Dialogue and Justice: Leonard Swidler’s Deep-Dialogue as an Essential Component of Justice

Underlying Leonard Swidler’s long career in interreligious dialogue and Church reform is the realization, shared with his friend Hans Küng and articulated in the early 1990’s, that there can be no peace in the world without peace among the religions of the world. Decades before, Pope Paul VI observed, “If you want peace, work for justice.” Thus, justice needs to be part of any discussion about Swidler’s life’s work of dialogue within the Catholic Church and among religions leading to peaceful and fruitful coexistence. Given the current discussion going on in the United States about justice, it is an important step simply to clarify understandings/misunderstandings surrounding the term. In this essay I would like to look at how justice is understood in conservative versus progressive circles and then to talk about how Swidler’s project of engaging in dialogue and reforming the Catholic Church represents an essential dimension of the work of justice.

People who call for justice might find that what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography applies to justice as well: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” However, “justice” or, more precisely, “social justice” means different things to different people. It is viewed negatively in some circles and positively in others. On his March 12, 2010, program, conservative television and radio host Glenn Beck famously admonished people: “I beg you. Look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can.”¹ Along with many others in the politically conservative camp, he was equating social justice with government-mandated redistribution of wealth—what they consider Marxist socialism.² In this mindset, “Big Government” takes money from hard-working Americans and gives it to undeserving, nonproductive people who are more than happy to live off the government. For them, social justice means creating a welfare state divided into givers and takers. When running for president in 2012, Mitt Romney famously claimed that forty-seven percent of Americans are takers from the government and therefore not likely to vote for him, since he was committed to eliminating or at least reducing the welfare state.

Beck, Michael Novak, and most other conservative commentators believe that private associations and charities, especially those connected with churches, are the best way to help people who are in temporary need of assistance. For such persons, helping people through the government is a tax, even if it is called “social justice,” for it undermines personal responsibility on the part of those who receive from the government and eliminates the need for people with the resources to do so to assist others. Helping people privately is charity, which is a time-honored way that neighbors help neighbors in America, and “equality” is a misguided pipe dream, made even more grotesque when governments try to impose it. People should take care of themselves and work to improve themselves as best they can in whatever economic state they find themselves.

In contrast, how do people who have a positive view of justice understand the term? The Catholic Church has been one of the strongest voices calling for justice in the modern era. A pivotal early statement of modern Catholic social-justice teaching is the 1891 encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, Rerum novarum (“Of New Things”) or “On the Condition of Labor.” The “new things” that Leo had in mind at the time were the changes brought about by industrialization. He was concerned about the condition of factory and mine workers while they were at work, the precarious nature of making a living through such work, and the effects of the factory system on the family life of workers: “In our present age of greater culture, with its new customs and ways of living...