Economic Justice in Social Catholicism: The Difficult Application of Natural Law

The evolution of the idea of economic justice is presented here to introduce the study of the con- cept of ‘social justice’ developed by social Catholicism. The latter was introduced and developed in the middle of the nineteenth century by Jesuits within the framework of Neo-Thomistic philo- sophical thought. The term social Justice was applied to the economic problems of the time and in particular to the ‘social question’, but the concept remained controversial and led to a long debate among the adherents of social Catholicism. We will highlight the connection between the philoso- phy of law and economics in Neo-Thomistic social economics and the debate that developed around this concept. We conclude by discussing the implications that this view of rights and the law has on economic theorising.