No, not at all. Of course, a lot depends on how you define your terms but CST draws upon classical sources like Aristotle as well as patristic and medieval sources such as Augustine and Aquinas for the idea of the common good. These far predate the advent of modern socialism. What CST reflects, as I have mentioned previously, is a communitarian outlook which highlights the claims that arise out of social life. It is a way of thinking as old as the prophets when they called upon Israel to care for the “widow, orphan and alien” or Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan in which the neighbor is a category broader than most of us would define it.

In the culture of a nation like the United States, where individualism is the ruling presumption, any rival perspective which upholds personal duties and obligations that accrue from the experience of shared life defies the conventional wisdom. As such it can be branded as socialism. Doing so may permit some to dismiss CST as being part of a failed social philosophy like the discredited approaches of twentieth century communism. That is why it is important to be clear about what we mean.

Solidarity is a term that defies neat definition in CST. The Catechism of the Catholic Church likens it to “social charity” (#1939). It is a modern term that can make older claims about an organic society and natural sociality understandable to a contemporary audience. Solidarity is more than what is commonly meant by the word interdependence. The fact that we are linked to one another in a variety of ways is interdependence. But individuals may acknowledge this fact while being resentful or indifferent toward it, even as they take advantage of the others with whom they are interconnected. Interdependence does not rule out domination or exploitation.

Solidarity, on the other hand, moves interdependence to another level, beyond acknowledging the fact of interdependence. Solidarity shapes the response we should have to interdependence, evoking within us a desire to build the bonds of common life. As a virtue, solidarity, in the words of John Paul II, is not a feeling of vague compassion but a “firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, #38). Solidarity shapes the character of a person so that mere recognition of interdependence is transformed into a commitment to the common good. It is solidarity that enables people to devote themselves “to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all” (Ibid.).

Reading the Bible can be like a visit to a foreign land for it offers a very different outlook than the conventional thinking of many of us. Whereas we tend to favor impartiality when determining justice the Bible provides evidence of God’s bias toward the weak and poor. While we often resort to considerations of merit when discussing justice, the God of the Bible looks more at need. There is a strong tradition of property rights in the United States., but the Bible records the ancient ideal of jubilee where land is redistributed. When Americans consider justice it is frequently procedural, that is, we set up fair and impartial rules and whatever emerges as the end result is judged as just. In the scriptures justice is more an end-state; it is the establishment of shalom, a community of peace where right relationships are restored.

This is not to argue that the culture of this nation is antibiblical or somehow fundamentally at odds with the Christian vision. I simply wish to point out there is a difference in perspective between how justice is frequently portrayed in the Bible and how many in U.S. society think about justice. The traditions can be mutually enriching for American Catholics. CST, to the extent that it draws upon the biblical tradition, will speak with a voice that challenges what frequently are the conventionally accepted premises of our culture.

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CST relies upon a traditional three-fold distinction of legal, distributive and commutative justice. Legal justice pertains to the common good and covers those aspects of determining what an individual’s responsibility is to the community, be that society or the state. So the obligation to obey laws which serve the common good arises from legal justice. Or the obligation to contribute one’s fair share of time, talent and/or money to the common good is due to legal justice. Recently, some have used the expression contributive justice rather than legal justice. The reverse side of legal justice is distributive justice, which addresses the relationship of the community’s responsibility to the individual. How are we to apportion the benefits and the burdens that exist in the community? Distributive justice is the aspect of the virtue which rules these decisions. Various approaches to distribution exist, but generally speaking, CST gives prominence to the category of need as the first for assessing fair distribution and one’s ability or resources when assessing burdens. So only after the basic needs of all are taken care of should other factors be permitted to influence distribution of goods, and with regard to burdens those who have more are expected to bear more.

Commutative justice is that realm of justice which governs the relationships of individuals to one another. We should remember, however, that a modern corporation is frequently understood as a moral person. Thus, the relationship of an employee to a business may be directed by norms of commutative justice. So fair dealing between employer and employee, between consumer and vendor, between borrower and lender is the sort of relationship which fall under the rubric of commutative justice.

Although the term "social justice" was given passing reference in some Vatican documents before Pius XI, it was that pope who made it a common term in CST. Subsequent popes have frequently appealed to social justice. While exact precision in the way the term is used in CST is not to be found, one theologian has suggested we think of it as a "political virtue," having to do with the "creation of patterns of societal organization and activity" whereby human rights are respected and participation in social life is guaranteed for each person (David Hollenbach, "Modern Catholic Teachings Concerning Justice" in Justice, Peeace, and Human Rights, pp. 16-33). This corresponds with the revised Catechism that sees social justice as governing "the conditions that allow associations or individuals to obtain what is their due" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1928).

Social justice is necessary if we are to have communities where commutative, distributive and legal justice flourish. To assess a topic through the lens of commutative justice requires that we acknowledge also the setting in which the moral actors are situated. For example, the late Monsignor John Cronin, an advisor to the American bishops on economic matters, described a controversy in the late 1950s when he argued that according to commutative justice payment of a living wage was a requirement of all employers. If correct, this argument placed a huge burden on some employers in industries where profit margins were slim or in business sectors that were in recession. Cronin records how he was challenged to rethink his position once he understood the requirement of a living wage fell under the principle of social justice, not commutative justice. (John Cronin, "Forty Years Later: Reflections and Reminiscences" in a collection of essays on CST edited by C. Curran and R. McCormick, Readings in Moral Theology: Official Catholic Social Teaching).

Thus, it was not the individual employer acting in isolation who had to pay a living wage. Rather, it was a duty of society to reorganize economic life so that payment of a living wage was possible by responsible employers and social assistance would be available to supplement the income of those workers who could not earn such a wage due to inadequate productivity or economic hard times. Similar sorts of examples about the misreading of obligations could be given about legal justice (requiring an unemployed person to contribute monetarily to the common good) or distributive justice (treating the duty of feeding the hungry as if it fell to an individual acting alone). Without consideration of social justice the burdens placed on individuals or groups to act justly become unwieldy and unrealistic. Social justice is an essential dimension to the moral life since it makes other forms of justice feasible as norms to obey.

Original sin presumes no act of the will on our part; we inherit it. But actual sin is different. Remember one of the traditional conditions for mortal sin, a species of actual sin, is that it requires full consent of the will to an evil. So the tradition has used “sin” to name evil that is both voluntary and involuntary. How can we do that? By using modifiers like “original” or “actual” with the word sin to show we are talking about sin in different ways. We are talking about the mystery of evil in both cases but original sin and actual sin are quite different experiences of evil.

What this indicates is that within the Catholic tradition the mystery of evil is understood as so profound that we must use a variety of terms to describe it adequately. So all talk of sin employs analogy. An analogy describes what is similar amidst difference: love is blind, war is hell, the car is a lemon. These are all examples of analogy.

We use the same word “sin” to describe similar but different realities. Original sin, actual sin, sinful deeds, sinful temptations or attitudes, mortal sin, venial sin, social sin, sinful structures -- all these and other expressions are trying to name something similar, the mystery of evil. But the term sin alone lacks a certain precision if it can be used to describe all these aspects of evil. So we use the modifier social to signify sin in a particular sense, as it is found in the culturally produced practices and institutions of social life.