Thomas Massaro reading: Living Justice

I must acquiesce that I had a brief moment of confusion with this scheduled reading. While there were some class notes taken on some of the terms in the reading, mentally I didn’t relate them to the reading due to some fatigue at the time. So, I am looking at this with fresh eyes. Thomas Morrow talks at some length about human dignity. He says that under Catholic doctrine all should be accorded diginity whether well, sick, the unborn, those who might be euthanized, or a social pariah. He also talks about equality from the standpoint of the Catholic Church, that all deserve equality, but it reminds me more of the words of Thomas Jefferson when he penned the Constitution, that we’re garranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness et cetera. Marrow doesn’t say it’s bad for one to have more wealth than others perse, but just because you’re born into the right family or social circles doesn’t mean that the pursuit of wealth and power should outweigh the pursuit of equality, even though he admits that the playing field isn’t level. A person can be of nobility, but that doesn’t make him or her noble by virtue in other words. Marrow upholds the example of the Pope John XXIII, who listed a series of human rights as “universal, inviolable, and inalienable.” Again, very Jeffersonian in nature. Massaro seems to disagree with secular human rights traditions, that man cannot give other men human rights as much as God leds the way in being an example of what human rights ought to be accorded to men. I do remember vaguely in class discussion that there was a brief distinction made between ought and should because “ought” indicates a moral imperative, i.e., what one has a moral obligation to do, whereas “should” implies the world of the mundane, like you should pick up your laundry, or you should tip a certain percentage on a bill, for example. Of course, I learned that distinction in philosophy courses, although I suspect the distinction is sometimes lost on others.

I think that Massaro strategically mentions both the term Solidarity  and John Paul II on page 84 because he’s alluding to that the late Pope was from Poland and supportive of the Solidarity labor movement in Poland during the Cold War that helped foster the end of Communism there as and example of what idea of the concept can do when put into practice. And it’s as if Massaro is alluding somewhat to the notion of the Buttefly Effect when he talks about John Paul II emphasizing, “God not only allows people to depend upon each other, but absolutely wills that humans share themselves in the context of intimate as well as larger groupings of our neighbors. To be human is to be a social being, one whose very life is and should be bound up with those in close proximity and even distant strangers.” But, Massaro also says the concept of Solidarity must begin with in to transcend outwardly.