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By James Buchok WINNIPEG (CCN)
There are stubborn myths surrounding social justice, says a Venezuelan professor, lawyer and Jesuit priest who has taught ethics and human rights and lived and worked among the poor in a Caracas slum.
Speaking at Winnipeg's St. Ignatius Church Adult Education Centre Feb.1, Rev. Eduardo Soto Parra said the untruths must be eliminated "in order to reach an understanding of social justice, and its applicability to our task as followers of Jesus Christ, in his holy church, as human beings who want to share this world as a gift from God, fairly with others."
Soto Parra said the first myth of social justice is that people get what they deserve. "That has been strongly attached to the notion of justice throughout the years," he said. "It is a myth to say someone deserves to be poor because they are lazy, or they are addicts, or they are refugees."
He said the myth of the impartiality of the law "is an assumption that hides the inequality and injustice suffered by Aboriginal people and women. The fact is, there is one culture that dominates another," Soto Parra said, be it a white culture, or a male culture.
Soto Parra said that to say the rule of a democratic majority is responsible for justice "is like saying 'the state is responsible for everything, I'm not responsible for anything.' The state's responsibility is a myth that blinds a man from an accurate concept of what social justice is."
Soto Parra has taught ethics and human rights at the Institiuto Universitario Jesus Obrero in Caracas, Venezuela and, from 2005-2011, was a professor in philosophy and law at the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello in Caracas. He lived in a Caracas slum where he was involved in public school education and also worked as a lawyer with Jesuit Refugee Service International in Brazil, Panama, and Venezuela.
Soto Parra currently lives with parolees from Stony Mountain Penitentiary at Quixote House in downtown Winnipeg, created by the Winnipeg Jesuit community as a safe place that provides men leaving prison a chance to live in a supportive environment as they look for new opportunities.
"Social justice pleads for a humanity that could make progress in the respect for the environmental resources for future generations, " Soto Parra said. "But even though there is increasing sensibility around the harm that industrialization has done to nature, the people and communities most affected by pollution don't play a significant role in the decision-making process."
Soto Parra described social justice as "a personal attitude characterized by a moral righteousness which invites us to a greater struggle beginning with ourselves. This demands that we fight against ideologies which have driven social injustice not only abroad but very close to us in ways that are both subtle and blatant."
Soto Parra told a story of his first day of ministry in a hospital in Venezuela. He said he thought he knew hospitals, being the son of two pediatricians who worked in clean, organized, happy nurseries. He discovered the hospital he was to work in was ill-equipped, dirty and smelly. He wanted to run.
"And then I thought, 'Am I thinking of them or am I thinking of me?' I said to myself, 'I can help them today and I won't think about tomorrow.' And that is the greatest struggle of social justice, it is with ourselves." Soto Parra said. "The lesser struggle is with those who inflict social injustice."
Soto Parra said all Catholics and Christians must maintain a link to the issues of justice, "and all of us must question our role in social justice."
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