Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

the industrial age. The fundamental principles of natural law are therefore not grasped formally
first and then determined in content, but, conversely, experienced and learned concretely
and objectively from childhood on in the family in which the essential elements of
right can be demonstrated, so that the knowledge of principles and of modes of being are
united at the root.
That misinterpretations of natural law can be demonstrated among many peoples is evidence
neither against natural law nor against its knowability. As history teaches, even the fundamental
norms are exposed to error. Even if, for example, man’s right to life has been recognized in
principle in all cultural areas, this right has nevertheless been obscured in certain cases such
as human sacrifice and exposure of infants. Erroneous conceptions occurred more frequently
the realm of the so-called applied natural law in which the principles of natural law are related
to current conditions. To hit on what is right here - „not all are able to do this carefully, but
only those who are wise,“ writes Thomas Aquinas (I-II, 100, 1). To decipher the „demands of
the law that God has written „in the heart“ of man (Rom 2:15) even in its fineness is often a
laborious enterprise and one threatened by error. Ignorance and misinterpretation of the natural
law have their deepest ground in the limitedness of the human mind and in its darkening
through original sin. These errors are not infrequently strengthened and hardened by false
theories and by public opinion. It is a consoling thought that Christ, as the Second Vatican
Council teaches, has entrusted his Church, the „teacher of the truth,“ with the mission to declare
and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origin
in human nature itself“ (Dignitatis humanae, 14) - a mission assigned to the Magisterium and
not to the pastorate of the Church, as Jakob David thinks. 33
CHAPTER TWO: THE VIRTUE OF JUSTICE
§ 1 The Essence of Justice
1. When justice is mentioned in modern philosophy of law, not infrequently the ‘moral idea of
law’ is meant. Under the rejection of natural law, and as its replacement, as it were, it is
thought to stand somewhere behind positive law, but outside the sphere of law proper. It is
further assumed to raise the in no way undisputed claim of being the moral measure of existing
law. Over against this basically legal-positivistic conception of law, Christian social
teaching sees in justice a virtue, namely, that moral attitude „whereby one renders to each one
his due by a constant and perpetual will“ (Thomas Aquinas, II-II, 58,1). The one who practices
justice seeks not his or her own right, but gives or allows the other one his or her right. 2.
Justice is one of the four cardinal virtues and thus a principal virtue on which the other virtue
hinge (sicut in cardine). It presupposes law, particularly natural law, from which it receives its
meaning and orientation. From this, it follows that the three properties of law will also accompany
the virtue of justice: relatedness to others, strict indebtedness, and exact proportion
between what is owed and what is given. If one of these properties is lacking or even diminished,
we are no longer within the jurisdiction of the cardinal virtue of justice, but in that of
one of its attendant virtues, such as piety, truthfulness, gratitude, or liberality.
§ 2 The Fundamental Forms of Justice
Justice is the great orderer of human social life. Since Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics), the
Western tradition has distinguished three fundamental forms of justice according to the three
fundamental social relationships: the relation of equal legal partners to one another, the relation
of the social body to its members, and the relation of the members to the social body.
33 Jakob David, Das Naturrecht in Krise und Läuterung. Köln 1967, S. 65 ff. - Cf. Ludwig Berg, Naturrecht im
Neuen Testament, in: Jahrbuch f. Christl. Sozialwissenschaften, Bd. 9 (1968), S. 23ff.
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