One of the basic principles of a free society, such as we would like to claim for our own society, is that all citizens are equal before the law, that one’s race or gender, religious and cultural identification, one’s wealth or poverty should not determine one’s status before the law.  In this justice is blind, so well depicted by the statue of Lady Justice, blindfolded and holding in her hand a balance, symbol of justice.  And well it should be so. 

      St. James, in today’s second reading, gives a warning to Christians that they too observe something of this “blindness” in dealing with people of a different status of wealth:  that the rich should not be treated with more honor or respect than the poor.  To treat people differently in the Christian community according to their outward appearance of wealth or poverty, St. James warns, is to have made “distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil designs.”  St. Paul too, in admonishing the fractious Christians in first century Galatia, calls for this kind of “blindness”:  “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). 

      Yet in other places of his writings, St. Paul seems to be saying the opposite, making large distinctions among the faithful.  To the Corinthians, for instance, he explained,  
 

And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various kinds of tongues.  Are all apostles? Are all prophets?  Are all teachers?  Do all work miracles?  Do all possess gifts of healing?  Do all speak with tongues?  Do all interpret?  But earnestly desire the higher gifts (1 Cor. 12:27-31). 
 

Indeed, St. Paul often points out many a distinction within the Church – between women and men, the strong in faith and the weak, distinctions in the roles of marriage and between certain “higher” and “lower” vocations, between higher and lower gifts, and so on. 

      The apparent contradiction is resolved by the use of an analogy of the human body:  that different members of the body perform different functions or roles for the sake of the good of the whole.   
 

For the body does not consist of one member but of many.  If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.  And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing?  If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?  But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose… that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.  If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.  Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it (1 Cor. 12). 
 

      In other words, there are distinctions made from “evil designs,” as St. James mentions, and there are distinctions made for the sake of the good of the whole.  In the first instance, St. James points out that partiality is being shown:  a rich man is being treated more honorably simply because he is wealthy, and a poor man is being treated shabbily because he is poor.  This is wrong, and it will do nothing but create fractions within the body.  It is unchristian.  The truly Christian way is to acknowledge the “natural” distinctions that are part and parcel of reality as well as the distinctions in the body, the Church, due to the sovereign decision of God to equip the faithful community with different gifts and roles for the sake of the good of the whole.

      Thus, St. Paul, throughout his letters to the Christian churches and their apostolic authorities, constantly admonishes the wealthy to come to the aid of the poor, the strong in faith to be of service to the weak in order to strengthen them, wives to respect their husbands and husbands to love their wives, those in spiritual authority to exercise that authority with gentleness and humility – always so as to build up the body.  Though the Church does not make the inane mistake, so tempting in a democratic society, of reducing “equality” to sameness, she does call for what St. Paul expresses as “a certain equality”:  a kind of dynamic that is centered on the common good.

      And this, not surprisingly, is the basis for the Church’s teaching on the common good in civil society:  distinctions – even between the wealthy and the poor – will remain unavoidably, but they should not be the basis of people being treated differently as to their worth (each human person being endowed by God with infinite worth).  On the contrary, extremes of wealth and poverty should be avoided, not by recourse to socialism, but to an inculcated attachment to the good of one’s neighbor, so that there will be, as St. Paul expressed it for the Church, “a certain equality.”  As in the community of the Church, the wealthy, by the very fact of their wealth, are obliged to help the poor; those gifted as civil leaders, by the fact of their gift, are obliged to lead and govern for the good of the whole.  Eschewing both communism and unbridled capitalism, the Church sees human society after the manner of the analogy of the body and of the family:  where a sense of communal happiness and fulfillment are achieved by an avoidance of selfishness and a dedication to the good of all.  In this sense especially is the appropriateness of one of the traditional titles of the Catholic Church, “the mistress and teacher of the nations.”  In her own communal, “bodily” life, she is to be an example set for civil society:  to recognize different gifts and abilities, to acknowledge distinctions of nature, but to order them all toward the good of all, for the sake, then too, of the happiness of each.