There is no such thing as "social" justice, there is only justice--giving to each his due, what he has earned, is owed.
You should really try Google more often before posting.
An entire book or three would even be better.
Classic Christian social justice has its roots in the preaching of the apostles and the ECFs to direct service and missions work inside and outside the Church as a matter or ordinary, normal Christian practice. As the Church became more institutionalized (and the RCC became that institution) various doctrines, or formalized perspectives and policies (that's all a doctrine is) for the purpose of standardizing teaching arose. That's why we have doctrines like "
Christology," "soteriology," "ecclesiology." It took about 150 years of vigorous debate for the matter of Christ's divinity to be settled and formalized. The first four centuries of the Church was spent contemplating and debating various perspectives, examining them with comparisons of whole scripture, for the Church to decide its core doctrines and put them into formalized statements.
One of the rarely mentioned doctrines was that of social justice. God is a just God, so take care not to inadvertently mock God with contradictory statements like "
There is no such thing as social justice" and "[justice]
is giving to each his due," because no one outside of Christ is
due anything but destruction. In Christ each individual has value (even in the sinful state we are worth shedding Christ's blood for) and to be treated with dignity and respect as creations of God. This is how James could write,
James 3:8-10
....
no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God; from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.
That is not solely because fresh and foul water cannot come from the same spring. It is also because those made in God's image have worth. The Christian life has always been about preaching
God's regard for humanity and then practicing that belief in tangible, visible ways. In its earliest days the gospel was well received by slaves and beggars and outcasts because of this belief. As Christianity became institutionalized it also gained wealth, and as it gained wealth it developed worldly problems of class division. We see the seeds of this, again, in James' epistle,
James 2:1-9
My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, "You sit here in a good place," and you say to the poor man, "You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool," have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called? If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
By the time Augustine came around the need to formalize the otherwise common practice arose. Augustine defined justices as "Love serving God alone," describing how love was to rule in the Christians being, his/her thoughts, will, and actions and, therefore this standard was a critically necessary aspect of any Godly state (by which he meant political state), and a crucial feature of all states (institutions) whether they be geo-political nation-states and religious institutions. Augustine's "
City of God" (perhaps one of the most misunderstood books in modernity) is very much about the ideal state (which would be the city of God's) and the fact that will never be realized on this side of the grave until Christ returns.
"Remove justice and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms?”
In Augustine's viewpoint ALL people were to be obedient to God, not just Christians, but due to the depraving effects of sin it is incumbent upon Christians to set the example - the example of love, love that is practically demonstrating God's love by helping others in need -
whether they deserve it or not because it's a function of grace, not merit (or what is earned or owed). His arguments were considered standard fare until the rise of Marxism, but before that happened Thomas Acquinas expounded on Augustinians' views by defining this love, or (social) justice as how Christians acted for the common good (as opposed to any individual's good). For Aquinas, geo-political nation states, earthly kings, nor any code of law could insure love or justice, nor could self-interest. Aquinas appealed to God's created order, to natural law, to show want and need of Christian service for all - both inside and outside of the Church. A monarch was just a responsible, accountable, and culpable to this standard as was the pauper and, since the agency of God's love in an individual is not dependent on material wealth all people must be just. There is no distinction between love and justice any more than God could be one or the other.
This all became very twisted as the RCC grew more institutionalized and rivalries developed. Throughout the first two millennia the RCC vied with monarchs and nation-states for authority, power, and influence. Internally the first big division occurred at The Great Schism when the Orthodox parted ways with Catholicism, Constantinople parted ways with Rome. A similar division occurred at the Protestant Reformation but one of the common set of beliefs all these divisions held fast to was that of social justice. With the rise of the Industrial Revolution, it became necessary for
all the Church, regardless of sectarian affiliation to evaluate its service to society. By this time the philosophies of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Locke were prevalent and competed with Christian orthodoxy. The first orphanages and hospitals were being built in the US - all the earliest social/welfare institutions in the US were begun by Christians. In a relatively brief time, the ideas of Kierkegaard (who was simply trying to find a means by which faith could be knowingly applied with confidence), Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin, and others were challenging Christian thought, doctrine, and practice. As the nations of the world became more secular (Napolean had made it possible for a king to be made apart from the Church) the Church responded two ways: increased missions into the colonies of the major nations, and hiding. The RCC responded with a papal Encyclical called "Rerum Novarum" which defined the Church's views on wages, how business owners were to treat their employees (the Marxist term "worker" was taking hold in the common vernacular of western societies), personal wealth and property, and
calling for a just distribution of wealth. After World War II and the rise of Communism these viewpoints became a core part of the Catholic belief system in South America (Islam and Chinese Communism had limited the Church's influence in Asia, and capitalism was till waging a cold war in Africa). The perversion of historical Social Justice became complete with the election of a Marxist as Pope. Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) was born and raised in Argentina; a Jesuit indoctrinated in Liberation Theology. The RCC had been going back and forth for decades between conservative and liberal factions. Marxism radically defines "
social justice," and steels its capital from the Church while perverting the mission and agency of the Christian's God-birthed love to idolize (Marxist) humanity and discard God, faith, and religion as unnecessary (or even something to be abhorred).
Social justice is a real thing. It is not the same as legal justice. It is much larger and more encompassing because it is rooted in the overlapping nature of God who is both love and just.
Which is relevant to this op because the Marxist-influenced application of historical RCC soteriology is much, much different than anything any Catholic our age (I'm 66) grew up with. Salvation by faith plus works in Marxist Catholicism is salvation by faith plus Marxist works of class revolution (commonly known in the US as DEI and ESG for the non-religious).
Jesus was, after all, a socialist and the early Church was communist
. It says so right in Acts 2-4
.
.
