Editor:Last week’s letter to the editor by a Loyola alumnus, which criticized a student column that described Loyola as a “social justice-oriented” university, was grossly unfair and ignorant. Setting aside the letter’s obnoxious and condescending tone, I want to respond to its caricatured understanding of the term “social justice” as “vague, nebulous, [and] trendy.” Pope Pius XI first used the term “social justice” within the annals of modern Church social teaching in his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. This term has appeared regularly in authoritative Church documents [e.g., Vatican II’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” and the Catechism of the Catholic Church #2426]. The concern for “social justice” expresses the conviction that dehumanizing conditions can be caused or aggravated by institutionalized structures of injustice [e.g., racist laws or unjust economic policies] that ought to be changed. The task of reforming these structures requires ethical reflection, rigorous social analyses and prophetic witness. Jesuit-sponsored institutions such as Loyola University have striven to incorporate concern for social justice in their various extra-curricular and curricular programs. No doubt more could be done. I am heartened that Olivia Ledee and Myria Holman have expressed this concern in the pages of The Maroon.

Peter J. Bernardi, S.J.Associate Professor of Religious Studies