of a particular virtue directed at the common good—and calling it, too, legal justice. He didn’t get into this particular type of legal justice very much, except to say that it had a direct effect on the common good: “Legal justice alone directly looks to the common good.”1 The implications, however, are profound. This means that every human being has the capacity to acquire and develop the virtue of particular legal justice.

Obviously using the same term for something completely different is a little confusing. Pius XI went to work and tightened up Saint Thomas’ terminology. General legal justice per se he “gave back to the lawyers” by restricting the term legal justice to mean only “general legal justice”—Aristotle’s term applied to Aristotle’s concept. Particular legal justice he renamed “social justice.”

The capacity to acquire and develop legal justice is delegated to the chosen representatives of the people as a political entity. This is to ensure that society—which is naturally hierarchical, consisting of many levels of the common good—is properly run and due attention paid to the maintenance of the whole of the common good. Because this is a general function, it is perfectly appropriate that the capacity to acquire and develop legal justice - a general virtue—be delegated to the state or some other institution.

The common good is maintained through direct acts of commutative and distributive justice which also constitute indirect “acts” of legal justice via their indirect effect on the common good. These are the exercise of rights, such as declaring war, keeping the peace, passing laws, and collecting taxes, that Saint Robert Bellarmine assumed were granted to the people as a whole, not to individuals, and then delegated to the state.2

On the contrary, as Pius XI clearly pointed out, these rights are granted to individuals, but cannot be exercised by individuals as individuals.3 They can only be exercised by the state on behalf of the individuals who make up society. Even then this is only when the agent of the state is acting as the legitimate representative of the people—as a member of the group carrying out his delegated role.

The state does not, therefore, possess this sovereign power in its own right, but only because the group has selected representatives to act on its behalf, and the group consents to those representatives, implicitly or explicitly. Leaders are entrusted with the exercise of specific indirect social rights in order to ensure that the common good as a whole is properly maintained and protected.

A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

The fact that certain social rights are delegated to the state does not mean that individuals retain no social rights. Very much the contrary! The state has the job of reconciling the interests of all the different levels of the common good and ensuring that everything operates harmoniously together. This is why the state has the job of passing and enforcing laws, as well as adjudicating disputes between individuals and groups, levying and collecting taxes, setting standards for weights and measures, declaring war, and so on. The leader or governing group of any other institution within a particular level of the common good is similar, within its own purview, to that of the state over the whole of the common good.

Passing and enforcing laws and regulations and so on are all social goods. They must be regulated and reconciled in some fashion or society will not be in harmony. Imagine trying to carry on trade when every individual decides for himself how long a foot is, or sets his own private standard of value for the currency—or what specific words mean in a legal context, or even whether a specific act constitutes a crime. Similarly, try and imagine running a business if no one follows the procedures that everyone has agreed upon. A system of accounting or internal control would be impossible.

The individual levels of the common good are another matter. These are effectively infinite, resulting, as they do, from the effectively infinite relationships between individuals and individuals, individuals and groups, and groups and groups. They are the personal and individual responsibility of the members of society who subsist within or at those levels4 —not a general responsibility of the leader. This is why each individual as a member of a group retains the capacity to acquire and develop social justice, a particular virtue.

Each individual has a personal and direct responsibility for the care and maintenance of the common good at his own levels. We need to specify levels for a very good reason. Each of us subsists within an almost unlimited variety of “milieux,” as the different levels of the common good can be termed. These milieux change from day to day, even from moment to moment, as we become involved in the almost infinite variety of social transactions that make up daily life.5

Each of these milieux is therefore our personal responsibility. It so happens, though, that, as Pius XI observed, we as individuals are often helpless when confronted with the seemingly impossible task of caring for and maintaining the common good at our level.6

THE ACT OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

To try and make this clearer, let’s look at the role that social justice can play in a badly structured social situation —a business enterprise in which no one does his job. This is adapted from the illustration Father Ferree used in his pamphlet, Introduction to Social Justice, that of a society in which no one was honest.

The first mark of social justice is that it cannot be performed by individuals as individuals, but only by individuals as members of groups. When a member of the company performs his work, he is also continuing a laudable tradition in his company that tasks are carried out when assigned. By doing his job promptly he contributes to the conviction which is prevalent in his company that tasks are to be carried out promptly. He not only performs his individual task, but he also contributes the performance of a task which he owes to his company, namely, support of the principle that at the proper time tasks are to be carried out. He also knows that when he assigns a task to somebody else, it will be carried out as well.

Now this “tradition,” this “confidence” are social things. They are marks of the society as a whole. These acts then, insofar as they contribute to the health of that company, are indirect “acts” of legal justice7 (promoting the corporate common good) although they are directly acts of individual responsibility.

What about direct acts of social justice? Suppose the company has a long tradition of people not doing their jobs without somebody standing over them with whips, chains, or threats of dismissal. As a result, everybody is suspicious of everybody else. No one will do his job without coercion even in an emergency where the survival of the company is at stake. To do your job in a holistic sense without coercion in such an environment is to be taken advantage of.

Emergencies, however, have a habit of coming up, and people as well as companies suffer. Likewise, all jobs that are too big for one person go undone because no one will trust another sufficiently to ask for assistance or go into even informal partnership with a co-worker. The consequence is that the economic life of the company as a whole is suffering more and more; and the company is being driven out of business.

The solution? First of all, we as individuals are helpless before the accumulated evil of the unjust system in force. We need help. If we are wise we will not tackle the whole company at once, but will look around among our coworkers and try to find other people who are as dissatisfied as we are with the condition of their company.

With these fellows in misfortune we sit down to study the sad condition of our company and to see what can be done about it—we organize. We determine the cause of the badly structured social order in our company, and set out to correct it. The first step is to bring others into the group in solidarity with its new principles.

We will make it a condition of joining our group that the newcomers study the necessity of doing one’s job as much as we studied it when we started out. In other words, we will attempt to form our new members to the habit of industry. Actually we are setting up a new “social conscience” to take the place of the old falsified “social conscience” that made shirking a normal thing.

In this social way of action—this organization of the company—something can really be done. We as organized human persons are going to show to our disorganized company an example, not of individually trying and failing, but of arriving at a viable and competitive company by the operation of industry as a group.

SUBSIDIARITY

This is the basis of the principle of subsidiarity. The essence of subsidiarity is that care of the common good is entrusted not to those at the highest level, not to those at the lowest level, but to those at the most appropriate level. That is, matters pertaining to the care and maintenance of the common good as a whole (that is, in general) are the proper purview of the state. Matters pertaining to the care and maintenance of the common good at a particular level are the purview of those subsisting within or at that level.

When problems occur and the members of a specific milieu are unable to carry out their task of caring for and maintaining the common good at their own level, a “higher” level may step in and provide assistance.8 This assistance can take one of two forms, frequently both. Where emergency aid is necessary, the “higher” level can provide for immediate subsistence of the members of the flawed milieu. This aid should be provided in a manner consistent with the demands of human dignity when possible, but sheer survival is the real issue and the justification for such assistance.

The assistance must never stop there, however. Keeping people alive in a manner consistent as far as possible with Social Justice Review 80 May/June 2005 the demands of human dignity is a matter of the highest importance, and certainly the most immediate.9 It is not, however, the only important matter, nor is it the highest matter, even in the temporal sphere.

In temporal matters that place is reserved for restructuring the social order at a particular level of the common good so as to enable the human persons within that milieu to carry out the functions themselves, without further assistance from a higher level. The primary assistance from a higher level must, therefore, take the form of removing barriers to the effective functioning of the people within the lower level so as to be able to carry out the operation of that level themselves.10

THE RIGHT OF FREE ASSOCIATION

As noted above, our direct and personal responsibility for the common good at our level means that each of us retains certain social rights. The single most important of these social rights is that of free association—the right to organize. Unless we can organize and thereby become members of groups, exercise of our social rights and development of our social virtue become impossible. Remember, acts of social virtue are carried out and social rights exercised only by members of groups.

Sadly, this right of free association has frequently been limited to simple encouragement of the related right of labor to organize.11 It is, as should now be clear, far more than that. The right to organize does not apply merely to the rather narrow task of restructuring the economic milieu of wage workers, but to the whole of the common good at all levels. Wherever flaws exist in the common good at any level, it is the individual and personal responsibility of everyone at that level to organize in order to correct those flaws. This personal responsibility takes precedence over the responsibility of higher levels to assist lower levels.12

CONSTANT VIGILANCE IS NECESSARY

Further, individuals within a particular milieu must continue to associate in an organized manner so as to keep a constant watch on the common good at that level.13 This means not only correcting obvious flaws as they appear, but changing and improving the institutions at that level of the common good to meet the changing conditions of society. As Pius XI noted, the whole of society is in such a state of flux as legitimately to be termed “radically unstable.”14

Changes must therefore constantly be introduced into the system so that institutions can continue to meet human wants and needs in the most effective and efficient manner possible. This requires organization and the exercise of social rights, which affect the common good directly, for the practice of individual virtue and the exercise of individual rights can only affect the common good indirectly, as Aristotle noted.15

The indirect “acts” of legal justice carried out by the state are direct acts of commutative and distributive justice. These acts, whether construed as indirect “acts” of legal justice or direct acts of commutative or distributive justice, are generally insufficient for the task of restructuring the social order at any level. As de Tocqueville noted,

The first of the duties that are at this time imposed upon those who direct our affairs is to educate democracy, to reawaken, if possible, its religious beliefs; to purify its morals; to mold its actions; to substitute a knowledge of statecraft for its inexperience, and an awareness of its true interest for its blind instincts, to adapt its government to time and place, and to modify it according to men and to conditions. A new science of politics is needed for a new world.16

This anticipated Pius XI’s statement that, “The pastoral theology of another day will no longer suffice.”17 It also gives a hint that Pius XI may have been familiar with de Tocqueville’s work—particularly its emphasis on individual sovereignty and the whole idea of groups.

SOLIDARITY

What is the role of “solidarity” in all this? We hear a lot of talk about it, but very few people ever seem to get down to specifics. Solidarity is actually quite a simple concept.

Solidarity, often mistaken for social charity, is merely a characteristic of groups per se. It is an inherent and integral part of all social virtue. This is because without solidarity “the group” simply would not exist.

Solidarity consists of acceptance and internalization by the members of a group of the principles and goals that define a group as that particular group. One of the “acts” of social charity—the virtue that commands us to love our institutions as we love ourselves (and structured groups are institutions)—is accepting and internalizing the principles and goals that define the group, hence the understandable confusion between solidarity and social charity.

Solidarity is thus the “glue” that holds groups together, but it is not a virtue in the philosophical sense of the term. Some very unvirtuous groups, for example, can have a high degree of solidarity, such as street gangs and Nazis. We cannot carry out acts of any kind of social virtue without solidarity, and may even, in a limited sense, understand solidarity as an act of social charity—perhaps even the act of social charity. Solidarity is not itself, however, a virtue.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

What we’ve analyzed of Pius XI’s political thought so far gives us the basis to understand his specific recommendations for restructuring the social order, and for putting them in their proper order. That is, consideration for the dignity of the human person is paramount within the temporal sphere. This requires recognition of each human being’s individual and personal sovereignty.

This Pius XI did with his careful correction of the political thought of Saint Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, and his equally careful exposition of this correction in his encyclicals, most notably Quas Primas. This was the foundation for Pius XI’s completed doctrine of social virtue, a development from the hints given by Saint Thomas Aquinas. In the third part of this article we will move on to specifics, as well as develop an orientation for understanding Pius XI’s plan for a more just ordering of society, both economically and politically.

ENDNOTES

1. 1-2:61:5, 4m.

2. De Laicis, VI.

3. Ferree, op. cit. 193-211.

4. Rev. John Francis Murphy, S.T.L., The Moral Obligation of the Individual to Participate in Catholic Action (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1958); Ferree, op. cit. 186-187.

5. Ferree, ibid. 177-178.

6. Divini Redemptoris. § 53.

7. Father Ferree used the term “indirect social justice,” which didn’t make complete sense, given his thesis that social justice was a particular virtue. I believe he meant legal justice, which can, in a certain sense, be understood as “indirect social justice.”

8. Quadragesimo Anno § 79.

9. Quadragesimo Anno § 63.

10. Rev. Heinrich Pesch, S.J., Lehrbuch der Nationaloeconomie, 2, 316; 5, 123.

11. Mary Lois Eberdt, C.H.M., Ph.D., Gerald J. Schnepp, S.M., Ph.D., Industrialism and the Popes (New York: P.J. Kennedy & Sons, 1953) 53 et seq,; Fr. Thomas J. Higgins, S.J., Man as Man: The Science and Art of Ethics (Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books and Publishers, 1992) §§ 962-975; Raymond J. Miller, C.Ss.R., Forty Years After: Pius XI and the Social Order, A Commentary (St. Paul, Minnesota: Radio Replies Press, 1947) §§ 22.4, 30.15, 110.3.

12. Pesch, loc. cit.

13. Rev. William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D., Introduction to Social Justice (Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Social Justice, 1996) 49-50.

14. Discourse to Diocesan Congress of Catholic Youth, May 16, 1926; Catholic Action, 107-112.

15. Ethics, 1129b26

16. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, “Author’s Introduction to the First Part.”

17. Pius XI, Discourse to the Ecclesiastical Assistants of the U.C.F.I., July 19, 1928. Quoted in Civardi, Manual of Catholic Action (New York: Sheed and Ward,