The Church’s insistence on social justice begins with Jesus, has been articulated by its
Saints and Popes, especially since Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum in 1891. Its
principles have been laid out by its great teachers, particularly St. Thomas Aquinas.
Today’s Gospel (Luke 16:19-31) contrasts a very rich man who lives magnificently and
a poor beggar, Lazarus, who is covered with sores that the dogs lick. He waits at the
gate of the rich man, hoping for the scraps from the rich man’s table. The Gospel states
that the wealthy man was “well off in his life time and Lazarus was in misery.”
God has sympathy for Lazarus, who is taken to heaven when he dies while the rich man
continues his insensitive and selfish life in hell. The simple story manifests Jesus’
attitude towards a society divided between the privileged and the poor.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, having what is needed for the necessities of life is a
basic human good (1a2ae. 2, 1). Nevertheless, even though Thomas is not given to
demeaning language, he describes those who consider that everything obeys money,
as “a multitude of fools” (ad multitudinem stultorum), since they know nothing more than
life on a material level (1a2ae. 2, 1, ad 1).
As a general principle, according to Thomas, “The common good takes precedence
over the private good, in the same category” (2a2ae. 152, 4, ad 3). St. Thomas states:
“The temporal goods which God grants us, are ours as to the ownership, but as to the
use of them, they belong not to us alone but also to such others as we are able to help
with what we have over and above our needs” (2a2ae. 32, 6, ad 2).
Thomas asserts that not providing necessary help for the poor can be a serious sin:
“There is a time when we sin mortally if we omit to give alms; on the part of the recipient
when we see that his need is evident and urgent, and that he is not likely to be helped
otherwise – and on the part of the giver, when he has superfluous goods, which he does
not need for the time being, as far as he can judge with probability” (2a2ae. 32, 6, ad 2).
For Thomas, the sin of avarice is “going too far in getting or keeping material things.”
Hording in this way is a sin against our neighbors: “With material possessions it is
impossible for one man to enjoy extreme wealth without someone else suffering
extreme want, since the resources of this world cannot be possessed by many at one
time” (2a2ae. 118, 1, ad 2).
T. C. O’Brien marvels at Thomas’ insight: “One cannot but be impressed by the
unqualified principle of social and economic justice, so flatly stated in the 13 th century,
that still remains an unfulfilled, even revolutionary ideal” (Summa Theologiae New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972, 243, n. b.)

Avarice is a sin against oneself because one’s desires are immoderate. It is a sin
against God because “for the sake of an earthly good a person rejects the eternal”
(2a2ae. 118, 1, ad 3).
Even many Catholics are unaware of the Church’s critique of social structures that
perpetuate systems of injustice and poverty. In modern times, the popes have been
calling attention to endemic social injustices. Fifty years ago, in 1975, Pope Saint Paul
VI spoke of peoples who are condemned to “remain on the margin of life” because of
“famine, chronic disease, illiteracy, poverty, injustices in international relations and
especially in commercial exchanges, situations of economic and cultural neo-
colonialism sometimes as cruel as the old political colonialism” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 30).
The Pope asked, “How in fact can one proclaim the new commandment without
promoting in justice and in peace the true, authentic advancement of man?” (Evangelii
Nuntiandi, 31). In his letter, Populorum Progressio, in 1967, Paul VI stated clearly that
the Church maintains each person’s right to self-fulfillment.
“In God’s plan, every man is born to seek self-fulfillment, for every human life is
called to some task by God. At birth a human being possesses certain aptitudes
and abilities in germinal form, and these qualities are to be cultivated so that they
may bear fruit. By developing these traits through formal education of personal
effort, the individual works his way toward the goal set for him by the Creator.
Endowed with intellect and free will, each man is responsible for his self-
fulfillment even as he is for his salvation” (Populorum Progressio, 15).
In his letter, Caritas in Veritate (2009), Pope Benedict XVI writes:
“Awareness of God’s undying love sustains us in our laborious and stimulating
work for justice and the development of peoples, amid successes and failures, in
the ceaseless pursuit of a just ordering of human affairs. God’s love calls us to
move beyond the limited and the ephemeral, it gives us the courage to continue
seeking and working for the benefit of all, even if this cannot be achieved
immediately and if what we are able to achieve, alongside political authorities
and those working in the field of economics, is always less than we might wish.
God gives us the strength to fight and to suffer for love of the common good,
because he is our All, our greatest hope” (Caritas in Veritate, 78).
Pope Francis appeals to the teachings of Thomas Aquinas: “One also sees the need for
policies which can lighten an excessive imbalance between incomes. We must not
forget the Church’s teaching on the so-called social mortgage, which holds that
although it is lawful, as Saint Thomas Aquinas says, and indeed necessary ‘that people
have ownership of goods’, insofar as their use is concerned, ‘they possess them as not
just their own, but common to others as well, in the sense that they can benefit others
as well as themselves’”(December 8, 2013).

The life of Mother Teresa (Saint Teresa of Calcutta) demonstrated this concern, as she
voiced:
“God has identified Himself with the hungry, the sick, the naked, the homeless;
hunger not only for bread, but for love, for care, to be somebody to someone …
Let each of us … become a true child, a carrier of God’s love, let us love others
as God has loved each one of us, for Jesus has said love one another as I have
loved you … Therefore, I appeal to every one of you – poor and rich, young and
old – to give your hands to serve Christ in His poor and your hearts to love Him in
them. … and since love begins at home maybe Christ is hungry, naked, sick or
homeless in your own heart, in your family, in your neighbors, in the country you
live in, in the world” (Life in the Spirit, 1983, pp. 13-15)
Denis Vincent Wiseman, O.P.

References to St. Thomas’ Summa Theologiae give the part of the Summa, such as the
first part of the second part. Then the question is given, such as question 2, and then
the article, such as the 1 st . If the reference is from Thomas response to an objection, the
number of the objection is added, with the Latin word, ad, meaning “to,” such as the
reply to the third objection.