THE CATHOLIC HOUR AO Mbbtl -rmvo JUSTICE IS STRENGTH BY REV. JOHN F. CRONI IN, S.S., Director of the Institute of Catholic Social Studies a t the Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C. The first in a series of five addresses on THE PATH OF DUTY, delivered in the Catholic Hour, broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men, on August 1, 1943. National Council of Catholic Men Washington, D. C. JUSTICE IS STRENGTH My friends, the series of talks which is about to begin centers about five virtues which the world today needs. If we are to keep the peace which we are winning so gloriously, we must be prepared in heart for the task. The world of tomorrow will demand, grea;t deeds from each of us. It will call for the calm heroism of godly living, for the dedication of our lives to the service of our fellow man, that God's Name may be honored upon earth, as it is in heaven. In these days to come it will not be enough to pass wise laws, even though we rightly pray that the Spirit of Wis- dom may descend upon our rulers. Nor will man be saved by the plans of economist and the treaties of statesmen, though it would be folly to discard these helps. These are but the externals of a great nation. They are necessary. At times they are indispensable. But real great- ness lies in the heart of man. A nation with a soul will find wise and learned men to guide it. But a people without a soul could possess the cleverness of a Solomon and the strength of a Samson, and still be an evil force, a menace to the peace of the world. Our Sav- ior warned us against whited sep- ulchres, possessed of a cold beauty which conceals death and corrup- tion. Today we may rightly rejoice in our strength. But naked strength can be abused. A powerful motor car can serve its owner well, but it can also rush in the ways of death and destruction. It is for us to decide upon the use of our powd- er. May God in His mercy guide us in this decision. There are two virtues which should be the pillars of society, jus- tice and charity. With these as our support, a noble structure can be built. Without them, we build upon shifting sands. In our talk today we are to consider justice in our dealings with our fellow man. Next Sunday we shall deal with justice in relation to our own selves, which is but another name for the forgotten virtue of human- ity, or love of neighbor, and then ity, of love of neighbor, and then of that higher charity which men call patriotism. Finally we shall dwell upon the highest degree of both justice and charity, and this is worship, man's duty to his Mak- er. Justice is the rendering to every man of that which is due to him. It is the granting of rights and the acknowledgment of duty. It is that even-handed equity which sets man apart from the animal, who knows only the laws of force and violence. Without bias and without prejudice, it deals fairly with the cfcfifiei lowly and with the great. Riches cannot corrupt it, nor can power prevail over it. Without it, gov- ernment is tyranny. With it, the strong can live with the weak; the friendless, with those blessed with influence and prestige. Justice makes man noble, indeed, unless a man is just, he is hardly »a man. All this we gladly admit. Few of us there are who would not pay tribute to this great virtue. Yet in practice, we do not always live up to our profession. It is not that we are consciously unjust. We do not steal or cheat or lie. The thought of defrauding our neighbor would shock us. We pay our bills, and even pride ourselves that on a certain occasion we corrected a merchant when we received more change than was our due. Yet in spite of this, there are certain broader demands of justice which we overlook. But it is these pre- cise demands which the modern world most needs, if it is to survive. The first quality of justice need- ed today is a sense of duty. In our nation many of us are more sensi- tive about our rights than about our duties. We are more conscious of the attractions of pleasure than of the stern insistence of obliga- tion. Even in a time of great na- tional crisis we find it necessary to offer inducements and sugarcoating for sacrifices which should be taken as a matter of course, We use salesmanship and p r o m o t i o n schemes, when it should be enough to say: Your country needs it. In the midst of a war for the survival of civilization, an appeal to self- interest should be unthinkable. Yet the headlines of recent months re- veal our shame in this matter. For example, if anything should appeal to our sense of justice, it should be the idea of rationing. It is obvious that in a war like this there are bound to be shortages. So much of our manpower and machine power have been drafted for war that even a great industrial nation can hardly expect to keep its Stand- ards of living intact. We cannot be both an arsenal for the world and a nation living in ease and lux- ury. We realize that we are sup- plying allies whose factories have been bombed, whose farm lands have been turned into airfields or battlefields. We know that gaso- line for a mechanized war will spare the lives of our sons and brothers in the armed services, dis- abling the enemy without enormous sacrifice of human life. All these things are clear to everyone. No one denies that shortages exist and that most of them are inevitable. Most Ameri- cans, thank God, accept them cheer- fully and honestly. Yet there is another side to the picture which cannot truthfully be overlooked. Our newspapers were filled with cynical pictures of crowded high- ways when the pleasure-driving ban was made a matter of honor rather than police regulation. Pres- sure groups were formed to de- mand our rights to recreation as usual. Black markets flourished and soon spread to the even more essential field of our basic foods. It was considered clever to carp at regulation and to magnify and dis- tort inevitable mistakes in admin- istration. Wild rumors and dan- gerous jokes spread like fire. En- forcement became necessary, but this was greeted by some as a par- allel to Prohibition days or to the Nazi Gestapo. We may well hope that all this was exceptional rather than typical. It is only natural that we hear more of the trouble- some few than of the patriotic and law-observing many. It would not be a comforting thought that many of us were like the Romans of the fifth century, who used military funds, not against the barbarian invader, but simply to provide more games and sport for the populace. Fearful indeed would be the day when we lost our sense of duty. There are deep roots to this dis- regard for duty. Much of it stems from our system of education. For a while it was fashionable to dis- card the very notion of discipline in the training of children. Some parents and teachers thought that self-expression was the ideal. Every trait in a child's personality had to be developed, no matter how much it conflicted with the rights of others. Such training might pro- duce a respectable hermit, but it did not fashion men and women for the duties of social living. Rather it led to a generation which de- manded a comfortable religion and an easy life. In the churches, the notion of sin and obligation were to be treated as survivals of out- moded customs. In the home, mar- riage was not supposed to inter- fere with the pleasure of husband and wife. Parties and fun were goals to which all else was to be subordinated. Children were not welcome because they demanded too much attention. They were a bur- den on vacation trips. They were a problem when one wanted to go to the theater. Furthermore, they were a financial drain which kept one from living up to the neigh- bor's standard of luxury. Such was the attitude towards duty popular- ized in the novels and motion pic- tures of the Twenties. Some of it even survived the depression of the Thirties. With some of us, it did not take deep root. The bravery and endurance of our armies, and the great sacrifices of many at home, prove this. But it remains a danger so long as the cynical few seek selfish advantage in this hour of crisis. It is the task of every American to set the example of a generous spirit of service. The question should be not: What must I do; but rather: What can I do. No other attitude is safe in time of war. No other attitude is adequate for the equally important, if less dramatic, task of safeguarding the future peace. But this is not enough. There is a second demand of justice to- day which is no less stern and ex- acting. It is the call to integrity and honor and truthfulness in our dealings with others. There is danger in time of war of a relaxing of this standard. Military neces- sities call for the concealment of many facts. Some go so fa r as to assert that in the interest of propaganda we must distort the truth. All our enemies must be portrayed as fiends, and all our allies as spotless crusaders. On the home front, wild hysterical ap- peals must be used to win the sup- port of every one in the war effort. Fortunately such methods are much less common today than they were in 1917. But there is still enough to warrant concern, particularly in view of the problem of peace. An outstanding example of dis- tortion and injustice is found in the story of our home production front. Here we have not been given a fair picture of the truth. Many persons have the impression that our war production is a hope- lessly bungled job. They blame this upon selfishness on the part of capital and labor, and on military and civil administrative incompe- tence. Certainly such an impres- sion has been transmitted to many of our soldiers on the fighting lines. The selfishness of the very few is allowed to overshadow the overwhelming devotion of the many. This is a false picture. It is like portraying our glorious vic- tory in Sicily by telling only of the dozen or so stories of individual incompetence and cowardice which I feel sure are bound to occur in such a huge undertaking. The facts are that capital and labor alike have done a magnificent job of war production. Hundreds of thousands are working themselves into a premature grave, giving their lives for their country, just as surely as did the soldier lying on the plains of Guadalcanal. There have been greedy business men; but thousands of others have ren- dered unselfish service beyond the power of money to buy. Some workers have been foolish enough to strike brifely even in time of war, but millions more have work- ed seven days a week, month after month, often in a strange _ city, under unbelievable housing condi- tions, often traveling hours to their work—likewise a sacrifice which no money can buy. The result of this and the equally splendid achieve- ments of our farmers, has been a miracle of production far surpass- ing the results of any other nation. In two years we did more than the Axis did in ten years of delib- erate preparation for war. These are the facts. Our soldiers and the public have a right to know them, and not distorted propaganda pro- duced by some selfish group. Unless we develop a conscience and a sense of justice in this matter, we will soon develop a cynical na- tion, distrusting all sources of news. We have already gone too far in that direction. One of the reasons why we so long underesti- mated the menace of Hitlerism was our unwillingness to trust the re- porting of the facts. Again, in recent mine strikes, many persons wondered why the miners followed their leaders instead of the press, radio, and newsreels of the nation. The answer is simple. The miners have long felt that their side of the case would not be given a fair hearing by those who supply the news. The result is that they pay no attention to public opinion, which they consider deceived and misinformed. This is a most seri- ous matter. The essence of democ- racy is free choice by informed voters. When we lose confidence in our ability to get the truth, the next step is to lose confidence in democracy. The right of freedom of speech must be safeguarded by the duty of telling the complete truth, undistorted and undiluted. There is another important ex- ample of injustice in the matter of truth. We find this in the portray- al of our war aims. Some publicists feel it their duty to hold that each of the United Nations is a great and pure democracy, fighting only for the four freedoms. But we know that this is not of necessity true. Most of us entered the war because we were attacked by that evil beast which we call the Axis. We saw Europe and Asia overrun by looting soldiers, thirsty for world conquest. Then the day came when our interests were attacked, and we fought. This is the pri- mary reason why the United States, the Soviet Union, and many other states are in the war. Over and above this we may accept the ideals of the Atlantic Charter. We may propose a treaty of peace which would embody great prin- ciples of wisdom and justice. We hope and trust that this will be the case. But first we must realize that the evil we are fighting against is an all sufficient justification of our war, independently of the good we are fighting for. If this is under- stood, then we will not face the disillusionment and cynicism which poisoned our minds after the last War. We hope for a world of the four freedoms; we shall strive to accomplish this; but we shall not feel that the struggle has been vain if we fail to attain the full ideal of world justice. So long as the world is better without the Axis than it was when tyranny was in flower, we shall have succeeded. We hope to do much more; but should we fail, we shall still believe that our cause was just. Justice, then, demands a passion- ate devotion to truth as well as a willingness to share a common burden. It means absolute in- tegrity in public life as well as in private. Honesty and principle, regardless of consequences, must be the rule. Such has been the tradi- tional spirit of America. It is the real source of our greatness. It is vital that we preserve this heri- tage in a world which so badly needs the example of great living. THE CATHOLIC HOUR 1930—Thirteenth Year—1943 The nationwide Catholic Hour was inaugurated on Marchr 2, 1930, by the National Council of Cath-olic Men in cooperation with the National Broad-casting Company and its associated stations. Radio facilities are provided gratuitously by NBC and the stations associated with it; the program is arranged and produced by NCCM. The Catholic Hour was begun on a network of 22 stations, and now carries its message of Catho-lic truth on each Sunday of the year (and Good Friday) through a number of stations varying from 90 to 107, situated in 40 states, the District of Colum-bia, and Hawaii. Consisting of an address mainly expository, by one or another of America's leading Catholic preachers, and of sacred music provided usually by a unit of the Paulist Choir, the Catholic Hour has distinguished itself as one of the most pop-ular and extensive religious broadcasts in the world. A current average of 41,000 audience letters a month, about twenty per cent of which come from listeners of other faiths, gives some indication of its popular-ity and influence. Our Sunday Visitor Press Huntington, Indiana