The Just Society And Why Judas Was Judged Harshly

Monday of Holy Week

I don’t understand why people these days feel like they have to defend Judas from the accusations that he was a thief and a jerk. He was a thief and a jerk. Today’s Gospel shows him accusing Jesus of sinning against the virtue of justice, by allowing an expensive ointment to be used for anointing his feet. Somehow it seems very strange to ask Judas about the virtue of justice.

The Holy Father did not ignore the virtue of justice in his encyclical about charity. Any duty to our neighbor is the province of both justice and love. We cannot claim to love our neighbor if we ignore our duty to protect his rights. That’s why I get a little impatient with folks who make a big deal out of the issue of global warming, a problem we may or may not be able to ameliorate, but ignore the real and present danger to human life and health represented by abortion, murder of the elderly disabled, and the epidemic of malaria in third-world countries. We have to get involved in solving these real problems.

Building a just social and civil order, wherein each person receives what is his or her due, is an essential task which every generation must take up anew. As a political task, this cannot be the Church's immediate responsibility. Yet, since it is also a most important human responsibility, the Church is duty-bound to offer, through the purification of reason and through ethical formation, her own specific contribution towards understanding the requirements of justice and achieving them politically.

The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice. She has to play her part through rational argument, based on the natural law, and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper. A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church. Yet the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is something which concerns the Church deeply.