In The Filipino Search for Meaning (1974), Fr. Vitaliano Gorospe, S.J., poses this fundamental point of inquiry: "How many Filipinos are really free to take into their own hands their own development and destiny and achieve by their own efforts the full human life to which they aspire?" (p.427) This question above is crucial in the issue of social justice. The ideal of social justice, as a matter of principle, is "based on the dignity of the human person", and incontrovertibly, includes "the relationship of the person to the material world and to the socio-economic structures of society." (p.438)
