Fr. Ferree’s Analysis of
(From Fr.
Ferree’s incomplete manuscript of Forty
Years After … A Second Call to Battle, currently in the process of editing
and completion by Michael D. Greaney, Director of Research, CESJ)
Without
dwelling on this unfortunate failure, it is sufficient here to call attention
to the fact that much of Pius XI’s practical
thinking on the realization of Social Justice is to be found in what was then
known as “Catholic Action.”
Footnote for Our Day
We might contrast this vision from the past with what has
filled the void since it disappeared from the scene. This filling will have been supplied, of course, by the
individualistic mindset which Social Justice was supposed to correct, but didn’t
— at least not the first time around.
The favorite “social technique” of our own time is the
“peaceful” demonstration, especially when media coverage is likely or can be
arranged. Subsidiary aspects of the
demonstration are boycotts, sit-ins, organized lobbying pressures, single-issue
“advocacy” and then — crossing an invisible line which is hard to define and
harder still to hold — civil disobedience, violent demonstrations, and,
ultimately, terrorism!
Despite the social intent of all such techniques, and their
almost universal arrogation to themselves of the terms “Social Justice” or
“Justice and Peace,” these techniques are all radically individualistic. There are several criteria which can be applied to
test this:
1) They are directed immediately
to some specific solution already
determined in the mind of the “activist”; they are never a willingness to
dialogue with other and differing opinions on what the problem really is.
2) They are always intensely
concerned with the methodologies of pressure,
not with those of competence in the
matter in question.
3) They all require “time out” from the day-to-day social
intercourse of life, and raise the
question of how many objects one can juggle at any one time without dropping
some or all.
4) Any “demonstration” is by
definition a demand on someone else
to do something. It takes for granted
that whatever is wrong is the personal work of someone else, not the common agony of all; and it always knows
exactly who and where the someone is.
All this can be summed up in the observation that the “social activist”
as we have seen them so far, is an earnest amateur by profession.
This is not to say that such “professional
amateurism” is always wrong. It is
wrong as a normal methodology. If it obeys the same principles which would
permit a just war, or the insurrection against an entrenched tyrant, more power
to it! But it is a hopeless and hence
unjust substitute for the patient and full-time organization of every aspect of
life which we have seen in the necessary implementation of Social Justice and
in the now defunct techniques of “Catholic Action.”