The Sun of Justice; An Essay on the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church
London: Heath Cranton Limited, 1938. First edition. Original brick red cloth (7 1/2 inches tall), spine and front board stamped in black. Mild toning to boards, slight bumping to upper corners, tanning to half title and last page. A near-fine copy. Item #1855
"IT IS CLEAR THAT THE PERSON, AS PERSON, HAS NO SUPERIOR BUT GOD. HE IS NOT FOR THE BENEFIT OF INSTITUTIONS OR STATES"
Scarce first edition of The Sun of Justice—the first book by Harold Robbins—a fine introduction to "the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church" and a persuasive expression of Distributism. A nice example of a humble-looking book.
A Birmingham convert from Protestantism and Socialism, Robbins was a writer for G.K.'s Weekly and a contributor to the Flee to the Land: the Catholic Land Movement (1934). Robbins was guided by his Distributive contemporaries, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Papal Encyclicals. "No one who is familiar with the blistering phrases of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI can suppose that they are at all pleased that millionaires exist."
With the author's dedication—"To the Mary and Martha of My Life"—and a short Foreword, which concludes of Charity, "the greatest of Christian virtues...there can be no Charity until Justice has been granted or achieved." In his view, "the Catholic system begins and ends with the person." Robbins describes the "abominable veiling" of the person with a new emphasis on "mere individuality," a concept from which "most of our modern oppressions have arisen." Later, Dorothy Day would declare, in the pages of The Catholic Worker, that The Sun of Justice "contains the best thinking ever done on Distributism." With a brief Bibliography ("confined to works which are either indispensible or readily accessible") and a short Index. See distributist.blogspot.com/2008/10/harold-robbins.html, and distributistreview.com/archive/last-of-the-realists.
Price: $150.00