Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/649

 JUSTIFICATION

573

JUSTIFICATION

compose it there is not this perfect distinction, and so there is something wanting to the proper and com- plete notion of the virtue in both legal and distribu- tive justice.

The rights which belong to every human being inasmuch as he is a person are absolute and inalien- able. The right to life and limb, the essential freedom which is necessary that a man may attain the end for which he is destined by God, the right to marry or remain single, such rights as these may not be in- fringed by any human authority whatever. A man himself even has no right to dispose of his own life and limbs; God alone is the Lord of life and death. But a man has the duty and the right to use and develop his faculties of soul and body, and if he chooses he may dispose of his right to use these faculties and whatever advantage they can procure him in favour of another. No person then can become the property of another human being, slavery in that sense is repugnant to the dignity of hinnan nature. But a man may by various titles have the right to the labour of another.

All things inferior to man were created for his use and benefit; they fulfil the end of their being by ministering to his wants and necessities. Whatever, therefore, pertains to the animal, vegetable, or in- organic world may be brought imder the ownership and made the property of man. The right thus to acquire property which is useful and necessary for an orderly human life, is one of man's natural rights, and it can not be taken away by the State. The State may indeed make reasonable laws regulating and tie- fining the property rights of its subjects for the com- mon good, but it cannot abrogate them altogether. Such rights are antecedent to the State, and in their substance independent of it; the State was instituted to protect and defend them, not to take them away.

Rights are the appanage of intelligent beings as such, beings who can reflect on themselves, know their own wants, and who can will to supply them by per- manently appropriating to themselves objects which are subordinate and which will satisfy those wants. Every human being, therefore, is the subject of rights, even before he has been brought into the world. The unborn child has a right to its life; it may even have property rights as well. Justice then is vio- lated if such rights are interfered with unwarrantably. Minors and married women have their rights like others, but positive law frequently modifies their property rights for the common good. In past ages the property rights of women especially were largely modified by positive law on their l)eing married, the husband acquiring more or less extensive rights over the property of his wife. In modern times, and es- pecially in English-speaking coimtries, the tendency has been to do away with such positive enactments, and to restore to married women all the property rights which unmarried women possess.

Not only indivitluals, but societies of men as such are the subjects of rights. For men cannot singly and by their own unaided exertions do everything that is necessary for the security and dignity of human existence. For this end man needs the co-operation of his fellows. He has then a natural right to asso- ciate himself with others for the attainment of some lawful end, and when such societies have been formed, they are moral persons which have their rights similar to those of natural persons. Such societies then may own property, and although the State may make laws which modify those rights for the common good, it is beyond its power altogether to abrogate them. Men have this power to form themselves into societies especially for the purpose of offering to God the public and social worship which is due to Him. The Catholic Church, founded by God Himself, is a perfect society and independent of the State. She has her rights, God-given, and necessary for the attainment of her

end, and justice is violated if these are unwarrantably interfered with.

As we have seen, human nature, its wants and aims, are the source of the fundamental and natural rights of man. By liis industry man may occupy and annex to his person material tilings which are of use to him and which belong to nobody else. He thus acquires property by the title of occupation. Property once acquired remains in the possession of its owner; all that it is or is capable of is ordained to his use and benefit. If it increases by natural growth or by giving birth to offspring, the increase belongs to the original owner. By the same law of accession in- crease in value, even tmearned increment as it is called, belongs to the owner of that which thus increases — "Res fructificat domino". Positive law may, as we have seen, mpdify property rights for the common good. It may also further determine those that are indeterminate by the law of nature; it may even create rights which would not exist without it. Thus a father may by law acquire cer- tain rights over the property of his children, and a husband may in the same way have certain rights over the property of his wife. When such rights exist it is, of course, a matter of justice to respect them. Finally, rights may be transferred from one to another or modified by a great variety of contracts, which are treated of under a special heading. (See Co.ntb,\ct.)

The foregoing is in \ery brief outline the doctrine on justice which has been gradually elaborated by Catholic philosophers and divines. The foundations of the doctrine are found in ,\ristotle, but the noble, beautiful, and altogether rational edifice has been raised by the laboiu's of such men as Acjuinas, Molina, Lessius, Lugo, and a host of others. The iloctrine as it appears at large in their stately folios is one of the chief and most important results of Catholic thought. It fully accounts for the peremptory, sacred, and absolutely binding character with which justice is in- vested in the minds of men. It was never of greater importance than it is nowadays to insist on these characteristics of justice. They disappear almost if not altogether in the modern theories of the virtue. Most of these theories derive rights and justice from positive law, and when socialists and anarchists threaten to abrogate those laws and make new ones which will regulate men's rights more equitably, no rational defence of the old order is possible. It becomes a mere question of might and brute force. Even if some with Herbert Spencer endeavour to find a deeper foundation for justice in the conditions of human existence, it is easy to answer that their interpretation of those conditions is essentially indi- vidualist and selfish, and that human existence thus conditioned is not worth having; that the new social order peremptorily demands their abolition. The Cathohc doctrine of justice will be found one of the main safeguards of order, peace, and progress. With e\'en balance it equally favours all and presses imduly on none. It gives the State ample authority for the attainment of its legitimate end, while it effectually bars the road to tyranny and violence.

Aristotle, Ethics; St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologica (PaniLi, 1852): Molina, De Justitia et Jure (.•Vntwerp, 1615); Soto, De Justitia et Jure (Lyons, 1582); Lessius, De Justitia et Jure (.Antwerp. 1632); Lugo, De Justitia et Jure (Paris, 1868); Ming, The Data of Modern Ethics examined (New York, 1896); Tanquerey, Synopsis theologice. moralis (Paris, 1905); Vermeersch, Qucesliones de Justitia (Bruges, 1904); Slater, A Manual of Moral Theology, I (New Yorlc, 1908).

T. Sl.\TER.

Justification (Lat. juMifiriitin; Gr. Siraiuiris), a biblio-ecclesiastical term, which denotes the trans- forming of the sinner from the state of unrighteousness to the state of holiness and sonship of God. Con- sidered as an act (achis justijicalionis), justification is the work of God alone, presupposing, however, on the part of the adult the process of justification and the co-