Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

232 STEPHEN T. REHRAUER
of justice, and by others as injustice, has plagued the ethical
attempt to clarify the boundaries between the two for centuries. 4
And it is essential that we as moral theologians renew our
dedication to do so, because as recent psychological
investigations into violence and evil have shown, contrary to the
myths about them that abound in human society, some of the
worst injustices are perpetrated and carried out by good-willed
people in the very name of justice. 5 It is not so much a problem
of moral relativism, although certainly it is aggravated by
tendencies toward moral relativism. Perhaps it is rather that
there is an internal tension within the very nature of justice itself
which reflects the underlying tension at the heart of what it is to
be human.
Where do we begin?
In her insightful study of justice, Karen Lebacqz suggests
that in the Christian’s attempt to understand the demands of
justice, rather than beginning with an attempt to define the
nature of what justice is, we must begin by taking a cold hard
look at the reality of the world in which we find ourselves
situated—a world filled with injustice. In order to do so we must
look closely to the social sciences which help us to understand
the causes, nature, and impact on people’s lives of these realities
of injustice. 6 In terms of the metaphor of Masters’ poem, we
4
This struggle historically to elucidate a comprehensive understanding
of justice in both philosophy and religious and social groups despite the
changing social and historical atmosphere in which the struggle is carried
out, and the consequent effect upon development of ideas about the nature
of both justice and reason, is thoroughly studied by Alisdair MacIntyre. See
A. MACINTYRE, Whose Justice, Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1988).
5
For an enlightening discussion of this issue, see R. BAUMEISTER, Evil:
Inside Human Violence and Cruelty (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1999), pp.
170-202.
6
“I begin with the realities of injustice. The formal principle of justice
is therefore not to give to each what is due but to correct injustices. This
simple shift in starting point has profound implications for a theory of