Thinking Anew: Justice is a moral concept

The saying “justice delayed is justice denied” has been attributed to the 19th-century British prime minister William Gladstone but the idea has been around for much longer. Magna Carta, for example, of 1215 states: “To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.” And justice is a recurring theme in the scriptures as in Isaiah 1:17 – “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow” – quite a contrast to what we hear in tomorrow’s gospel where a judge shows little concern for a widow in distress. She has a hard time being heard and is turned down again and again until the judge finally relents albeit for the wrong reason: “For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.`”

Justice is a moral concept and when the concerns of desperate people are not addressed, others can speak up for them, as Marlon Brando did for Native Americans in March 1973, when he declined an Oscar for his starring role in The Godfather. He asked the actress Sacheen Littlefeather to attend in his place which she did, wearing a buckskin dress and moccasins. She explained her presence: “My name is Sacheen Littlefeather. I’m Apache … I’m representing Marlon Brando this evening and he has asked me to tell you . . . that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reason for this being the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry and on television . . . I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening and that we will in the future, our hearts and our understandings, meet with love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of Marlon Brando”. Some members of the audience clapped while others booed and, it is reported, an enraged John Wayne had to be restrained from physically assaulting her. She was quickly blacklisted by the film industry, her career over because she sought justice for her people.

Almost 50 years later, in August of this year, the Academy revealed that its former president, David Rubin, had apologised to her: “The abuse you endured . . . was unwarranted and unjustified,” he wrote. “The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration.” An apology, however, is not a substitute for justice; it is an admission of guilt. For Sacheen Littlefeather and her people the justice train had long since left the station.

As she was receiving her apology, Pope Francis was in Canada apologising for wrongs done to native Canadians when children were taken from their families and placed in church run institutions to be “educated”, which meant destroying the culture and tradition that defined who they were. Other churches did the same – all acting in the mistaken belief that the white man’s understanding of the gospel and what it means to be civilised should be imposed on everyone else. Too many people still think like that.

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To impose images of ourselves on others, which is what happened not only to those children in Canada but to people all over the globe, is, in the opinion of Archbishop Anthony Bloom, a denial of justice: “To acknowledge another man’s right to be himself, not to resemble me, is the fundamental act of justice, which alone will make it possible for us to look at a man without trying to see and recognise ourselves in him, but to recognise and beyond yet within him, to discern the image of the Lord.”