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Volume 8, Number 2 June 2019 Virtues, Politics, And

VOLUME 8, NUMBER 2 JUNE 2019

VIRTUES, POLITICS, AND ECONOMICS

Journal of Moral Theology is published semiannually, with regular issues in January and June. Our mission is to publish scholarly articles in the field of , as well as theological treat- ments of related topics in philosophy, economics, political philosophy, and psychology.

Articles published in the Journal of Moral Theology undergo at least two double blind peer reviews. Authors are asked to submit articles electronically to [email protected]. Submissions should be prepared for blind review. Microsoft Word format preferred. The editors as- sume that submissions are not being simultaneously considered for publication in another venue.

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EDITOR EMERITUS AND UNIVERSITY LIAISON David M. McCarthy, Mount St. Mary’s University

EDITOR Jason King, Saint Vincent College

SENIOR EDITOR William J. Collinge, Mount St. Mary’s University

ASSOCIATE EDITOR M. Therese Lysaught, Loyola University Chicago

MANAGING EDITOR Kathy Criasia, Mount St. Mary’s University

BOOK REVIEW EDITORS Kent Lasnoski, Quincy University Christopher McMahon, Saint Vincent College

EDITORIAL BOARD Jana M. Bennett, University of Dayton Mara Brecht, St. Norbert College Jim Caccamo, St. Joseph’s University Meghan Clark, St. John’s University David Cloutier, The Catholic University of America Christopher Denny, St. John’s University Matthew J. Gaudet, Santa Clara University Mari Rapela Heidt, Notre Dame of Maryland University Kelly Johnson, University of Dayton Andrew Kim, Marquette University Warren Kinghorn, John Love, Mount St. Mary’s Seminary Ramon Luzarraga, Benedictine University, Mesa William C. Mattison III, University of Notre Dame Christopher McMahon, Saint Vincent College Mary M. Doyle Roche, College of the Holy Cross Joel Shuman, Kings College Matthew Shadle, Marymount University Christopher P. Vogt, St. John’s University Brian Volck, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine Paul Wadell, St. Norbert College Greg Zuschlag, Oblate School of Theology

J O U R N A L O F M O R A L T HEOLOGY V O L U M E 8, N UMBER 2 J UNE 2019

C ONTENTS

Aquinas, Custom, and the Coexistence of Infused and Acquired Cardinal William C. Mattison III...... 1 Elevated ? Angela Knobel...... 25 Moral Virtues, , and Grace: Why the Infused and Acquired Virtues Cannot Co-Exist Jean Porter...... 40 , Love and Thomistic Moral Precepts Daniel R. DiLeo ...... 67 Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and Modern Economic Tradition Andrew Beauchamp and Jason A. Heron ...... 91 Local Authoritarianism as a Barrier to Democracy Cristina L.H. Traina ...... 113 Rectifying Political Leadership Through a Just Peace Ethic Eli McCarthy and Leo Lushombo ...... 122 Book Reviews Sarah Bachelard, Resurrection and Moral Imagination ...... Kyle Washut 140 Sherri Brown and Christopher W. Skinner, eds., Johannine Ethics: The Moral World of the Gospel and of John ...... Jeffrey L. Morrow 141 T. Ryan Byerly, Putting Others First: The Christian Ideal of Others- Centeredness ...... Marcus Mescher 143 William T. Cavanaugh, ed., Fragile World: Ecology and the Church ...... Lucas Briola 145 Gary L. Chamberlain, Because Water Is Life: Catholic Social Teach- ing Confronts Earth’s Water Crises ...... Dawn M. Nothwehr, OSF 147 Daniel R. DiLeo, ed., All Creation Is Connected: Voices in Response to Pope Francis’s Encyclical on Ecology ...... Kathryn Lilla Cox 148

Jonathan Homrighausen, Illuminating : The Ethical Imagina- tion of The Saint John’s Bible ...... Catherine Petrany 150 Steven J. Jensen, Sin: A Thomistic Psychology ...... Michael P. Krom 152 Micah D. Kiel, Apocalyptic Ecology: The Book of Revelation, the Earth, and the Future ...... Benjamin J. Hohman 153 Matthew Levering, Dying and the Virtues ...... John Sikorski 155 Alexander Lucie-Smith, Narrative Theology and Moral Theology ...... Alessandro Rovati 156 Gerald McKenny, Biotechnology, Human , and ...... Gemma Baker 158 Steven P. Millies, Good Intentions: A History of Catholic Voters’ Road from Roe to Trump ...... Charles Camosy 160 Anselm K. Min, ed., , , Love, and Justice: The Today ...... Paul J. Wadell 162 Mark C. Murphy, God’s Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the Argument from Evil ...... William J. Abraham 163 D. Preman Niles, Is God Christian? Christian Identity in Public Theology: An Asian Contribution ...... Julius-Kei Kato 165 Thomas Petri, Aquinas and the Theology of the Body: The Thomistic Foundations of John Paul II’s Anthropology ...... Fr. Marek J. Duran 166 Steven C. van den Heuvel and Patrick Nullens, eds., Driven by Hope: Economics and Theology in Dialogue...... Mari Rapela Heidt 168 Contributors ...... 170

Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2019): 1-24

Aquinas, Custom, and the Coexistence of Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues

William C. Mattison III

HE LAST DECADE HAS SEEN A STRIKING amount of scholar- ship devoted to the question of the relationship between the infused and acquired virtues, with a focus on the thought of T St. Thomas. More specifically, there is lively debate over whether or not those in a state of grace who possess the infused virtues can possess also the acquired virtues.1 Indeed, it may be the case that there has never been more sustained and in-depth scholarly attention to this issue, evident also in this volume of the Journal of Moral The- ology.2 This scholarship is replete with practical examples, which not only function as rhetorically effective, but also demonstrate the eve- ryday relevance of this rather technical debate. My purpose in this es- say is to contribute to that debate by calling into question a common assumption concerning one such practical example. In the example of a person with the infused virtues who loses them, it is assumed that any consistent good actions that persist after the loss of infused virtue

1 For an article that takes on this question directly and surveys prior scholarship ad- dressing it, see William C. Mattison III “Can Possess the Acquired Vir- tues?” Theological Studies 72 (2011): 558-585. For scholarship in the past decade addressing this question directly, see Angela Knobel, “Can Aquinas’s Infused and Acquired Virtues Coexist in the Christian Life?” Studies in Christian Ethics 23 (2010): 381-96, “Two Theories of Christian Virtue,” American Catholic Philosophi- cal Quarterly 84 (2010): 599-618, and “Relating Aquinas’ Acquired and Infused Vir- tues: Some Problematic Texts,” Nova et Vetera 9, no. 2 (2011): 411-431; David Deco- simo, “More to Love: Ends, Ordering, and the Compatibility of Acquired and Infused Virtues,” in The Virtuous Life: on the Theological Nature of Moral Virtues, ed. Harm Goris and Henk Schoot (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 47-72 and Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue (Palo Alto: Stanford Uni- versity Press, 2014), 190-197; Andrew Pinsent, “Who’s Afraid of the Infused Virtues? Dispositional Infusion, Human and Divine,” in The Virtuous Life: Thomas Aquinas on the Theological Nature of Moral Virtues, ed. Harm Goris and Henk Schoot (Leu- ven: Peeters, 2017), 73-96; and Nicholas Austin, S.J., Aquinas : A Causal Reading (Washington, D.C.: Press, 2017). 2 I support this claim in a forthcoming article on the ramifications of Thomas’s thought on dead faith for this debate. See William C. Mattison III, “Revisiting the Relationship Between the Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues: Lessons from Thomas Aquinas on Dead Faith,” Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics 16 (2019): 11-24. In this volume of the Journal of Moral Theology, I am obviously in conversation with the essays by Jean Porter and Angela Knobel. 2 William C. Mattison III are due to the possession of acquired virtue. I will question this as- sumption by offering a Thomistic account of “custom” as an alternate explanation for persistent good activity after the loss of infused virtue. My task here is to show why it may be the case that the person who loses infused virtue might not possess acquired virtue even while con- sistently performing acts that seem good from an observer’s perspec- tive. At question is the source of the stability of the disposition to such good acts. While I have no stake in denying it is ever possible for one who loses infused virtue to attain acquired virtue after having commit- ted mortal sin (though I admit I find it hard to imagine this happening, at least initially), what I do propose here is that there is another possi- ble explanation for the consistent good acts of one who loses infused virtue. That source is what Thomas calls consuetudo, or custom. Thomas frequently discusses custom (as well as natural temperament) as a possible source of stable activity akin to a habit, yet importantly lacking certain features of a habit. Therefore, this paper is actually less about the relationship between acquired and infused virtues directly, although its conclusions relate to that debate. It is rather an inquiry into the ways that those human capacities amenable to habituation may be variously stably disposed toward activity. It turns out that the two most important sources of stability for a human person’s natural or supernatural virtue, namely, or charity respectively, are not the only sources of stability. We are wrong to assume, simply on the basis of consistent observably good action, the presence of prudence in the absence of charity. In other words, in the case of one who has lost infused virtue, ongoing persistent good action need not be the re- sult of acquired virtue connected by prudence. There are other sources of stable activity, and consuetudo is one of them, one far too neglected in moral theology.3 In what follows I proceed in three sections. In Section One, I re- view the recent debate over the relationship between acquired and in- fused virtue in order to identify points of agreement and disagreement among participants and also to situate the case at hand. In Section Two, I offer an account of custom situated within Thomas’s distinc- tion between habits and dispositions. Thomas speaks of nature and custom as possible causes of stable dispositions, and such dispositions can be part of the development of habits properly so-called or exist as distinct from proper habits. I examine the relationship between habits

3 I want to recognize that my claim here that one who loses infused virtue might not subsequently possess connected acquired virtue is not an endorsement of the claim, evidenced recently in the work of Tom Osborne, that connected virtue is only possible in the context of infused virtue (see Thomas Osborne, Jr., “The of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory,” The Thomist 67 [2003]: 279-305). I do not think that is true. There presumably can be cases where there is connected acquired virtue in the absence of infused virtue, and yet there has not been the recent loss of infused virtue. This latter case with the recent loss of infused virtue is the one addressed here. Aquinas on Custom 3 and the dispositions Thomas calls customs to prepare for the final sec- tion. Section Three applies the analysis of Section Two to the case of the person who loses infused virtue and posits custom as an explana- tion for such a person’s stable good actions. It first examines how ac- customization is involved in the loss of acquired virtue, and second examines the dynamics particular to the loss of infused virtue. This article’s account of custom has broader ramifications for a compre- hensive Thomistic account of habit and even for a Thomistic account of education. Yet it also has clear ramifications for recent debate on the relationship between the acquired and infused cardinal virtues, and these are noted in the conclusion.

BACKGROUND ON THE CURRENT DEBATE4 It would help at the outset to offer a brief sketch of the abovemen- tioned recent debate on the possibility of acquired cardinal virtue in the Christian. All participants agree on the following. It is possible for people to possess virtues, variously called by St. Thomas “acquired,” “natural,” “political,” or “social” virtues, which enable one to act in a manner oriented toward and indeed constitutive of natural human flourishing as one’s last end.5 There are a host of such moral and in- tellectual virtues, but they are typified by the cardinal virtues, which for St. Thomas “cover” all natural virtue in a sense.6 Thus this debate is not about the possibility of pagan virtue; all in this debate affirm its possibility.7 All participants also agree that through God’s grace peo- ple are oriented toward supernatural happiness as last end, and God

4 This summary of recent debate draws on Mattison, “Revisiting the Relationship Be- tween the Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues,” 16-18. 5 For more on these four terms as functional equivalents, and Thomas’s various cate- gorizations of virtue more broadly, see William C. Mattison III, “Thomas’ Categori- zations of Virtue: Historical Background and Contemporary Significance,” The Tho- mist 74 (2010): 189-235. 6 Thomas often distinguishes, on the basis of object, the theological virtues from the “moral and intellectual” virtues. Thus, scholars commonly speak of the theological virtue vs. moral virtue distinction in Thomas, which is accurate. But since in Thomas’s work “moral” virtue is at times distinguished from theological virtue, and at other times distinguished from intellectual virtue (e.g., ST I-II q. 58), “cardinal” virtue is used here in reference to the moral virtues that are distinguished from the theological virtues. This terminological practice is not only adopted in certain contemporary scholarship (e.g., Michael Sherwin, “Infused Virtue and the Effects of Acquired Vice: A Test Case for the Thomistic Theory on the Infused Cardinal Virtues,” The Thomist 73 [2009]: 29-52), but also employed by Thomas himself at times (e.g., ST I-II, q. 61) due to his claim that the four cardinal virtues “cover,” in a sense, all moral virtues (ST I-II q. 61, a. 1 & 2). 7 For a helpful entry into the topic, which is also part of a thread of scholarly debate on “pagan virtue,” see Brian Shanley, “Aquinas on Pagan Virtue” The Thomist 63 (1999): 553-77. Shanley responds there to Bonnie Kent's “Moral Provincialism,” Re- ligious Studies 30 (1994): 269-85, which is itself a response to the work of Alasdair MacIntyre on virtue in Thomas and Augustine, especially his Whose Justice? Which 4 William C. Mattison III gives graced virtues to enable action oriented toward that end. Such virtues are infused. They include the theological virtues, which have God as their object (ST I-II q. 62, a. 1). They also include the infused cardinal virtues, which incline people to act well with regard to the material activities common to both acquired and infused cardinal vir- tues, but in the case of infused virtues in a manner specified by refer- ence to the supernatural end and the concomitant divine rule (ST I-II q. 63, a. 3 & 4). All agree on this account of virtue thus far. The question is whether or not a person, oriented toward supernat- ural happiness by God’s grace, and who therefore possesses the theo- logical and infused cardinal virtues, also possesses the acquired cardi- nal virtues. It is a yes or no question and thus there are two sides, though some recent work has helpfully identified significant differ- ences within at least one of the sides.8 These sides go by various names. On the one hand, there are a set of positions which claim that a Christian can indeed possess both acquired and infused cardinal vir- tues. This group of positions is coined “coexistence” (by Knobel) or “compatibilist” (by DeCosimo). I will use Knobel’s “coexistence” here. On the other side there is a set of positions that all claim that a person with the infused virtues cannot possess the acquired cardinal virtues. This group of positions is called the “transformational” by Knobel or “incompatibilist” by Decosimo. I will again use Knobel’s term, transformational. Some members of this camp claim that should a person’s natural capacities be qualified by acquired cardinal virtues but then receive the grace of God and its concomitant qualities called infused virtues, say, at conversion, then the specification of the natural powers by those qualities called virtues would be “transformed” or re- qualified toward the supernatural end.9 Those who hold the coexistence position commonly raise the fol- lowing concern. All in this debate agree that people who live lives

Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). Shanley in turn is responded to by Osborne, “The Augustinianism of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory.” Osborne is responded to by Angela McKay, “Prudence and Acquired Moral Virtue,” The Thomist 69 (2005): 535-55, to which Osborne replies again in “Perfect and Imperfect Virtues,'' The Thomist 71 (2007): 39-64. Knobel makes further contri- butions to the debate in both “Aquinas and the Pagan Virtues,” International Philo- sophical Quarterly 51, no. 3 (2011): 339-354, and “Ends and Virtues,” Journal of Moral Theology 3, no. 1 (2014): 105-117. For a recent monograph treatment of the question see DeCosimo’s Ethics as a Work of Charity. 8 For excellent treatments of the different ways that each position may be held, see Knobel, “Can the Infused and Acquired Virtues Coexist,” “Two Theories of Christian Virtue,” and especially “Relating Aquinas’ Acquired and Infused Virtues: Some Prob- lematic Texts.” The differences in these arguments on either side are quite significant. However, in the end the question at hand is indeed a yes or no question. 9 For an example of this, see Mattison, “Can Christians Possess the Acquired Vir- tues?” 560 and 584. Aquinas on Custom 5 ordered toward supernatural happiness with God can cease to live to- ward that end. In the Catholic tradition, this is called mortal sin. When this occurs, one no longer possesses the virtue of charity, which is friendship with God that orients all virtuous activity toward that su- pernatural end of friendship with God. One also ceases to possess in- fused cardinal virtues which are informed by charity. But presumably the person who had, say, infused by which she lived while in friendship with God, will not immediately become a glutton, or un- chaste. To this point all agree. The question then is how might we de- scribe how such a person exercises her natural abilities? Is she rightly said to possess the virtue of temperance? If so, it would of course be acquired temperance. Does that mean the acquired temperance was there all along, “underneath,” if you will, the infused temperance?10 This would be a claim in support of the coexistence position. Or would the loss of charity somehow engender the acquired temperance? This is one possible explanation of the case at hand that could be offered by proponents of the transformational position, since a person would possess either acquired or infused virtue but not both at the same time. Such an explanation is a seeming weakness of the transformational position, since it certainly would seem odd if a mortal sin were to cause the acquisition of a previously unpossessed virtue.11 In the case of the person who loses charity and the corresponding infused cardinal virtues, two assumptions are made. First, the person can quite possibly continue to perform consistent good actions, say, of temperance. Second, those consistent good actions indicate the exist- ence of an acquired virtue of temperance in that person. The first as- sumption is not questioned here, but the second one is. What if the person who loses the infused cardinal virtues does not possess ac- quired temperance, even as he consistently performs actions that are acts of temperance? The following section draws on the thought of Aquinas to delineate just such a source of consistent human activity, namely custom. I claim that a person may possess a disposition to con- sistent action, even quite stable such action, which is nonetheless not a habit properly understood, and therefore not a virtue. Thomas’s thought on custom offers just such an explanation.

10 Such a hypothesis could also be used to explain the inverse case of one with the infused virtues (including temperance) who nonetheless struggles with excessive de- sire for and consumption of food or drink. Should such a person grow more temperate, one explanation is that they obtain acquired temperance, alongside or “co-existing” with the already possessed infused temperance. For an example of an analysis of this very case, see Sherwin, “Infused Virtue and the Effects of Acquired Vice.” 11 For reasons that Thomas himself acknowledges in his treatment of dead faith, nei- ther of these alternatives are attractive. His most direct treatment of this issue can be found at ST II-II q. 4, a. 4. For treatment of this text see Mattison, “Revisiting the Relationship Between the Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues,” 21-25. 6 William C. Mattison III

DISPOSITIONS, HABITS, AND THE PLACE OF CUSTOM This section will have to prescind from a robust account of habit in Thomas’s thought, and provide only what is necessary to outline Thomas’s understanding of custom and its relationship to habits.12 Thomas claims that habits are qualities. That is, they are not human capacities themselves, but rather qualifications of those capacities to- ward specified types of action (See ST I-II q. 49, a. 1). Not all human capacities require habituation. Some capacities are ordered to only one specific type of activity (e.g., digestive powers). Others have the spec- ificity of their activity provided entirely externally (e.g., the exterior senses). Yet others, while activated by interaction “from the outside,” are underdetermined in how they are actualized.13 These capacities are perfected in their actualization by being further qualified, or specified, toward more particular types of actions. That qualification, a (more or less) stable specification of activity toward which the capacity is dis- posed, is not innately part of the natural capacity, but becomes a “sec- ond nature” feature (qualification) of the capacity. Though such a quality is not innate (hence “second” nature), it is so much a part of the human person that action—even when prompted by interaction with the external environment—is one’s own as caused by this internal principle. Such action is said to be “natural” (or “connatural”) to the person since one’s capacities have been specified toward such action (hence second “nature”). Habits are one type of such qualification of habituate-able human capacities. They are exemplary forms of quali- fication, since they are stable specifications of a person’s capacities, where that specification is provided by human reason.14 It is in the context of explaining how habits are qualities that Thomas distinguishes between habit and disposition. When the quali- fication or specification of a capacity is very stable (difficile mobile), the capacity can be said to be qualified by a habit rather than a mere disposition.15 Whence that stability? A power is stably habituated

12 For such an account of habit, see the first two chapters of my forthcoming (tenta- tively titled) Aquinas on Habit, the Last End, and Graced Virtue. David Decosimo offers a very illustrative treatment of habit in Ethics as a Work of Charity, 73-105. See a more recent treatment in Austin, Aquinas on Virtue, 27-34. 13 Thomas’s most complete treatment of this is found at “On the cardinal virtues” (De virtutibus cardinalibus), a. 1. See also ST I-II q. 49, a. 4. 14 How the infused virtues operate in a continuous yet different manner is addressed below. 15 There is also a sense in which disposition refers to any such qualification, whether stable or not. In this sense “disposition” is a genus term and includes “habits” which are more stable types of dispositions. But in the sense referenced here, habits are dis- tinct from dispositions. For both of these uses see ST I-II q. 49, a. 2, ad 3. There is extensive secondary scholarship on the relationship between dispositions and habits. For a helpful review of it, see Andrew Whitmore, Dispositions and Habits in the Work of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Ph.D. Dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 2018). David Decosimo’s work on this is also insightful and largely endorsed here, Aquinas on Custom 7 when the cause of its specification is immobile rather than transmuta- bile.16 For examples of habits with causae immobiles, Thomas ad- duces sciences and virtues. For examples of dispositions with causae transmutabiles, he adduces sickness and health. Scholars recognize that in this context the causa immobile of habits should be understood as the rational soul.17 Such habits may of course entail bodily changes and activities of the person that are shared in common with animals (i.e., the sensitive soul), but the causa immobile which grants stability is the rational soul.18 For acquired virtues that immobile (rather than transmutabile) cause is practical reason.19 Thomas therefore claims that human habits are paradigmatically caused by one’s rational powers providing the specification of the un- derdetermined capacity. If they lack specification by one’s rational powers, they lack something of the proper “notion” (ratio) of a habit.20 Yet Thomas also recognizes there can be other causes of “habits.” I use scare quotes because at times Thomas can be rather imprecise or non-technical in his use of that term. Despite having carefully distin- guished habits from dispositions by the causa immobile (one’s rational capacities) entailed in the former and not the latter, at times Thomas examines various causes of habits and includes causes that alone do not render habits properly understood.21 In his most complete list of see his Ethics as a Work of Charity, 75-97. Robert Miner also offers a penetrating treatment of habit and disposition in his “Aquinas on Habitus,” in A History of Habit, ed. Tom Sparrow and Adam Hutchinson (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013), 67-87, 68-71. 16 These terms are from ST I-II q. 49, q. 2, ad 3. They are left in the because they are commonly translated as “unchangeable” and “changeable,” which is mislead- ing, since even the causa immobile and certainly the habit caused by it are indeed changeable, even if such habits are more stable than dispositions caused by a causa transmutabile. 17 See Whitmore, Habits and Dispositions, 97-98. See also Decosimo, Ethics as a Work of Charity, 82-84, 87-94. 18 Thomas recognizes there are problems with equating stability with causa immobile. On the one hand, there can be dispositions caused by reason that are not (yet?) held stably, as with the beginner in virtue or science. These dispositions can be properly called such, rather than habits, since though they do have a causa immobile, they do not possess stability. Conversely, there can be dispositions without causae immobiles which nonetheless are relatively quite stable. They are still called dispositions because their causae transmutabiles render them only accidentally stable. For excellent treat- ments, see Whitmore, Habits and Dispositions, 96-97; Decosimo, Ethics as a Work of Charity, 89-90; and, Miner, “Aquinas on Habitus,” 69. 19 Of course, a habit need not be a virtue, as vices are also habits. So, what qualifies a disposition as a habit is not necessary the virtue prudence (right practical reasoning), but the specification of the acts of the power by practical reasoning. 20 See term ratio of a habit in ST I-II q. 50, a. 3 ad 2. Again, as noted below, the human rational powers can, in the case of the infused virtues, be elevated by grace. 21 The dynamic is similar to his usage of virtue. Despite having a very precise and technical understanding of virtue, at times he will describe various levels of “virtue” and include types that do not properly match the meaning of virtue, such as a natural 8 William C. Mattison III causes of “habits,” in the context of describing what can lead to virtue being greater in one person than another, Thomas includes four such causes: greater habituation (assuetudinem), a better natural disposition (dispositionem naturae), a more discerning judgment of reason, or a greater gift of grace (ST I-II q. 66, a. 1).22 Yet only the last two are causes of habits properly so called. In fact, the first two are adduced by Thomas as causes of “habits” that are not properly habits. For in- stance, in his treatment of the connectivity of the virtues, Thomas claims:

Moral virtue may be considered either as perfect or imperfect. An im- perfect moral virtue, temperance for instance, or fortitude, is nothing but an inclination in us to do some kind of good deed, whether such inclination be in us by nature [a natura] or by habituation [ex assue- tudine]. If we take the moral virtues in this way, they are not con- nected: since we find men who, by natural temperament [ex naturali complexione] or custom [ex aliqua consuetudine], are prompt in doing deeds of liberality, but not prompt in doing deeds of (ST I-II q. 65, a.1).

Therefore, like one’s natural temperament, custom can be a cause of (even a relatively stable) disposition to action that is stable enough to be akin to a habit, but not properly a habit.23 Before continuing to explore how a disposition from custom arises, it would help to pause to examine the meaning of custom. “Custom” is a tricky topic in general, and no less tricky in the thought of Aquinas. The Angelic Doctor himself recognizes two distinct meanings for cus- tom.24 One recent author translates the first meaning as “practice,” i.e.,

inclination to virtuous acts or even the miser’s frugality. See ST I-II q. 65, a. 1 and De virt. a. 2 for examples of Thomas using the term “virtue” for a natural inclination to virtue (mentioning custom in ST I-II q. 65, a. 1). See ST II-II q. 23, a. 7 for varying usage, initially calling the miser’s frugality virtue, but then saying it is actually coun- terfeit virtue. 22 The use of assuetudinem here rather than consuetudinem raises the question of how these two terms are related. As seen in the following longer quotation, they are com- monly used synonymously; in the context of this inquiry, that rough equation of the terms suffices. See ST I-II q. 65, a. 1 for their equation by Thomas. 23 It should be noted here in the context of the term “imperfect” that Thomas claims habits properly understood are necessary for a person’s perfection. See ST I-II q. 49, a. 4, as well as De virt. a. 1. Something is lacking if a human power amenable to habituation is “only” accustomed rather than habituated. I take Thomas’s claim on the “necessity” of habit to mean necessary for full rational operation, not as literally nec- essary in the sense of unable to be without, since he clearly affirms the possibility of “imperfect” virtues as in this text. I am grateful to Jean Porter for this point. 24 See ST I-II q. 58, a. 1 where he addresses custom in the context of the meaning of the Latin term mos (or the Greek term ethos). Aquinas on Custom 9 some sustained activity on the part of a person, quite commonly com- munally mediated, that presumably has intelligible purpose.25 Thomas’ own example in this text is the practice of circumcision as prescribed in the old law. The second meaning is a “natural or quasi natural inclination to do some action,” as can even be found in (non- human) animals. Thus, while the first sense describes persistent activ- ity that can lead to a disposition, the second describes a disposition in a person (or even animals). These two senses seem to correspond to contemporary usage. We speak of the customs of a people (such as Native American customs) or a person (his daily custom of visiting the coffee shop). We also speak of custom as a disposition held by a person, as when we say “he has a custom of doing...,” or, “she is ac- customed to ….” The point for our purposes is that Thomas uses the term custom to speak of a disposition to action in a person, though of course, such a disposition results from repeated activity. In fact, at times he uses language that is strikingly similar to his language of habit. On repeated occasions across his corpus Thomas claims that custom is “second nature.”26 As one contemporary scholar notes, “Both habitus and consuetudo are regularly described as a second na- ture that becomes virtually inalterable over time, and both can be used positively or negatively.”27 We may wonder what exactly is happening when a disposition is caused in a human person not by natural temperament but by repeated activity, and yet which is not a proper habit. In one key text, Thomas uses the example of animals to describe this dynamic. He claims that we can admit the existence of “habits” (really dispositions) in animals, citing Augustine’s reference to the process of accustoming in brutes.

By man’s reason, brutes are disposed by a sort of custom to do things in this or that way, so in this sense, to a certain extent, we can admit the existence of habits in dumb animals: wherefore Augustine says…“We find the most untamed beasts, deterred by fear of pain, from that wherein they took the keenest pleasure; and when this has

25 See A. Leo White, “Instinct and Custom,” The Thomist 66, no. 4 (2002): 577-605, at 601, n. 82. There is a ready connection here to Alasdair MacIntyre’s renowned concept of practice. Such a connection is the first of many nods in this chapter to the communal nature of habituation. 26 See de ver. 24,10, citing as a source. See also ST I-II q. 56, a. 5 on the subject of virtue. See also repeated affirmations of this in the articles on the causes of virtue, De virt. aa. 8-10. 27 See Katharine Breen, Imagining an English Reading Public 1150-1400 (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 46, on the use of habit in medieval period. Granting the stability of “second nature,” “virtually inalterable” is a little too strong for either habitus or consuetudo. 10 William C. Mattison III

become a custom in them, we say that they are tame and gentle” (ST I-II q. 50, a. 3, ad 2).28

It is interesting that Aquinas uses (in his own voice) the term “habit” for this dynamic when Augustine himself uses “custom.” Nonetheless, the fact that this is an example of an extended and non-precise use of “habit” is indicated in the very next line, where Thomas claims:

But the habit is incomplete, as to the use of the will, for they [animals] have not that power of using or of refraining, which seems to belong to the notion of habit [ad rationem habitus]: and therefore, properly speaking, there are no habits in animals (ST I-II, q. 50, a. 3 ad 2).

There are stable dispositions in animals caused by repeated activity, but such customs lack the use of rational capacities and therefore do not attain to the notion (ratio) of habit properly understood. We might rightly ask at this point if the dynamic described here with regard to animals is the same as can occur in human persons. In another key text on custom, Thomas claims it can indeed.29 Inquiring as to whether the human person’s sensory powers of apprehension can be habituated, Aquinas again uses the term “habit” initially broadly to say that there can be “habits” in such capacities. Here he deploys Ar- istotle, who also equates custom with “second nature”:

In the interior sensitive powers of apprehension, there are some habits. And this is made clear principally from what the Philosopher says (De memoria ii) that “in remembering one thing after another, what is at work is custom, which is a second nature.” Now a habit of custom [habitus consuetudinalis] is nothing other than a condition [habitudo] acquired by custom [per consuetudinem], which is like unto nature (ST I-II q. 56, a. 5).30

This may be surprising given that Thomas consistently concludes that the sensory powers of apprehension are not subjects of habits properly understood (ST I-II q. 50, a. 3 and q. 56, a. 5). And indeed, in the very

28 For more on this see White, “Instinct and Custom,” 601: “While insisting in the Summa Theologiae that brutes cannot, strictly speaking, acquire habits (because habit is a function of choice), he grants that reason can modify the dispositions found in animals inasmuch as human trainers can establish custom within them.” 29 As noted by White, “Instinct and Custom,” 600: “Custom is the component of hu- man experience that humans and brutes have in common.” 30 This translation draws on the English Dominicans translation as offered at dhspri- ory.org/thomas/summa/index.html. Yet there are some modifications, including im- portantly “condition” for habitudo. This latter Latin term is used surprisingly infre- quently in Thomas’s treatments of habit and virtue, suggesting it is not to be equated with habitus. Yet, the English Dominicans translate it as “habit” here, which defies both the context of this text, as well as the more common choice to translate it with the English “aptitude.” Aquinas on Custom 11 next line, Thomas qualifies this broad and imprecise use of “habits” by using Cicero to give a precise definition of virtue (and by extension habit):

Wherefore Tully says of virtue in his that “it is a habit like a second nature in accord with reason.” Yet, in man, that which he ac- quires by custom in his memory and other sensitive powers of appre- hension, is not a habit properly so called, but something annexed to the habits of the intellective faculty, as stated above (ST I-II q. 56, a. 5).31

This is perhaps the most direct distinction between custom and habit in Thomas’s work, in his own voice and buttressed by and Cicero.32 “Accustoming” leads to what seems like a habit since a hu- man capacity becomes stably specified, and thus second nature. How- ever, as Augustine had affirmed above and as Thomas affirms in dis- tinguishing dispositions from custom (and nature) from habits, in the absence of specification by reason, such dispositions from custom are not habits in the proper sense.33 In sum, custom may be understood as the repeated activity that leads to a stable disposition (though not proper habit) toward specific activity. Thomas uses “custom” to refer both to the repeated activity leading to the disposition (which might be called “accustomization”) and to the disposition itself, even at times calling custom “second na- ture.” It is possible for a person to possess a custom, a disposition from repeated activity, that is not a habit in the proper sense since the stable specification of the natural capacity’s activity is not provided by hu- man reason as causa immobile.

31 This translation also draws on the English Dominicans translation as offered at dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/index.html, yet it modifies that by changing the odd choice of “by use” for ex consuetudine to “by custom.” 32 It is puzzling why Bonnie Kent fails to see the reasoning behind this distinction in Aquinas. She says, “Thomas’ distinction between habit and custom seems rather strained—and, from the perspective of , hopelessly misguided.” See her “Habits and Virtues,” in Aquinas on Virtue, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 116-130, 120. 33 To make this point crystal clear, Thomas goes on in the lines that follow to reiterate that habits are not found in the sensory apprehensive powers, but they are preparations (preparatoriae) for virtues in the rational powers. See ST I-II q. 56, a. 5. For more on the way that the sensory apprehensive capacities “are in a certain sense” said to be habituated, but not properly so, see ST I-II q. 50, q. 3, ad 3. There he says “in the interior sensitive powers of apprehension are able to be posited certain habits [aliqui habitus], according to which man has facility of memory, thought [cogitativus], or imagination: wherefore also the Philosopher says…that ‘custom [consuetudo] con- duces much to a good memory….’” It is noteworthy, especially for treatments of the habituation of the passions, that Thomas notes the amenability of the interior senses, including the crucial cogitative power, to accustoming. 12 William C. Mattison III

Before turning to the following section, mention of how custom is distinguished from reason-specified habit invites a word or two on the place of “accustoming” in the formation of reason-specified habits. The question might be put this way. Since a disposition from custom and a habit specified by reason are distinguishable such that one could have custom without a habit, does a custom become a habit when one attains a habit properly understood? Or does one lose a custom once one attains a habit? Or does one develop a habit alongside or “on top of” the disposition from custom?34 This is where Thomas’s thought on formation in habit (hopefully virtue as good habit) can be deployed in service to a broader Thomistic theory of education, a task obviously beyond the scope of this essay. For an example of how the issue of the role of custom in the develop- ment of habit relates to that topic, consider the recent book Imagining an English Reading Public, 1150-1400, where English literature scholar Katharine Breen explores the topic of habit as it relates to for- mation and education in the Middle Ages. She has a clear grasp of the distinction between custom and habit, and the distinct yet ideally com- plementary role for each in the endeavor of education and formation. At one point she claims, “In this context, it is not unusual for writers to suggest that a good consuetudo is a kind of substrate from which a good habitus can develop.”35 She goes on to say with reference to Ar- istotle that “habits…build on the good consuetudines that are acquired in youth….”36 Indeed she explains how for one medieval thinker growth in virtue entails movement from natural disposition (for which she uses the term mores) to custom, to habit.37 She describes the (me- dieval and thus male) process of education in a manner that perfectly captures the role of custom:

Even though virtuous habitus are by definition rational, they do not derive directly from abstract principles. Instead they are developed by carefully encouraging young boys’ good mores until they establish

34 Though this may seem a nod toward the next section’s application of Thomas’ thought on custom to the debate over the relationship between acquired and infused virtues, it must be noted that the question addressed here is not about the relationship between different habits (such as acquired and infused virtues) in the same natural capacity toward acts with the same material object. Rather, the question addressed here concerns the relationship between dispositions whose specification is caused by the accustomization of the sensory powers on the one hand and habits properly under- stood as specified by reason on the other hand. 35 Breen, Imagining an English Reading Public, 48. The “context” she references in Aquinas’s thought, particularly ST I-II q. 56, a. 5. 36 Breen, Imagining an English Reading Public, 64-65, emphasis added. 37 At this particular point she relies on Engelbert of Admost (1250-1331), though Thomas’s references to both natural temperament and custom earlier in this section indicate this as relevant for his thought as well. Aquinas on Custom 13

good consuetudines. Later, once they are of age to exercise their ra- tional powers and systematically relate them to their actions, these customs will gradually become habitus. Though the good actions prompted by consuetudo may not be discernibly different from the virtuous actions of full-blown habitus, they reflect different internal states. The habitual action is virtuous because it combines the stability of second nature with the order of right reason.38

A full Thomistic account of formation in virtue and its pertinence for a broader account of education cannot be undertaken here. Hopefully Breen’s work indicates the importance of custom in developing habits, especially for children but surely also in adult persons who continue to gain or strengthen habits. What is directly relevant here in Breen’s work are her underdeveloped comments about the transition from cus- tom to habit. She uses phrases like custom being a “substrate from which” good habits develop, and later says customs gradually “be- come” habits. What more should be said here in service to the follow- ing section’s application of Thomas’s thought on custom to the case of one who loses infused virtue and yet persists in the performance of observably good acts? Two comments are offered here. First, it is essential to recall a point made early in this section, that habits are not substances in themselves, but rather qualifications of natural capacities. Therefore, what persists in the process of formation is the natural capacity, whose qualification, i.e. (more or less stable) specification, can change (e.g., from disposition to habit; from vice to virtue, etc.). Thomas makes this point, interestingly enough in his treatment of growth of infused virtue, in a style uncommon to him, namely, in the form of a warning not to make a mistake on this point:

Many make mistakes about forms by treating them as if they were substances. This seems to happen because forms are described by us- ing nouns, just as substances are, albeit abstract nouns, such as white- ness or virtue (De virt. a. 11).

Yet forms such as whiteness and virtue are not substances but rather qualities of substances. As he says later in that same article, “Charity and the other infused virtues…do not give their subject its being as a substance, as the substantial forms do.”39 He goes on to say:

38 Breen, Imagining an English Reading Public, 48. Though Breen is examining the role of custom in medieval thought on habit in general, she relies on Aquinas at this point in her argument (and for roughly half her chapter on the medievals), particularly ST I-II q. 56, a. 5. 39 Decosimo grasps this point well in Ethics as a Work of Charity, where he claims that the capacity qualified by the habit is not only raw material but already possesses “direction or inclination,” albeit “insufficiently determined” and thus requiring the further specification and especially stability of habit. He is correct to emphasize that 14 William C. Mattison III

Just as being belongs not to a form but to a subject by means of a form, so too the process of coming into being (which concludes with there being a form) does not belong to the form, but to the subject (De virt. a. 11).40

When we talk about habits such as virtues, we are actually talking about people’s natural capacities. The attainment of a disposition or habit is a qualification, a (more or less stable) specification, of a sub- ject’s capacity toward a certain sort of activity.41 Therefore, “a form is said to come into being not because it itself comes into being, but be- cause something comes to be it: namely when a subject is brought from capacity to actualization” (De virt. a. 11). Although it is not in- accurate to say that one gains a habit such as temperance, it is less misleading to say that one’s sensory appetites become temperate.42 What has any of this to do with the relationship between disposi- tions and habits in the process of formation in habit? Development of a habit is best understood not as gaining an additional substance, but rather having one’s capacities become stably specified through practi- cal reasoning. If those capacities are not (yet?) stably specified by a habit, it is the same capacities that are (in principle less stably) speci- fied by dispositions from nature and/or custom. Thus, Breen might have spoken more precisely had she said that one’s capacities quali- fied by custom become qualified by habit, rather than that a custom “becomes” a habit. This raises the second point about the ongoing relationship be- tween the formal specification provided by a disposition like custom (or nature) and the formal specification provided by reasoning. Do these forms each persist as distinct entities, operating in conjunction with each other? Put differently, does the sort of specification (of sen- sory powers) provided by custom persist in the sort of specification (of rational powers) provided by habit? Since we are talking about the

“habit does not cause appetitive power to desire food—that desire, instead, is what habit works upon, shapes, and perfects” (87). 40 See also Thomas’s more brief treatment of this in the Summa theologiae. When addressing increase in habits, he claims “This distinction is not to be understood as implying that the form has a being outside its matter or subject…” (ST I-II q. 52, a. 1). 41 Conversely, the loss of a virtue is a dis-qualification, or perhaps more likely re- qualification. 42 This point is actually important in discussions of the relationship between acquired and infused virtue. Proponents of coexistence rightly stress the need for continuity in the non-graced and graced virtuous life. But they mistakenly assume that acquired virtue provides such continuity, whereas it is the person’s (natural) capacity—quali- fied in one way by acquired virtue but a different way by infused virtue—that provides such continuity. Aquinas on Custom 15 relationship between the sensory powers (of apprehension and appe- tite) and the rational powers (of apprehension and appetite) in the hu- man person, we would benefit from consulting Thomas’s position on the so-called plurality of forms debate in the Middle Ages. An in-depth examination of the context of and various positions in this debate is well beyond the scope of this essay.43 The basic issue was how to ac- count for the fact that the human person has several different levels of capacities, which reflect the human person’s continuity with yet also distinction from other creatures. Medievals (influenced by Aristotle) referenced the various “souls” of the person, namely, nutritive (in common with plants), sensory (in common with animals), and rational (distinct to persons). The question at hand was how to describe the ongoing presence of all of these in a human person, yet in a unified manner. While some medievals affirmed a “plurality of forms” (i.e., souls) in the human person to explain activities on those various lev- els, Thomas endorsed a “unicity of form” position whereby the human person possess just one (rational) soul, which “contains” or we might say “includes” the activities of the “lower” forms. Thomas thought this position crucial, among other reasons, to maintain the unity of the hu- man person.44 What is the relevance of this position for the relationship between habit and custom? Thomas claims that habits properly understood re- quire the rational powers of the human person. His description of cus- toms, dispositions arising from repeated action as distinct from habit, indicates that the specification of such capacities occurs at the level of the sensory soul. Therefore, any Thomistic account of how custom and habit operate together, if you will, should be compatible with Thomas’s thought on the relationship between “souls” in the plurality of forms debate. Given that Thomas claims the human person’s sen- sory powers are not a separate soul from the rational soul, but are “con- tained” by or included in the person’s rational soul as source of unity, it is reasonable to assume that same understanding of the relationship between rational and sensory powers in a habit with both rational and

43 For a helpful introduction to this medieval debate, see Etienne Gilson, The of St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 194-195. For its relevance to virtue, see Bonnie Kent, Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century (Washington, DC: The Cath- olic University of America Press, 1995), 214-215. 44 For Thomas’s treatment of this issue see ST I q. 76, a. 3. There he claims: “Thus the intellectual soul contains virtually whatever belongs to the sensitive soul of brute animals, and to the nutritive souls of plants. Therefore, as a surface which is of a pentagonal shape is not tetragonal by one shape, and pentagonal by another—since a tetragonal shape would be superfluous as contained in the pentagonal—so neither is Socrates a man by one soul and animal by another; but by one and the same soul he is both animal and man.” In addition to the unity of the person, another reason Thomas endorses this position is the fact that activities of one “soul” can impede another. 16 William C. Mattison III sensory aspects. How does this relate to formation (or de-formation) in virtue? Breen uses the term “substrate” to describe the sensory aspects of capacity specification characterizing a custom disposition, namely, the connaturalization of the sensory powers to certain paradigmatic acts of the capacity at hand. The term is used to claim that such aspects persist in the presence of habit of that same capacity. I take “substrate” to indicate the persistence of such characteristic features of custom in a habit, even while such features of custom are not only distinguisha- ble from, but even possible without, the specification by reason char- acterizing a habit. I do not take “substrate” as a claim that these dis- tinguishable features are two separate dispositions even while existing together. Such a position would contradict Thomas’s more unified ac- count of the person and her various capacities as evident in his position on the unicity of forms.45 The distinction between dispositions caused by custom and habits caused by reason suffers great neglect in contemporary moral theolog- ical scholarship on virtue in Aquinas. A possible reason for that ne- glect is that when the formative processes of repeated activity are functioning well, they lead not only to “mere” custom but also to proper habits. In other words, repeated (generally communally medi- ated) activity leads one’s natural habituate-able capacities to be stably specified not only by the “customization” of one’s non-rational pow- ers such as the interior senses (memory, imagination, etc.) but also by the more stable specification provided by one’s practical reasoning. Though we can “get used to” (i.e., become accustomed to) activities in a manner that does not engage our rational abilities, normally the process of repeated activity will specify not only one’s sensory capac- ities but also one’s rational capacities. In the same way that one’s nat- ural temperament is not complete virtue (or vice) even as virtue properly understood “includes,” if you will, such innately provided sources of specification of a person’s natural capacities, so too is mere custom or accustoming not complete virtue (or vice) even as virtue properly understood entails the dynamics of accustomization. Since the social practices called customs commonly bring about dispositions called customs as part of the more complete process of formation of properly human habits, it is easy to neglect this distinct role for custom or the possibility of it existing before or without a proper habit.

45Not all of Breen’s comments on custom are endorsed here. Though at one point she claims custom can function positively or negatively, in general she reads medievals as regarding custom generally as negative (and habitus as positive.) See Breen, Imag- ining an English Reading Public, 49. She also has a rather classist understanding of custom (for the “untutored,” “ordinary” people) as distinct from habit (which “marks a spiritual elite”). See Imagining an English Reading Public, 47-48 and 65. For critical examination of Breen on other points, see, for example, Miner, “Aquinas on Habitus,” 80. Aquinas on Custom 17

These last two technical points concerning habit—namely, that habits are qualities not substantial forms, and that the human person has one rational soul under which other “souls” of the person such as the sensory soul are united—may seem to have driven us far afield. But they have actually completed this section’s analysis of Thomas’s thought on custom in a way that sets the stage for the final section’s application of that thought to the case prompting this essay. For it may be the case that customs and habits do not operate together. In fact, the case prompting this essay is one where there may be custom without habit. But this brief foray into the relationship between custom and habit in the processes leading toward formation in habit helps illumi- nate what occurs when they do not operate together. To conclude, Thomas explains with great precision how human ca- pacities able to be habituated can be qualified by dispositions or hab- its. His common examples of dispositions are natural temperament and custom. Ideally these causal influences, akin to what we com- monly reference as “nature and nurture,” are taken up in a process of formation that culminates in full-blown habits properly understood. Yet dispositions by custom (as by nature) are possible without the sta- ble specification provided by practical reasoning. This leads us back to the case which prompts this essay.

CUSTOM AND THE PERSON WHO LOSES INFUSED VIRTUE The relevance of custom for the case this essay addresses should hopefully now be evident. I am suggesting that the person who loses infused virtue and yet who afterwards consistently performs observa- bly good actions and thus seems to possess a habit in the fullest sense (which would of course have to be an acquired virtue) may in actuality possess a disposition to good action, a disposition from custom. To speak colloquially, the person has “gotten used to” acting in the man- ner formerly specified by the causa immobile of infused virtue. In this case the custom would not be part of a developmental process in child- hood toward the possession of true virtue, but rather a regression, the residue of a previously possessed habit. What is lost is the causa im- mobile specifying the activities. In this case of infused virtue, the causa immobile would be grace, and its habitual possession in the vir- tue of charity along with the other infused virtues such as faith and infused prudence. What is left is the accustoming of one’s capacities toward acts that no longer retain their former intelligibility, or we might say “rationale,” even as they are observably the same and seem to retain the stability of “second nature.”46 To make this case I will

46 Though this is particularly evident in acts of the sensitive appetite from the accus- tomization of sensory apprehensive capacities like imagination and memory and es- pecially the cogitative power, there does seem to be a sort of customization even in acts of the will, which obviously in this case would not be perfectly rational. One 18 William C. Mattison III first examine the (tougher) case of acquired virtue to determine if re- sidual “customs” toward actions observably similar to those previ- ously specified by the virtue could (not as) stably continue after the loss of acquired virtue. Second, I turn to dynamics particular to infused virtue, which only increase the plausibility of custom playing the role suggested here.

Custom Dispositions “After” Acquired Virtue? Before examining the case at hand, which concerns infused virtue, it would help to explore whether or not it is feasible that residual dis- positions from custom could remain in a person after the loss of ac- quired virtue. Thomas grants that it is possible for a person to cease to possess an acquired virtue.47 When that happens, presumably over re- peated acts or even simply the cessation of virtuous acts, at some point one’s capacity is no longer qualified by the virtue, understood as a habit in the proper sense. When this occurs, is that natural capacity previously qualified by the virtue now qualified in any way? Thomas claims that any action disposes a capacity (De virt. a. 9 ad 11). It could create a (presumably initially very unstable) disposition or strengthen or weaken an existing one. But once a natural capacity is active, any action impacts its qualification. The question is: once a capacity is qualified by a habit (virtue or vice) due to stable specification by prac- tical reasoning, can it ever be only qualified by a disposition and not a habit properly understood?48 Consider two possibilities. First, one could cease to possess that acquired virtue and immedi- ately begin to possess a contrary vice. Since it is practical reasoning that stably specifies a habit (virtue or vice) properly understood, pre- sumably this could occur in a situation where there is a reasoned, prin- cipled repudiation of the virtue and comparably reasoned, principled taking up of the vice. Of course, since it is one’s same practical rea- soning that specifies the manifold virtues (ST I-II q. 65, a. 1), this would mean that all those natural capacities would need to be (imme-

might think of someone who has grown up or otherwise became accustomed to always telling the truth, or taking care of those in need, or performing courteous acts, and continuing to do so even after the loss of specification by a causa immobile such as right practical reasoning or charity. Despite the will’s status as “rational appetite,” it, too, relies on processes of habituation toward paradigmatic acts. For more on this dynamic in the will, including in children, see Jean Porter, The Perfection of Desire: Habit, Reason and Virtue in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2018), 117-122. 47 For Thomas’s account of the corruption or diminishment of habits, including by cessation of action, see ST I-II q. 53, a. 1-3. 48 Recall this topic addressed above (n. 28) as to the “necessity” of habit in a person. As will be clear in the second possibility below (with reliance on ST I-II q. 51, a. 3), I take Thomas to mean that habits are necessary for fully human (rational) functioning, though not necessary in the sense that one is “unable to be without” them. Aquinas on Custom 19 diately, it would seem) re-stably specified by one’s (now wrong) prac- tical reasoning into vices.49 Note that this account assumes that once a person has possessed habits properly understood, they can no longer not possess habits properly understood, though of course they can change from virtue to vice (or the other way around). This position is based on the assumption that practical reasoning, once present to sta- bly specify one’s capacities, can never not stably specify one’s capac- ities, though how it does so may change. Second, it could also be the case that a person’s habituate-able ca- pacities might cease to be qualified by a virtue understood as a habit in the proper sense and yet not be immediately stably specified by (contrary) practical reasoning so as to be qualified right away by a vice understood as a habit in the proper sense. There could be an interim period (whose length of time could vary) before the specification of vice is stabilized, or before the return to the virtue, where the person’s capacities are disposed but not habituated.50 Note the claim here is not that in such an interim period one does not act out of practical reason- ing, but rather that in such a period, one’s natural capacities are not stably specified as habits. If this were the case, how would one’s prac- tical reasoning be operative? I see two possibilities. Perhaps one’s rea- soning is confused and unable to provide stable specification, as it vac- illates between different goods. Or, perhaps one’s reasoning is more coherent, but the appetitive powers “lag.” Indeed, as to the (im)possi- bility of forming an acquired habit in one act, Thomas claims:

Reason cannot entirely overcome the appetitive power in one act: be- cause the appetitive power is inclined variously, and to many things; while the reason judges in a single act, which should be willed in re- gard to various aspects and circumstances. (ST I-II q. 51, a. 3).

Thomas claims that reason “gradually expels contrary dispositions,” eventually “overcoming it entirely,” so as to “impress its likeness on it” (ST I-II q. 51, a. 3). Presumably those existing “contrary disposi- tions” could be caused by nature or custom on the path toward growth in virtue, as discussed earlier. Yet, surely, they could also be caused by former habits properly understood, in which the stable specification

49 The claim that vices entail the stable specification of one’s capacities by practical reasoning that is vitiated, which Thomas endorses, is not the same as the claim that sins of vices are connected, which Thomas denies. See ST I-II q. 73, a. 1. 50 It must be granted that for a person with experience in life, a capacity will never not be qualified by a habit or disposition, since Thomas claims that even one act disposes (though obviously need not engender a habit in the proper sense) a person (De virt. a. 9 ad 11). Furthermore, given the dispositional impact of activity from a capacity, pre- sumably one will never fall back simply to natural temperament as the sole cause of disposition, even as the force of natural temperament may continue to persist solely qua disposition in the capacity qualified by custom even if not reason. 20 William C. Mattison III was provided by the rational powers as causa immobile in a manner unified with “lower” sensory powers that were “accustomed” in ac- cord with that virtue. Remove or change the causa immobile, and at the very least the corresponding dispositions formed in the sensory powers, which previously existed as part of the habit properly under- stood as “taken up” by the rational powers, will remain residually in a manner disjointed from one’s practical reasoning until “impressed” by practical reasoning in its new specificity (or return to its former spec- ificity). And if one’s practical reasoning itself remains confused or un- certain, all the longer until the capacities with those residual disposi- tions are re-qualified. Therefore, even in the case of acquired virtue, if we grant that virtue can be lost, then it is possible to possess disposi- tions to actions characteristic of the lost virtue even after the loss of stable specification provided by one’s practical reasoning, assuming one’s practical reasoning need not (at least in every case) immediately specify one’s habituate-able capacities in a contrary manner.51 In such a case, a person would be inclined to such actions by a custom dispo- sition rather than a habit properly understood.

Custom Dispositions After the Loss of Infused Virtue If residual dispositions toward acts characteristic of an acquired virtue are possible after the loss of such virtue as a habit properly un- derstood, this is all the more possible in the case of the loss of infused virtue. For the infused virtues, charity rather than prudence (or more precisely, the grace-informed charitable will rather than prudent prac- tical reasoning) provides the causa immobile, giving the virtue its ra- tio.52 The function of charity in serving as form of the virtues is distinct from the role of prudence. Charity orients a person toward supernatu- ral happiness, an end not accessible, let alone attainable, without God’s grace. Charity brings with it the infused cardinal virtues, so this is not to say that infused prudence does not function in the person in a state of grace in a manner comparable to acquired prudence. And the believer’s intellect is also qualified by faith in a manner that is also crucial for the life of grace including the activity of charity.53 Yet nei- ther infused prudence nor faith, but rather charity, provides the ratio of the infused moral virtues. It is the clinging to God in friendship (i.e., charity) which provides the ratio of the infused moral virtues.54

51 Once again, this is granting that once one possesses a habit, one need not always have one’s natural capacities qualified by habits as distinct from dispositions. 52 It also provides the source of connectivity, although that topic is beyond the scope of this essay. 53 For an excellent account of the interplay between charity and faith, see Michael Sherwin, By Knowledge and by Love (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005). 54 Thomas claims that it is fitting for an intellectual virtue such as prudence to inform the virtues in moral matters when the matters at hand are lower than the human person, Aquinas on Custom 21

From this feature of infused virtue, several differences from ac- quired virtue result. For instance, even while charity is possessed, the infused virtues are compatible with contrary dispositions in a manner unlike the acquired virtues (ST I-II q. 65, a. 3, ad 2),55 since the super- natural end to which charity orients is beyond the capacity of even charity-informed faith and infused prudence in a way that does not pertain to acquired prudence.56 This “stretching” of human capacities beyond their natural ability not only renders possible the persistence of contrary dispositions but also renders necessary God’s actual grace in all acts of infused virtue. It is the possession of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (themselves habits) that render a person amenable to movement by this actual grace (auxilium), which Thomas calls the instinctus of the Holy Spirit.57 This dynamic is not relevant to the case that prompts this essay, since our case concerns ongoing good acts after the loss of infused virtue. But if there can be a disjointedness in one’s sensory dispositions while possessing infused virtue, it is not at all surprising that there can be comparable (though opposite) disjointedness at the loss of infused virtue. More relevant for this essay, unlike acquired virtues, infused vir- tues can be all together lost through one mortal sin, since such a sin ruptures friendship with God resulting in the loss of charity and there- fore the infused virtues with charity as their form. This is precisely yet it is fitting for an appetitive virtue of the will such as charity to inform the virtues in theological matters “when the matters in question higher on the scale than the per- son understanding them” (De virt. a. 3 ad 13). 55 It is noteworthy that in this very text, though without using the word, Thomas speaks of dispositions from repeated acts that are not proper habits. In a case opposite to the one addressed here, he claims that one who gains the infused virtues may still experi- ence contrary dispositions “remaining from previous acts.” The Latin phrase aliquas dispositions contrarias ex praecedentibus actibus relictas more strongly indicates that these contrary dispositions are “left behind” or “residual” from prior acts (relictas). Note that in three of the four places where Thomas treats causes of habits, including both dispositions that arise from accustomization and proper habits stably specified by reason, the term he uses for such a cause is ex actibus. See III Sent d. 33, q. 1, a. 2, qa. 1; De virt. a. 9; ST I-II q. 51, a. 2. For Thomas’s most lengthy treatment of the compatibility of contrary dispositions with infused virtues (and even contrary passions to acquired virtues), see De virt. a. 10, ad 14-16. 56 This is one reason for Thomas’s well-known claim that infused prudence provides what is necessary for salvation, see ST II-II q. 47, a. 14, ad 1. Infused prudence can of course orient to a broader realm of activities beyond those necessary for salvation, and indeed does so as one grows in the spiritual life, and of course as infused prudence comes to fruition in the blessed in heaven. 57 For an outstanding treatment of the types of grace at work in the infused virtues and gifts, see John Meinert’s The Love of God Poured Out: Grace and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in St. Thomas Aquinas (Steubenville: Emmaus, 2018). For Aquinas’s in- creased use of instinctus in the context of his thought on the gifts, see James Stroud, “Instinctus and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Explaining the Development in St. Thomas’s Teaching on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit,” Journal of Moral Theology 8, Special Issue 2 (2019): 60-79. 22 William C. Mattison III what happens in the case at hand. In the life of grace, one can possess the infused moral virtues in a manner that leads to connatural (really con-supernatural) acts of infused moral virtue.58 Let us assume in this case that the person animated by grace is not beset with contrary dis- positions. But with the departure of the clinging in friendship toward the supernatural end provided by charity, if a person continues to per- form acts that are observably good, what informs one’s capacities in such activities? By definition it cannot be the causa immobile of the infused virtues. Yet the stability suggests some causa immobile. I will consider two such possible causae immobiles before positing the pos- sibility of another cause, which will obviously be custom. What causa immobile could stably specify one’s post-infused vir- tue activity? Obviously, it would have to be practical reasoning, not grace. Consider two ways that could occur. First, one’s practical rea- son could stably specify one’s capacities toward some pernicious end. One could turn to pleasure or money or regard one’s self as one’s final end, such that any stable activities of one’s capacities such as eating and drinking are now given their intelligibility as directed toward that evil end. The consistent observably good acts would actually be per- nicious, even as they appear the same as the person’s acts formerly animated by charity. One thinks here of the miser’s seeming frugality or the hypocrites’ prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in Matthew 6, all of which are actually vicious. In such cases the person who loses infused virtue, and thus the causa immobile of his acts, substitutes another causa immobile, namely, vicious practical reasoning oriented toward money or one’s own fame or glory. In such a case, the ongoing seem- ingly good acts would be in actuality acts of new stably specified habit, now vice. This seems quite possible, and I have no stake in denying that this indeed occurs. Second, I suppose it is conceivable that one who loses infused vir- tue could reject friendship with God outright and seek (merely) natural human flourishing, such that the ensuing stable good actions are those of the acquired virtues. As noted above I will not address this in depth here, since the burden of this essay is not disproving its possibility but rather identifying an alternate explanation for observably good con- sistent action after the loss of infused virtue. But given Christian com- mitments about the relationship between nature and grace, I find it hard to imagine a situation where one casts off friendship with God to then seek genuine natural human flourishing, given that one’s activi- ties toward such natural flourishing would have to be stably specified by right practical reasoning. For instance, consider one who commits a mortal sin (say, adultery) and yet continues to eat and drink “well.” Though acquired virtue is compatible with a contrary act (such as

58 Such acts would be enabled by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, necessary for salvation and infused with charity. Aquinas on Custom 23 adultery, which is contrary to justice) in a manner that infused virtue is not, consider what it would have to look like to possess acquired virtue in this situation. One would have to choose an act incompatible with friendship with God (adultery), and then immediately have one’s capacities re-specified stably through practical reasoning such that they are ordered toward natural human flourishing rather than super- natural friendship with God. Such a wholesale re-orientation of one’s life not toward evil but toward natural good is difficult for me to im- agine when occasioned by an act that relinquishes infused virtue. Such a case is more conceivable when the loss of friendship with God is occasioned not by an act (e.g., adultery) that is contrary to both the natural and supernatural orders, but rather by some sort of direct repu- diation of faith, perhaps a principled “conversion” away from the life of faith. I have no stake in denying this possibility, though again I find it less imaginable that all occasions where one loses infuses virtue en- tail such principled repudiation and wholesale re-orientation. What seems more imaginable is that a person who has lost charity is in a more general sense, well, lost. Consider this third possibility. Deprived of the unifying function of charity, the person’s life lacks robust coherence, toward either a pernicious end or the natural good of human flourishing. Yet there is still a need to explain the stable dispositions toward seemingly good acts of eating and drinking. What could be the source of such relatively stable specification? It seems customs, residual dispositions from past acts that no longer retain their former intelligibility (from causa immobile) but do not (yet?) have one supplied by permeation by practical reasoning toward some pernicious end or natural human flourishing, fit the bill for explaining such stable action. In such a case, a person would not be performing such acts out of habit properly so-called, but out of the custom, a disposition from the prior “accustoming” of one’s capacities.

CONCLUSION Let me conclude by returning to the ramifications of this argument on recent debate over the possibility of people with infused virtue also possessing acquired virtue. The most obvious ramification is an expla- nation for the seemingly good acts of a person who has lost infused virtue. We need not posit that such acts reflect a newly attained ac- quired virtue, which would be a weakness of the transformational ac- count. Nor need we posit that such a person all along possessed ac- quired virtue with infused virtue, and the loss of infused virtue makes that possession evident. This argument about custom supplies an ex- planation for consistent good acts after the loss of infused virtue that does not rest on the possession of acquired virtue. This argument does not of course disprove the possibility of acquired virtue coexisting with infused virtue, but it does remove one commonly cited reason to 24 William C. Mattison III posit such coexistence. In addition to providing an alternate explana- tion for a rhetorically effective case in the current debate, this work on the distinction between and relationship between disposition and habit as examined through custom presumably has further ramifications for this topic. It surely has ramifications for a Thomistic theory of educa- tion more broadly understood, including as applicable to children. More relevant to the case at hand, this essay has ramifications for how further growth in infused virtue occurs once it is possessed. It is hoped that this essay will prompt precisely such further research. Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2019): 25-39

Elevated Virtue?1 A reply to Bowlin and Aquinas

Angela Knobel

N RECENT DECADES, CHRISTIAN MORAL philosophers have shown increasing interest in the notion of divinely given virtue, often referred to as “infused” virtue.2 At the same time, the very I notion that virtue could be divinely given raises a number of questions. One of them is whether a previously acquired natural virtue can simply be “re-ordered” or “re-directed” to supernatural beatitude via some combination of grace and the supernatural virtues. This ques- tion is important, indeed, all important, because how it is answered has vital ramifications for our understanding of the life of grace. If infused virtues are merely natural virtues that have been redirected to a supernatural end, the magnitude of the rebirth brought about by sal- vation is diminished. If infused virtues exist apart from but alongside re-ordered natural virtues, then one risks compartmentalizing the life of grace. If the natural virtues are not re-ordered but are instead com- pletely absorbed by the infused virtues, or if they simply become ir- relevant, then grace might seem to supplant rather than perfect nature. Important as these global questions are, however, our first concern must be that our answer can accommodate the notion of virtue itself. In this paper I argue that, at least if we accept certain foundational assumptions about natural and supernatural virtue, it is not coherent to think that existing acquired virtues can simply be “re-ordered” or “re- directed” to supernatural beatitude.3

1 The research for this paper was made possible by a grant from the Templeton Reli- gion Trust. 2 Infused virtues are most often discussed by and among Thomists. This is unsurpris- ing, because Thomas Aquinas is the only one to have described the infused virtues in any detail, but it is my belief that other Christian philosophers, especially those in the Reformed tradition, should pay much more attention to divinely-given virtue than they presently do, for Thomas Aquinas was hardly the only Christian scholar who believed that God bestows virtue along with grace. Jonathan Edwards, Calvin, Peter Vermigli, and the early Reformed tradition all insisted that virtue is a divine gift. For a nice overview of their views, see Sebastian Rehnman, “Virtue and Grace,” Studies in Christian Ethics 25, no. 4 (2012): 472–493. 3 It might seem that the answer to this question will itself presuppose a take on the debate over the so-called “two-fold end” of humanity, i.e. the debate over whether all people naturally desire supernatural union with God. Though I do not have the space to address this fully here, I will say merely that both parties in that debate agree that 26 Angela Knobel

In what follows, I will first contextualize the question and describe two accounts of how such redirection might occur: one recently of- fered by John Bowlin and one traditionally attributed to Thomas Aqui- nas.4 Both accounts attempt to draw an analogy between the way that one natural virtue can guide direct another natural virtue and the way a supernatural virtue might ostensibly guide and direct a natural virtue. While it is certainly plausible to think that one natural virtue might guide and direct another natural virtue, I will argue that when such orderings occur, there are two key features that make such ordering possible. Neither of these key features, I will argue, exist between a natural and a supernatural virtue.

I. Preliminaries On the traditional Aristotelian account, humans achieve happiness by living a life that expresses right reason. One becomes capable of living such a life by cultivating the virtues: i.e., by performing acts that express right reason again and again until one forms the appropri- ate habits. On the Christian view, however, the gift of supernatural grace makes possible a different, higher, kind of fulfillment, one that goes far beyond any capacity inherent in our ordinary, created nature. Grace makes us participants in the divine life, the adopted sons and daughters of God. Since no Aristotelian acquired virtue can make us capable of the kind of activity befitting a participant in the divine life, God also—on this view—bestows virtues along with the gift of grace, virtues which enable us to perform acts ordered to our supernatural, as opposed merely to our natural, flourishing. One could certainly hold that Aristotelian virtue is simply irrelevant. But many Christian schol- ars, especially contemporary ones, are sympathetic to the Aristotelian account of virtue. And if one wishes to offer an account of the Chris- tian moral life that includes a role for both Aristotelian virtue and di- vinely given virtue, a number of problems arise.

there is a good proportionate to human nature and that natural virtues are ordered to our proportionate natural good. For a nice exposition of this point, see Nicholas Healy, “ on Nature and Grace: A Note on Some Recent Contributions to the Debate,” Communio 35, no.4 (2008): 535-565. One does not assume the truth of a “two-end” interpretation, therefore, merely by referring to natural virtue. Moreover, one’s position on the two-fold end does not and need not determine one’s position on whether or not the natural virtues can be redirected. 4 See John Bowlin, “Elevating and Healing: Reflections on the Summa Theologiae I- II q. 109 a. 2,” The Journal of Moral Theology 3, no.1 (2014): 39-53 and John Bowlin, Temperance Among the Virtues (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). Al- though Bowlin clearly accepts much of Aquinas’s account, I think he clearly intends his account as an argument in its own right, not merely as an interpretation of Aquinas. Although the arguments in both texts are similar, in this paper I shall be primarily focused on the argument that appears in “Elevating and Healing.” Elevated Virtue? 27

One central problem has to do with the question of how the Chris- tian moral life can accommodate the cultivation of both kinds of vir- tues. For instance, suppose that a non-Christian, having already made considerable progress in the cultivation of Aristotelian acquired virtue, becomes a Christian and receives grace and all the supernatural vir- tues.5 What happens to the acquired virtues she took such pains to cul- tivate?6 Are her existing acquired virtues transformed, so that they somehow become integrated into and inseparable from the virtues she receives along with grace?7 Or do her Aristotelian virtues remain, dis- tinct from her new supernatural virtues but also somehow ordered and directed by them, in such a way that she sometimes performs acts of the one and sometimes performs acts of the other?8 A possible response to the questions mentioned above, and one that a great many scholars find intuitively appealing, is to say that grace and the other divinely given virtues “redirect” any pre-existing natural virtues, so that they now are both perfected and ordered to supernatu- ral beatitude. Some scholars claim that virtues so perfected and reor- dered will be the only virtues the newly converted Christian possesses, so that these virtues are simultaneously acquired and infused, natural

5 This very question presupposes that a non-Christian can make considerable progress in the cultivation of Aristotelian natural virtue, a claim which some scholars deny. See for example Thomas Osborne, “Perfect and Imperfect Virtues in Aquinas,” The Tho- mist 71, no.1 (2007): 39-64. I have argued against his interpretation elsewhere. See Angela McKay, “Aquinas and the Pagan Virtues,” International Philosophical Quar- terly 51, no. 3 (2011): 339-354, and Angela Knobel, “Ends and Virtues,” Journal of Moral Theology 3, no. 1 (2014): 105-117. In addressing this question here, I assume that it is indeed a question worth answering and hence that Osborne’s position is in- correct. 6 A distinct, but equally important question concerns the possibility that the infused virtues will sometimes coexist alongside serious vices. For a discussion of this prob- lem, see Jean Porter, “Virtue and Sin: The Connection of the Virtues and the Case of the Flawed Saint,” Journal of Religion 75, no. 4 (1995): 521-539. 7 This position can itself be held in a number of different ways. Some scholars, for instance, hold that the infused virtues “form” the “matter” of the acquired or at least make use of their “psychological structure,” while others hold that any existing ac- quired virtues are so completely transformed that no acquired “core” remains, and all that is possessed is an infused virtue. For an example of the former view, see Renee Mirkes, “Aquinas’s Doctrine of Infused Moral Virtue and its Significance for Theo- ries of Facility,” The Thomist 61, no. 2 (1997): 189-218. A more recent and more sophisticated version of this view has recently been put forward by David Decosimo in his book Ethics as a Work of Charity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). For an example of the latter view, see William Mattison, “Can Christians Possess the Acquired Cardinal Virtues?” Theological Studies 72, no. 3 (2011): 558-585. 8 For defenses of this view, see Bowlin, “Elevating and Healing,” and Michael Sher- win, “Infused Virtue and the Effects of Acquired Vice,” The Thomist 73, no. 1 (2009): 29-52. 28 Angela Knobel and supernatural.9 Other scholars, however, argue that our hypothet- ical Christian now possesses two distinct kinds of virtue: the acquired natural virtues that they previously possessed, now both perfected and redirected by grace, and supernatural, divinely given versions of all the natural virtues.10 On this view, divinely-given virtues exist inde- pendently and can produce their own acts, but they also help to reorder and redirect existing acquired virtues. This latter explanation avoids some of the problems the first raises.11 It also appears to have been the position held by Thomas Aquinas—at least early in his career12—and has historically been a favorite explanation of Thomists.13 For all of these reasons, I will focus primarily on this latter explanation in what follows.14 If one wishes to argue that existing natural virtues are perfected and redirected by grace and the divinely-given virtues, one needs to offer some account of precisely how this occurs. In what follows, I will mention two very similar accounts: one recently offered by John Bowlin and a very similar account which some interpreters take to be the view of Thomas Aquinas. Both explanations attempt to draw an analogy between the way that one natural virtue orders and directs an- other and the way a supernatural virtue might order and direct a natural one. I will begin with the argument that Bowlin offers in his essay “Elevating and Healing,” and then turn to the account often attributed to Aquinas.

II. A Theory of “Elevation” Like many who maintain that the Christian’s acquired virtues are directed to a further supernatural end by grace and the infused virtues, Bowlin maintains that the elevation of the natural virtues is easily ex- plained. He offers the analogy of a professor whose son happens to enroll as a student in one of his courses. The professor, qua professor, has a certain kind of relationship with his students and abides by cer- tain norms. In matters having to do with the class, the father and son,

9 This would reflect the position advocated by Mirkes and Decosimo but not, if I un- derstand him correctly, the position advocated by Mattison. 10 For references to those who hold this view see footnotes 4 and 8. 11 A key difficulty Mirkes’s view raises, for instance, is how we would describe the virtues possessed by convert who possessed no acquired virtues capable of being “formed” by grace. Such an individual would, it seems, have the forms of the virtues but not the matter. 12 See Angela Knobel, “A Problem with Several Solutions: Aquinas and the Relation between Infused and Acquired Virtue,” Being, Goodness and Truth ed. A. Hall (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming Summer 2019). 13 For a thorough explanation of the varieties of this view and its advocates, see Robert Coerver, The Quality of Facility in the Moral Virtues (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1946). 14 Although I disagree with the positions of Mirkes and Decosimo, the argument put forward in this paper should not be taken as an argument against their position. Elevated Virtue? 29 if they are virtuous, will abstract from their father-son relationship and treat each other in the way that it is appropriate for professors to treat students (and vice versa). Yet at the same time, they do not stop being father and son or lose the relationship they have as father and son. Far to the contrary, Bowlin argues, “If it happens that I have acquired or- dinary measures of both justice and natural charity, then we can as- sume that I will treat him justly in accord with the norms, require- ments, and ends of the student-teacher relationship and then further ordain that just treatment to the ends of (natural) charity.”15 Bowlin argues that the supernatural virtues elevate the natural vir- tues in just this way. Just as the professor father orders the treatment of his student son to the love he has for his son, so “a just act in a good relationship will be elevated by grace beyond these natural realities to the ends of supernatural charity.” When this occurs, the natural virtues “remain and constitute the material aspect of the act even as its formal aspect is now determined by supernatural charity.”16 The act of natural virtue remains what it is—an act of natural virtue. But it is ordered, through grace and the corresponding infused virtue, to the end of su- pernatural beatitude. It is acquired justice that allows the professor to treat his student in the way that the just student-professor relationship demands, and infused justice that enables him to order that just treat- ment to a still higher, supernatural end.17 A very similar view is often attributed to Thomas Aquinas, whom Bowlin cites in defense of his own view. In the tenth article of his De virtutibus in communis, Aquinas addresses the objection that the in- fused virtues are unnecessary. They are unnecessary, the objector ar- gues, because grace already orders the natural virtues to supernatural beatitude. Aquinas replies that:

The actions of an acquired virtue can be meritorious only by means of an infused virtue. For a virtue that is ordered to a lower end can only bring about actions ordered to a higher end if this is done by means of a higher virtue. For example, the that is a virtue of a human being qua human being does not order its actions to the civic good except by means of that courage that is the virtue of a human being qua citizen.18

Although not all scholars interpret this text in the same way; many, including Bowlin, see in this text not only an affirmation that the su-

15 Bowlin, “Elevating and Healing,” 41. 16 Bowlin, “Elevating and Healing,” 41. 17 Bowlin, “Elevating and Healing,” 42. 18 Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Virtue, trans. Thomas Williams (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), a. 10 ad 4. 30 Angela Knobel pernatural virtues order and direct the natural virtues but also an affir- mation that Aquinas believes they do so in a manner analogous to the way that one natural virtue orders and directs another.19 Aquinas does not actually offer a description of the way that civic courage orders the courage “of man qua man,” but he does offer a description of a very similar kind of ordering, namely of the way that he believes political prudence orders and directs individual prudence. Generally speaking, prudence is the virtue that finds fitting means to a due end. But—at least as Aquinas describes it—the “ends” for which prudence finds fitting means fall into different categories that are dis- tinguished from one another by the specific type of deliberation in- volved. It is one thing to deliberate well about fitting means to one’s own good, another to deliberate well about the good of the household, and still another to deliberate well about the civic good.20 For each different category, there will be a different kind of prudence. And Aquinas clearly believes that when an individual possesses more than one of these kinds of prudence, the higher form of prudence com- mands and directs the lower form of prudence. Even if prudence simpliciter—the virtue that enables one to delib- erate well about one’s own good—has its own distinct concern, noth- ing, says Aquinas, prohibits it from also serving a higher good. Horse- manship has its own distinct aims, but it can still be ordered to the military art, and the military art can in turn be ordered to - ship.21 Similarly, even if individual prudence is concerned with one’s own good and political prudence concerned with the common good of the city, nothing prohibits the lower form of prudence from also serv- ing the higher, or the higher form of prudence from commanding and directing the lower. This is possible, says Aquinas, because even if the two goods are different, they are nonetheless linked: to pursue the common good is to pursue one’s own good. We can easily imagine examples of what Aquinas might have in mind. When one deliberates well about how to conduct one’s life, or about how to run a household, it is theoretically possible that that deliberation could happen in a vac- uum. For someone who lived alone, or for someone who lived in a small household outside of society, there would be no such delibera- tion. But in the more typical case, no aim is had in isolation. We seek our own individual good, not just for its own sake, but in part because it is conducive to the good of our household, and we seek the good of our household, not merely because it is good in its own right, but also

19 I have examined this text in more detail elsewhere. See Angela Knobel, “A Con- fusing Comparison,” The Virtuous Life, ed. H. Goris and H. Schoot (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 97-116. 20 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fred Freddoso, https://www3.nd.edu/ ~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%202-2/st2-2-ques47.pdf, II-II q. 47, a. 2. 21 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fred Freddoso, https://www3.nd.edu/ ~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%202-2/st2-2-ques47.pdf, II-II q. 47, a. 2. Elevated Virtue? 31 because it is part of the common good of society. Each pursuit is dis- tinct and involves a distinct virtue. Yet at the same time all of these distinct pursuits are also linked. Both Aquinas and Bowlin, then, describe ways in which one natu- ral virtue can direct the other. In what follows, I will point out some key features that both analogies contain. First, however, it is important to note that Aquinas’s account is broader than Bowlin’s in at least one important respect. Bowlin’s analogy is focused on a somewhat rare example: a situation in which the professor/father must simultane- ously treat his student/son justly qua student and lovingly qua father. Although his explanation—that in such situations the lower virtue would be practiced for the sake of the higher—is certainly plausible, it seems equally plausible that the same ordering could also occur in more normal situations. If the professor is also a parent, could it not be the case that he orders his just treatment of all his students to the love he has for his son even if his son is not actually his student? It certainly seems plausible that he could. In fact, it is not unusual to hear a parent say that they work hard, or try to lead a good life, or engage in any number of other pursuits for the sake of their children. Aqui- nas’s examples achieve this broader perspective. Only very rarely could we imagine a case where, say, prudent household management and prudent deliberation about the common good of society directly concern one and the same thing. Nonetheless, it is entirely plausible to maintain that prudent deliberation about the common good of soci- ety can guide and direct one’s deliberations about prudent household management, just as it is equally plausible to think that the military art can guide and direct the art of horsemanship. Aquinas’s broader focus notwithstanding, both analogies share two important features. First, on both accounts, both the natural virtue that orders and the natural virtue that is ordered have distinct “domains”: distinct relationships or aspects of life with which they are con- cerned.22 Professors and students have a specific kind of relationship and special virtues that correspond to that relationship. Fathers and sons have different kind of special relationship and correspondingly different kinds of virtues that attach to it. What a professor owes a student is different from what father owes a son, and so it is only nat- ural that what is “just” in the one relationship will not be the same as what is “just” in the other relationship. Both virtues can certainly be

22 The notion of a “domain” of virtue is not a new one. For a discussion of this topic, see Neera Badhwar, “The Limited Unity of Virtue,” Nous 30, no. 3 (1996): 306-329. For a helpful clarification of Badhwar’s view, see Daniel Russell, Practical Intelli- gence and the Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 365-366. Russell maintains, correctly in my view, that the notion of a virtue’s “domain” as articulated by Badhwar is compatible with the unity of the virtues. 32 Angela Knobel possessed by the same person, but each is primarily relevant to a dif- ferent aspect of that person’s life. Similarly, even if possessed by the same person, individual prudence and household prudence and politi- cal prudence concern distinct areas of life. The second important feature shared by both analogies is this: in both, the hierarchical ordering is made possible by the fact that both virtues are ordered to the same ultimate end.23 This point is far from trivial. It makes sense that one natural virtue can order and direct an- other natural virtue because all the natural virtues are ordered to the same ultimate end. The virtue that orders and directs does so precisely because it is higher in that ordering—more intimately tied up with the ultimate end—than the other. Indeed, it is the shared ultimate end that explains why there can be harmony between all these varied virtues. It is also the shared ultimate end that explains why there cannot be genuine conflict between two natural virtues. Considered abstractly, it might well seem that there would be con- flict between the natural virtues we have been describing. In the ab- stract, just treatment of one’s students demands that one return papers within a certain amount of time. In the abstract, just treatment of one’s children demands that one spend time with them, care for them when they are ill, and so forth. In the abstract, prudent household manage- ment demands that one not buy overpriced goods. And so on. But sometimes being a good parent will get in the way of returning papers in a timely fashion, and sometimes being a good citizen might get in the way of household economy. If my child is ill and needs to be cared for, I might not be able to return the papers as quickly as I planned. If patriotism demands that I buy goods made in my own country, I will not be able to be as thrifty with my household spending as I might like to. And so on. Because both virtues are ordered to the same ultimate end, the apparent contradictions disappear. No virtue can require that I do something opposed to the ultimate end. So it cannot be the case that virtuous treatment of my students really requires that I neglect my child. It must instead be the case that my actual deliberation about what I owe my students must be conducted in light of other, more fun- damental obligations, such as what I owe my family.

23 In this paper I assume the unity of the virtues, as do most others who address the kinds of questions raised here. For an important contemporary argument against the unity of the virtues, see Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), 157. I have addressed the question of the unity of the virtues as it relates to Aquinas’s view of the cultivation of acquired virtues elsewhere. See McKay, “Aquinas and the Pagan Virtues.”

Elevated Virtue? 33

III. An Analogous Ordering? In the preceding section, I examined two examples of one natural virtue ordering and directing another: the example of a professor or- dering the virtuous treatment of his students to his virtuous treatment of his son and the example of civic prudence ordering and directing a lower form of prudence. I pointed out that both examples contain two key features. First, each virtue—the one that orders and directs and the one that is ordered and directed—concerns what I called a distinct “do- main” of action. Even if the one is ordered and directed by the other, each concerns a kind of ability and/or sphere of action which is in principle distinct from the virtue that orders or is ordered by it. Second, implicit in the very ordering and directing is a key fact: both virtues are ordered to one and the same ultimate end. It is their order to the same ultimate end that both makes one virtue subordinate to another and makes it coherent for the higher virtue to “direct” the lower. The shared ultimate end plays an essential explanatory role at every level. In what follows, I want to argue that the supernatural virtues cannot order and direct the natural virtues in the way that one natural virtue orders and directs another. To the contrary, neither of the key features that enable one natural virtue to order another are present: natural and supernatural virtues do not have distinct “domains,” and they are not ordered to the same ultimate end. In order to make my case, I will first return to an account of what virtue is, the same account to which both Bowlin and Aquinas appeal. This is the notion that virtue enables the power it perfects to operate at its “upper limit.” I will argue that when we understand this notion in the context of the distinction between natural and supernatural virtue, it is clear that supernatural virtue can- not order and direct natural virtue in anything like the way one natural virtue orders and directs another. Both Bowlin and Aquinas explicate virtue in terms of how a virtue is related to the power it perfects. Bowlin speaks of a virtue working at the “limit” of a power in order to contrast how virtue is supposed to operate with a situation in which virtue is limited by something else, namely sin and circumstance.24 We can easily imagine how sin and circumstance—petty grudges, an inability to see another person’s point of view, and so forth—might limit a virtue’s capacity to act and thus prohibit it from actually working at the “limit” of a power. But the notion that virtue works at the limit of a power is itself something that needs explaining. This latter notion has its roots in Aquinas. Throughout his corpus but especially in his Disputed Questions on Virtue, Aquinas asserts that virtue is the “upper limit” (often translated “utmost”) of a capacity.25 This simply means, as Aquinas indicates

24 Bowlin, “Elevating and Healing,” 41. 25 Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Virtue q. 1, a. 1. 34 Angela Knobel elsewhere, that virtue is the fulfillment of a capacity. The human pow- ers of appetite and will achieve their natural fulfillment when they are perfectly subject to reason. The natural virtues are those habits which make the powers of the soul subject to reason. So when we say that a virtue “works at the limit of a power,” what we really mean is that the different virtues express what it means for the various powers of the soul to have achieved their fulfillment. Where several virtues belong to the same power, they express the different respects in which that power of the soul is made subject to reason. Although it almost goes without saying, it is important to note the intimate connection between a thing’s ultimate end and the “limit” of a power. We only know what the upper limit of a power is insofar as we know what the fulfillment of that power would be, and we only know what the fulfillment of that power would be if we know some- thing about the relationship of that power to the ultimate end. I will return to this point in what follows. Abstracting for the time being from the ways that sin corrupts a virtue’s ability to “work at the limit” of the power in which it resides, we can consider how different virtues might represent different as- pects of the same power’s fulfillment. The just person renders each person their due, but the different kinds of justice help us to describe the various ways in which this occurs. There is one kind of “due” that constitutes the right relationship of a father and a son, another that constitutes the right relationship of a teacher and a student, and still another that constitutes the rightful enduring of objectionable differ- ences in our social relationships. All of these together constitute jus- tice. All the virtues that have to do with the right ordering of the ra- tional appetite to reason together constitute the “limit” of the will, and so on. But considering a group of virtues that together express the same limit of a given power is a rather different thing from considering two groups of virtues that express different limits of the same power. This point requires some unpacking. In trying to understand the notion of a “limit” of a power it helps to consider for a moment a much simpler power: a sensory power like sight. We can only talk coherently about the “limit” of the power of sight if we first know something about the thing that possesses the power, because knowledge of the possessor enables us to understand what the optimal function of that power would be. The fulfillment of the human power of sight is one thing, the fulfillment of a hawk’s power of sight is another, and the fulfillment of a bat’s power of sight still another. These several fulfillments are distinct from each other in a way that does not invite ordering or comparison, because they have to do with the fulfillment of specifically different natures. The same is true of virtue. We can speak of the virtues that together constitute the fulfillment of a power only after the limit has been established, and the limit itself is established by the nature of the thing in question. But Elevated Virtue? 35 if there is a change in the nature of a thing, then there must also be a corresponding change in the virtues that perfect it. If one accepts the view that grace perfects nature, then one of course will not think that the powers of unperfected nature differ from the powers of perfected nature in the way that the human power of sight differs from a hawk’s power of sight. But insofar as one accepts that grace causes an actual created change in nature—that it does not just heal the various imperfections caused by but also, in elevating nature, changes what nature is26—then there must be a cor- responding change in what the perfections of the various powers of the soul will be. All of this has important consequences for the analogies I described in the preceding section. The various kinds of natural prudence “work at the limit” of the same power, but more importantly, because both kinds of prudence are natural virtues, the limit of that power is the same for each of those kinds of prudence. All the kinds of prudence described above, that is to say, work toward the same kind of fulfill- ment: they express different aspects of what it is for the power in ques- tion to be related to right reason. Household prudence causes one’s deliberation about fitting means to the good of the household to con- form to right reason; political prudence causes one’s deliberation about fitting means to political common good to conform to right rea- son; and so on. In each case, reason is “right” when it settles on the course of action commensurate with our natural fulfillment. This is likewise true in the case of the father/son relationship and the teacher/student relationship. This is the fundamental difference be- tween comparing two natural virtues on the one hand and a natural and a supernatural virtue on the other. For while two kinds of natural pru- dence represent different aspects of what it means to work at the limit of the same power, natural and supernatural prudence work at different limits of the same power. The importance of this difference cannot be overstated. Those who argue for the necessity of divinely-given virtue do so because they recognize that there is a key gap between any purely nat- ural fulfillment and the supernatural fulfillment Christ promises. When we ordinarily speak of a virtue “fulfilling” a given power, we are speaking of that power’s natural fulfillment. But the supernatural fulfillment of a human being, and the corresponding supernatural ful- fillment of the various powers of the soul, is something altogether dif-

26 This is the view of Thomas Aquinas and the Roman Catholic tradition, but it is by no means unique to either. It is also the view of a significant number of Protestant thinkers including John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards. For a thorough discussion of this, see Anri Morimoto, Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). 36 Angela Knobel ferent. Just how that supernatural fulfillment is characterized will dif- fer depending on one’s account of how nature is altered and trans- formed by grace. But key to any account is the recognition that nature is transformed by grace: that grace does not merely, say, render one more capable of doing what one could already do or simply heal the effects of original sin but instead makes a newer, higher, fulfillment possible. In Aquinas’s view, at least, the transformation that grace works on nature is thoroughgoing and complete. It extends to the very principles that lead us to act in the first place. In ordinary human nature, the rea- son and will and appetites are ordered to the good of reason. Thanks to this order, all persons have a vague and inchoate knowledge and desire for the good of reason, a desire that is fulfilled by the cultivation of the natural virtues. In Aquinas’s view, grace changes even this fun- damental orientation. The theological virtues of faith, hope and love, bestowed along with grace, give us an inchoate knowledge of and de- sire for supernatural beatitude that is analogous to our natural inchoate knowledge of and desire for the good of reason.27 This new inchoate knowledge is fulfilled through the supernatural virtues, albeit only with the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit.28 Even without belabor- ing the details, this has clear consequences for the notion that a virtue “works at a limit” of a power. It is one thing for the concupiscible appetite (say) to be appropriately responsive to human reason. It is quite another for it to be appropriately responsive to the supernatural good.29 Our earlier analogy of the power of sight can be helpful here. The human power of sight can be impaired in various ways, much as original sin impedes our ability to pursue even our natural fulfillment. But grace does not merely heal the effect of original sin; it altogether alters what our fulfillment is, so that we are now fulfilled by partici- pation in the divine life. Even if we were perfectly able to pursue our natural fulfillment, we would be no closer to this latter kind of perfec- tion. If our powers are to be ordered to this new, supernatural end, we need the appropriate kinds of virtues.

IV. The Imperfect Analogy of Natural Virtue With all of these preliminaries in place, we can return to the ques- tion of whether a supernatural virtue can order and direct a natural virtue in a manner analogous to the way that one natural virtue orders and directs another natural virtue.

27 Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Virtue q. 1, a. 10. See also Aquinas, ST I-II q. 63, a. 3. 28 Aquinas, ST I-II q. 68, a. 2. 29 Among other things, such responsiveness would have to include a receptivity to the motion of the Holy Spirit, such as Aquinas describes in his account of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. See Aquinas, ST I-II q. 68. Elevated Virtue? 37

In the preceding, I pointed out that in the examples where one nat- ural virtue orders and directs another natural virtue, each virtue has a distinct “domain” or is relevant to a distinct area of life. Professorial justice, like other virtues associated with students and teachers, has to do with and arises from very specific circumstances. Such virtues are, in principle, separable from the virtues associated with fathers and sons, even if it is conceivable for the latter to order and direct the for- mer. It not typically appropriate to exercise parental love and justice in a classroom setting, because one’s students are not one’s children and one’s professors are not one’s parents. The same, mutatis mutan- dis, is true of household and civic prudence. But as should already be clear from our discussion of virtue, it is precisely not the case that the natural and supernatural virtues have similarly distinct “domains.” We noted above that while the various natural virtues are distin- guished by the specific way in which they fulfill some particular power, the supernatural and natural virtues have to do with altogether different kinds of fulfillment. The immediate consequence of this is that, far from having to do with distinct areas of life, there will be supernatural versions of all the natural virtues. The professor can treat her students in a way commensurate with her natural fulfillment, or she can treat her students in a manner commensurate with her super- natural fulfillment. A father can treat his son in a manner commensu- rate with his natural fulfillment, or in a manner commensurate with his supernatural fulfillment. I can deliberate about household manage- ment in a way that corresponds to my supernatural fulfillment, or in a way that corresponds to my natural fulfillment. And so on. In the typ- ical case, the acts themselves might well be outwardly identical, but this is irrelevant to the point at hand. An act ordered to supernatural beatitude arises from different principles and is ordered to a different kind of fulfillment; even the very process by which one arrives at the act that is required is different. For at least on the view that both Bowlin and Aquinas accept, in an individual transformed by grace, one’s very reasoning is guided and directed by the Holy Spirit. The domains of the various natural and supernatural virtues are precisely the same: it is what constitutes the “upper limit of the power” that will differ. The immediate consequence of all of this is that the relationship between natural and supernatural virtue cannot be analogous to the way that one natural virtue directs another. Each natural virtue is rel- evant to a different kind of activity or a different area of life. When one virtue is ordered and directed by another, it is because that activity or that area of life is subordinated to a different activity or area of life, and that subordination happens because both are pursued for the sake of the same ultimate end. But in the case of the natural and supernat- ural virtues, the opposite applies. 38 Angela Knobel

From what I have said so far it will already be clear that the second feature that allows one natural virtue to order and direct another—the shared ultimate end—is not present. Natural virtues differ from super- natural ones precisely because their ultimate ends differ. While this point is already clear enough, the details are worth discussing. I noted in the preceding that a number of features make it intuitive that there should be a hierarchical ordering among virtues ordered to the same ultimate end. The first, which we have already discussed, is the fact that different natural virtues have to do with different “domains” of life. Deliberation about household management requires one kind of expertise, while deliberation about the good of the city requires an- other. The kinds of considerations and sensitivities relevant to giving one’s students their due are not the same as the considerations and sensitivities relevant to giving one’s children their due. And so on. But the various natural and supernatural virtues have the same domains; they just have different ends. There is a natural household prudence, and a supernatural household prudence. There is a natural virtue hav- ing to do with the just treatment of students, and a supernatural virtue having to do with the just treatment of students. And so on. More im- portantly, though, it is simply unclear that the Christian moral life would include natural acts in need of supernatural ordering. Aristotle famously pointed out that the moral virtues “lie in a mean” between excess and defect. The mean, like the “upper limit” of a power, has an intimate connection to a thing’s end. It was this con- sideration, indeed, that led Aquinas to repeatedly assert that what is moderate by the standards of natural virtue might be immoderate by the standards of supernatural virtue and vice versa. The important point here is not just that the acts of natural and supernatural virtue can sometimes come apart, but that they are subordinate to and gov- erned by different standards. Unless one could make the case that it is sometimes appropriate for a Christian to ignore the supernatural stand- ard he is ordered to by grace, or that supernatural considerations are only relevant to some subset of his life, it is unclear that there could be any role for virtues ordered to a natural standard.30 Initially plausi- ble as the view might seem, there simply does not seem to be any role for the cultivation of natural virtue in the Christian moral life. At the outset of this paper, I claimed that the question of whether the natural virtues can simply be “re-directed” to supernatural beati- tude is all important for our conception of the Christian life of grace. I have argued in this paper that the natural virtues cannot be so redi- rected. In so doing, I hope to have shown that a certain conception of the transformative work of grace is misguided. Grace does not merely cause it to be the case that we (either always or sometimes) continue

30 It is my view that the early Aquinas did indeed hold this view, and that this explains his early position on virtue. Elevated Virtue? 39 to do the same acts for the same motives, with the difference that they “count” towards salvation. Grace, without destroying nature, brings about a fundamental change in it, with the difference that what it means to act virtuously is changed as well.31

31 My account is compatible with both the view that grace completely transforms any existing natural virtues and with the view that existing natural virtues remain but simply become irrelevant to progress in the life of grace. My own view is the latter, but an argument for it is outside the scope of the present paper. Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2019): 40-66

Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace: Why the Infused and Acquired Virtues Cannot Co-Exist

Jean Porter

N THE COURSE OF DEVELOPING HIS ANALYSIS of habits in the Prima secundae of the Summa theologiae, Aquinas identifies three ways in which habits are caused in the soul. The habitual I knowledge of the first principles of speculative and practical knowledge is innate. Other habits of the intellect and all the habits of the appetites, which comprise the moral and theological virtues as well as vices, are either acquired through action or infused directly by God. Infused habits are necessary, Aquinas explains, in order for the human person to act in such a way as to attain an end which exceeds the ca- pacities of nature:

There are some habits by which the human person is well disposed to an end exceeding the faculties of human nature, which is the ultimate and perfect happiness of the person. And because a habit must be pro- portioned to that to which the human person is disposed through it, therefore it is necessary that the habits disposing to such an end should exceed the faculties of human nature. Hence, such habits can never be in the human person except through divine infusion, and such is the case for all the gratuitous virtues (ST I-II q. 51, a. 4).

As we would expect, the gratuitous virtues include the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, which direct the human person im- mediately to God. However, Aquinas goes on to say that moral virtues are also sometimes infused directly by God, and more specifically, all the cardinal virtues are infused together with charity (ST I-II q. 65, a. 3). This claim raises a question that has received considerable atten- tion over the past few years.1 What is the relation between the infused

1 The current debate was triggered by articles by William Mattison and Angela McKay Knobel, arguing against (Mattison) or at least calling into question (McKay Knobel) the claim that for Aquinas, the acquired and infused virtues can co-exist; see Angela Knobel, “Can Aquinas’s Infused and Acquired Virtues Coexist in the Christian Life?” Studies in Christian Ethics 23 (2010): 381-96, and “Two Theories of Christian Vir- tue,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84 (2010): 599-618; and William Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 41 moral virtues and virtues acquired by the individual before she re- ceives charity? More specifically, can infused and acquired moral vir- tues co-exist in the same individual? Aquinas does not address this question directly in the Summa the- ologiae, but I believe that he says enough to allow us to answer it with some confidence.2 That is, given what Aquinas says about the neces- sity for the infused moral virtues, taken together with the wider con- text set by his analysis of grace as a form of the soul, it is impossible on his view that the infused and acquired virtues can co-exist in the same individual. That, at least, is what I will argue in this paper. I should add that this conclusion is restricted to his mature view as set forth in the ST. I do not claim that this was his view throughout his career, nor do I attempt to trace the development of his thought on this topic. But I do want to argue that by the time Aquinas develops his final, comprehensive account of the virtues and the life of grace, he is committed to the view that someone in a state of grace cannot have, and does not need, virtues acquired through purely natural principles and directed towards connatural happiness. This conclusion runs contrary to a well-established line of interpre- tation, going back at least to Cajetan and defended by many prominent scholars of Aquinas’s thought.3 On this reading, Aquinas presupposes

Mattison III “Can Christians Possess the Acquired Virtues?” Theological Studies 72 (2011): 558-585. 2 Some commentators do claim that Aquinas says that the acquired virtues can exist together with charity, but I have yet to see a citation from the ST that makes that claim explicitly. The texts most frequently cited in support of this claim include ST I-II q. 65, a. 3, ad 2 and ST II-II q. 47, a. 14, ad 1. In the first text, Aquinas observes that the exercise of an infused virtue can be impeded by contrary dispositions and the “relics” of previous acts, which would be removed through the formation of an acquired vir- tue. However, he does not claim that the infused virtue therefore needs an acquired virtue in order to operate. In the second text, Aquinas draws a distinction between a level of prudence sufficient to avoid sin and attain salvation, which is present in eve- ryone who has grace, and a more comprehensive kind of prudence which is present in only some. But he does not say that this more comprehensive prudence is acquired, and the context would seem to confirm that he is talking about different degrees of possessing infused prudence. 3 As David Decosimo rightly observes, the position defended by Mattison, and up to a point by McKay Knobel, is a minority view; see “More to Love: Ends, Ordering, and the Compatibility of Acquired and Infused Virtues,” in The Virtuous Life: Thomas Aquinas on the Theological Nature of Moral Virtues, ed. Harm Goris and Henk Schoot (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 47, n.1. He himself defends the compatibility of the infused and acquired cardinal virtues in this article and in his recent book, Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2014), 190-197. In addition, see John Harvey, “The Nature of the Infused Moral Vir- tues,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 8 (1955): 172-221; Romanus Cessario, The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics (Notre Dame: The Uni- versity of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 99-113; Renée Mirkes, “Aquinas’s Doctrine of Moral Virtue and its Significance for Theories of Facility,” The Thomist 61 (1997): 42 Jean Porter or implies that the acquired virtues continue to operate in the graced individual, in some kind of separate or subordinate relationship to the infused cardinal virtues. This line of interpretation is attractive, first of all, because it offers a straightforward and plausible answer to an obvious question. What happens when someone who has acquired vir- tues receives the infused virtues? It is natural to think that the acquired virtues continue to operate, presumably in subordination to the infused moral and theological virtues. This way of reading Aquinas has the further advantages of preserving the value and integrity of human na- ture and the place of human activity in shaping one’s moral character. These are important concerns, and I will return to them in the last sec- tion of this paper. At this point, however, I simply want to observe that this reading raises a basic question of its own. That is, if the acquired virtues continue to operate in the graced individual, then why does Aquinas claim that the moral virtues are infused together with charity? Why not simply say, as does, that charity works through the acquired moral virtues, orienting them towards the higher end of divine beatitude?4 To frame this question in another way, if the ac- quired virtues persist after the infusion of grace, why are the infused moral virtues necessary at all? Until recently, this question was relatively neglected. Every stu- dent of Aquinas recognizes that on his view, the infused cardinal vir- tues confer a distinctive orientation towards God, but there has been surprisingly little interest in exploring how this is supposed to work.

189-218; Denis J.M. Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Hu- man Happiness in Aquinas’s Moral Science (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 14-24; John Inglis, “Aquinas’s Replication of the Acquired Moral Virtues: Rethinking the Standard Philosophical Interpretation of Moral Virtue in Aquinas,” Journal of Religious Ethics 27 (1999): 3-27; Robert Miner, “Non-Aris- totelian Prudence in the Prima secundae,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 401-422; Thomas Osborne, “The Augustinianism of Thomas Aquinas’s Moral Theory,” The Thomist 67 (2003), 279-305: “Perfect and Imperfect Virtues in Aquinas,” The Thomist 71 (2007): 39-64; Jennifer Herdt, Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 82-91; Michael Sherwin, “Infused Virtue and the Effects of Acquired Vice: A Test Case for the Thomistic Theory of Infused Car- dinal Virtues,” The Thomist 73 (2009): 29-52. In addition, Nicholas Austin argues that acquired and infused moral virtues are not specifically different, but it is not clear that he attributes this view directly to Aquinas; see Aquinas on Virtue: A Causal Reading (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), 205. Finally, and on the other side of this debate, Andrew Pinset argues for the incompatibility of infused and ac- quired virtues, most explicitly in “Who’s Afraid of the Infused Virtues? Dispositional Infusion, Human and Divine,” 73-96 in The Virtuous Life. I cannot discuss his argu- ments in any detail here; his interpretation of the infused virtues is illuminating, but also, in my view, problematic. Most notably, he denies that the infused virtues are habits, a claim that Aquinas contradicts; see “Who’s Afraid,” 85, and compare, for example, ST I-II q. 63, a. 3, in which Aquinas refers to the infused moral virtues as “habits divinely caused in us....” 4 See Ordinatio III, dist. 36 in Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality, ed. A. Wolter (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 414-416. Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 43

According to one view, the infused cardinal virtues confer an orienta- tion towards one’s supernatural end, but nothing more—that is to say, they do not confer a facility for action. This line of analysis explains why the acquired virtues continue to be necessary, but it does not re- ally help us to see why the infused virtues are necessary.5 At any rate, it is difficult to reconcile this line of interpretation with Aquinas’s clear and unqualified claim that the infused cardinal virtues are oper- ative habits. As such, each infused virtue is oriented towards and de- fined in terms of a distinctive kind of action, directed towards a char- acteristic kind of object which is good in some formally distinct way (ST I-II q. 54, a. 2; ST II-II q. 23, a. 4). He acknowledges at several points that the infused virtues may be impeded by contrary disposi- tions or desires; that is how he accounts for difficulties in practicing the infused cardinal virtues, and the ongoing possibility of sin even for someone who has charity (ST I-II q. 65, a. 3, ad 2, ST II-II q. 24, a. 11). At the same time, he would seem to rule out the suggestion that the imperfections of the infused virtues might need, or even allow for, another set of habits, the acquired virtues, in order to help them along. A habit is a kind of form, and as such, it cannot be augmented—that is to say, extended or rendered more effective—through the addition of another form (ST I-II q. 52, a. 2). By implication, someone’s growth in the practice of the infused virtues would not be due to the assistance of the acquired virtues, but rather, it would reflect the greater permea- tion and effectiveness of the infused habits themselves.6 At any rate, once the received view began to be challenged, schol- ars began to try to account for the necessity of the infused virtues, while still maintaining that the infused and acquired virtues operate together. On one view, the infused moral virtues are necessary in order to carry out distinctive kinds of actions, which are only performed by someone who has grace. But it is difficult to say just what kinds of actions those would be, and at any rate, Aquinas claims that the in- fused moral virtues have the same field of operation as their acquired counterparts, including all the kinds of actions characteristically asso- ciated with a given faculty.7 Alternatively, the infused cardinal virtues

5 The claim that the infused cardinal virtues do not bestow a facility for action seems to have been widely held through the first decades of the last century; for a defense of this view, see Harvey, “The Nature of the Infused Moral Virtues,” 193-194. For a more recent version, see Herdt, Putting on Virtue, 90-91. 6 This claim presupposes that the infused virtues are in some sense open to develop- ment and augmentation, and I believe that this is indeed Aquinas’s view; see ST I-II q. 51, a. 4, ad 3, ST II-II q. 24, a. 2-4. For further discussion of this point, see Mattison, “Can Christians Possess the Acquired Moral Virtues?” 566-7, 576-580. 7 Decosimo claims that the acquired virtues are oriented to acts which reflect right reason, whereas the infused virtues are directed towards acts within the domain of a given virtue which are necessary for salvation and require grace; see Ethics as a Work of Charity, 193. As for Aquinas’s claim that the infused and acquired virtues have the 44 Jean Porter might be said to direct or coordinate the acts of their acquired coun- terparts, in such a way as to direct these towards the final end of char- ity. But it is difficult to see why charity would need to operate through intermediaries in this way. If the acquired virtues can be directed to- wards the agent’s final end at all, why can’t charity itself play this role?8 It is also difficult to see how the infused virtues of temperance and fortitude, both habits of passions, could direct or command their acquired counterparts. The virtues of charity and justice can command the acts of the other virtues, because these are virtues of the will, which is capable of commanding actions, in conjunction with the intellect (ST II-II q. 32, a. 1, ad 1). But virtues of the passions can only lead to actions within the scope of the passions, namely, affective responses to images of particular desirable or noxious objects. The infused virtue of temperance, for example, can elicit desires and aversions which are congruent with the agent’s overall stance of charity, but it is difficult to see how it could move another kind of temperance to elicit desires and aversions of any kind. My point in raising these questions is not to try to settle the debate over infused and acquired virtues through theoretical speculation on the scope and the limits of the virtues. Rather, I want to suggest that if we want to move forward in this debate, we need to look more closely at what Aquinas says about the necessity of the infused cardinal vir- tues. Why does Aquinas claim that the cardinal virtues are necessarily infused together with charity? What does this claim tell us about the distinctive character of the infused cardinal virtues, seen in relation to charity? In the first half of this paper, I want to pursue these questions by focusing on four texts in the ST that would seem to be especially pertinent. The first of these, ST I-II q. 63, a. 3, asks whether some moral virtues are in us through infusion. The second, ST I-II q. 65, a. 3, asks more specifically whether charity can exist without the infused moral virtues. The third and fourth, ST II-II q. 23, aa. 7-8, which we will consider together, ask whether there can be any true virtue with- out charity, and whether charity is the form of the virtues. In the sec- ond half of this paper, I attempt to place this debate within the wider context of Aquinas’s doctrine of grace, in order to make a point about same field of operation, see ST I-II q. 63, a. 4 and De Virtutibus in Communi q. 1, a. 10, ad 8. 8 If I have understood him correctly, Decosimo takes this view in “More to Love,” 53, 56-59. So far as I can tell, most of those who defend the co-existence of infused and acquired virtues take the simpler view that charity directs the acquired virtues. But this approach makes it even harder to see why Aquinas says that infused cardinal vir- tues are necessary. They may cooperate with charity in a more appropriate or harmo- nious way, but if the acquired virtues can get the job done, why are they necessary? I am not persuaded by Decosimo’s interpretations, but he is one of only a few partici- pants in this debate to take seriously Aquinas’s claim that the infused cardinal virtues are necessary. Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 45 the relation between grace and the infused virtues stemming from grace, and the good of human nature perfected by grace.

WHY ARE THE INFUSED CARDINAL VIRTUES NECESSARY? After setting out his overall understanding of the virtues, their re- lation to the faculties of the soul, and the ways in which they are dis- tinguished from one another, Aquinas turns in ST I-II q. 63 to a con- sideration of the causes of the virtues. This is the context within which he poses the question “whether some moral virtues are in us through infusion?” (ST I-II q. 63, a. 3). This question presupposes that we do possess some infused virtues, namely, the theological virtues, which orient us directly to God and therefore go beyond the capacities of human nature. But it is not apparent that we also need to postulate infused moral virtues, which are immediately oriented towards partic- ular goods, but in such a way that these can be ordered to the final end of supernatural happiness. Aquinas develops this idea through three objections. In the first objection, he points out that God does not gen- erally bring something about immediately if secondary causes are suf- ficient to do so; hence, since we can acquire the virtues, there is no need for God to bring them about. In the second objection, he observes that God does nothing superfluous, and since the theological virtues are sufficient to orient us to God, we do not need infused cardinal vir- tues in order to do so. Finally, he once again points out that God does nothing superfluous, and since he can be said to insert the seeds of virtue by creating us as rational creatures, he does not need, in addi- tion, to confer cardinal virtues on us through infusion. These objections have a strikingly contemporary sound. Each one appeals to an ideal of simplicity or fittingness, grounded in a sense of the goodness of created nature and the sufficiency of grace. Simply by creating us as rational creatures, God gives us the capacities we need to acquire and act on the virtues. At the same time, moral goodness alone cannot attain heaven, and so God also bestows the principle of divine life, in the form of faith, hope, and charity. These two divine endowments, the natural and the supernatural, might be expected to work together harmoniously to lead us to our final end of union with God. This is an attractive view, affirming the goodness and the funda- mental integrity of human nature while also acknowledging the neces- sity for grace. And yet, this is not Aquinas’s view. Why not? We might expect him to respond to these objections by reminding us of the crippling effects of sin, but that consideration is absent here. We might also ex- pect him to make the point that the capacities of human nature are inadequate to attain one’s supernatural end. But the objections do not deny that point, and the second objection explicitly acknowledges that the human person is oriented directly to God through infused virtues. 46 Jean Porter

Rather, Aquinas rejects the view sketched above because it presup- poses an inadequate view of grace itself:

It is necessary that an effect be proportionate to its causes and princi- ples. Now all virtues, whether intellectual or moral, which are ac- quired from our acts, come forth from certain natural principles preex- isting in us...; in the place of these natural principles, theological vir- tues are conferred on us by God, through which we are ordained to a supernatural end....Hence, it is necessary that other habits, divinely caused in us, proportionately correspond to the theological virtues, which habits are related to the theological virtues in the same way as the moral and intellectual virtues are related to the natural principles of the virtues (ST I-II q. 63, a. 3).

In this way, Aquinas argues that the infused cardinal virtues are a necessary concomitant of the theological virtues, considered in them- selves and as the first, inchoate principles of other virtues (cf. ST I-II q. 63, a. 3, ad 3). By implication, the intrinsic dynamisms of the theo- logical virtues—and more especially charity, as we will see—are in- trinsically linked to infused cardinal virtues, through which they trans- form every aspect of human life through the operations of grace. So far, nothing in this text rules out the possibility that the acquired virtues might continue to exist and function on a parallel track with the infused cardinal virtues. However, this passage does make it clear that in order to defend this claim, we would need to postulate the ex- istence of two distinct principles of action in the graced soul. On this view, the theological virtues, together with the infused cardinal vir- tues, would operate independently of natural human capacities for knowledge and desire, while these natural capacities would retain their autonomy as principles directed towards a kind of this-worldly happi- ness. At the same time, Aquinas also says that the rational agent nec- essarily has one final end, towards which all his actions are in some way directed (ST I-II q. 1, aa. 4-6). By implication, someone who is oriented towards the supreme happiness of union with God cannot also pursue connatural happiness, since this is a qualitatively different kind of end.9 Correlatively, it cannot be the case that the infused and ac-

9 Mattison emphasizes this point in support of the conclusion that the infused and acquired virtues cannot co-exist, “Can Christians Possess the Acquired Moral Vir- tues?” 560-565. I agree, but at this point I am making a more modest claim, that at the very least, someone who argues for the co-existence of these two kinds of virtues must also claim that the acquired virtues are oriented towards the final end of beatitude in some way. Almost all the authors we are considering would agree with this. However, Mirkes apparently believes that the acquired virtues remain oriented towards their proper end of natural happiness, which is in turn oriented towards supernatural hap- piness; see “Aquinas’s Doctrine of Moral Virtue and its Significance for Theories of Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 47 quired virtues operate in complete independence, oriented to the dis- parate ends of supernatural and natural happiness. Presumably, the op- erations of the acquired virtues are harmonized or subordinated in some way to the overarching aim of supernatural happiness. Nonethe- less, on this view, the graced human soul operates out of two distinct principles, and correspondingly, two distinct sets of virtues, which are hierarchically ordered and extrinsically related to one another. Whatever the merits of this view may be, I do not believe that it can be Aquinas’s own view. We will return to the question of grace as a principle of operation and virtue. The more immediate difficulty, from Aquinas’s standpoint, arises out of the claim that the theological virtues can somehow direct or work through the acquired virtues. In his responses to the objections sketched above, Aquinas seems to rule this out. The most relevant of these is the response to the first objec- tion, which as we recall claims that infused moral virtues are superflu- ous, since we can attain the moral virtues through our own actions. Aquinas replies that “indeed, some moral and intellectual acts can be caused in us by our actions, but these are not proportioned to the the- ological virtues. And, therefore, we need others, immediately caused by God, which are proportionate to these” (ST I-II q. 63, a. 3, ad 1). It is not immediately clear what Aquinas means by saying that ac- quired virtues are not proportioned to the theological virtues.10 He has already told us that effects must be proportioned to their causes, but it is difficult to see how this general rule would apply in this context. In what sense could the relation between theological and moral virtues, of any kind, be a causal relation? The parallel text in De Virtutibus in Communi (DVC, un 10) sheds light on this question. In that text, he frames the causal relation more specifically in terms of the proportion between a causal power which perfects something and the correspond- ing capacity for perfection in that which is perfected.11 For Aquinas, perfection always implies the actualization of some intrinsic potential or capability, in accordance with the form of existence proper to that which is actualized. Correlatively, nothing can be perfected—actual- ized, realized, developed—unless it already has some latent capacity

Facility,” 191-192. This claim overlooks the point that natural and supernatural hap- piness are two distinct ways of attaining one’s perfection, that is to say, one’s full and appropriate development as a rational creature. Each mode of perfection is complete at its own level. The particular goods of human life can be oriented towards supernat- ural perfection—that is what the infused virtues do—but connatural happiness is com- plete in accordance with its own standards and cannot be oriented towards another, qualitatively different kind of completion. 10 For a helpful discussion of this question and its relation to this debate, see Knobel, “Two Theories of Christian Virtue,” 610-618. 11 The concept of perfection is fundamental to Aquinas’s thought; within the ST, the key texts would include ST I q. 4, a. 1, q. 2; q. 5, a.1, especially ad 1; q. 6, a. 1; and with respect to the perfection of the rational creature, ST I-II q. 1, a. 7; q. 5, a. 6. 48 Jean Porter to be perfected in the relevant way. Hence, no created causal power can bring about some perfection in another, unless the agent and the thing perfected are, so to speak, on the same ontological plane. That is why God necessarily creates the rational soul directly—its powers ex- ceed the capacity of matter. He goes on to say that:

It is therefore necessary that, just as the first perfection of the human person, which is the rational soul, exceeds the power of corporal mat- ter, so the ultimate perfection to which the human person can reach, which is the happiness of eternal life, exceeds the full power of human nature. And because each thing is oriented towards an end through some operation, and those things which are oriented towards an end are necessarily in some way proportioned to the end, it is necessary that there be some perfections of the human person by which he is ordered to a supernatural end, which exceeds the power of the natural principles of the human person. This however is not possible, unless over and above natural principles, some supernatural principles of op- eration are infused in the human person by God (DVC un 10).

These supernatural principles include grace itself, through which the human person attains a kind of “spiritual being,” and the supernat- ural virtues, which orient the intellect and will directly towards God. Finally:

And just as beyond those natural principles, habits of virtue are re- quired in order to perfect the human person in a way that is connatural to him...so from divine infusion the human person obtains, in addition to the afore-mentioned supernatural principles, other infused virtues, through which he is perfected to carry out operations ordered to the end of eternal life (DVC un 10).

We are now in a better position to understand what Aquinas means by saying, at ST I-II q. 65, a. 3, ad 1, that infused cardinal virtues are necessary because acquired virtues are not proportionate to the theo- logical virtues. Aquinas presupposes that a higher virtue can be said to perfect a lower virtue by actualizing it, in the sense of commanding its proper act and ordering it to some higher or more comprehensive good. This can only work if the higher and the lower virtue are already oriented in some way towards the same overarching aim, the latter presumably in a more limited way; otherwise, the commanding activ- ity of the higher virtue would distort the innate orientation of the lower virtue, rather than perfecting it. Hence, the infused moral virtues can be said to be proportionate to the theological virtues because each set of virtues is directed towards the same supernatural end, indirectly or directly. The acquired virtues, in contrast, are directed to a different end, connatural perfection or happiness. This orientation towards con- Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 49 natural happiness is constitutive of the acquired virtues, just as an ori- entation to supernatural happiness is constitutive of the infused cardi- nal virtues.12 That is why the acquired virtues do not have the capacity, as it were, to be perfected through the commanding operations of the theological virtues. The theological virtues cannot direct the acquired virtues to their own end without, in a sense, doing violence to the in- trinsic orientation of these virtues—that is to say, they are not propor- tioned to the theological virtues. Aquinas goes on, in his response to the second objection, to argue that the theological virtues alone cannot perfect the soul with respect to this-worldly desires and activities—a response framed in such a way as to imply that the soul needs to be perfected in this way, in order for the theological virtues themselves to operate effectively. And fi- nally, he reminds us that the natural power of the innate principles of virtue cannot extend to the attainment of a supernatural end, and that is why we need supernatural principles of action. This would seem to be another way of formulating the point that habits must be propor- tioned to the end towards which they are oriented, and it reinforces the idea that our natural capacities and the acquired virtues stemming from these capacities cannot be oriented towards supernatural beatitude, even instrumentally.

WHY DOES CHARITY NEED THE INFUSED CARDINAL VIRTUES? This brings us to the second text under consideration, ST I-II q. 65, a. 3, “Whether charity can exist without other, moral virtues?” Once again, the objections with which Aquinas introduces this question in- dicate what, for him, are the issues at stake. The first objection claims that charity alone is sufficient to fulfill all the acts of virtue; the second and third, in contrast, argue that at least some of those who have char- ity do not, in fact, possess all the moral virtues. So far, nothing in this article suggests that the distinction between infused and acquired vir- tues might be relevant to the question at hand. The objections are fo- cused on the relation between charity and the moral virtues, without further qualification. Taken together, they point to the conclusion that charity alone is sufficient for living the life of grace. Yet on Aquinas’s view, charity alone is not enough. In the course of developing this claim, he explicitly links charity to the infused moral virtues, arguing that the latter are necessary in order for charity to function:

12 Aquinas makes this point repeatedly; see, for example, ST I-II q. 51, a. 4, q. 63, a. 3, and q. 110, a. 3. For further elaboration of the relation between different kinds of perfection or happiness and divisions of the virtues, see William Mattison, “Thomas’s Categorizations of Virtue: Historical Background and Contemporary Significance,” The Thomist 74 (2010): 189-235, and Arielle Harms, “Acquired and Infused Moral Virtue: A Distinction of Ends,” The New Blackfriars 95 (2014): 71-87. 50 Jean Porter

With charity all the moral virtues are infused simultaneously. The rea- son is that God does not work less perfectly in the works of grace than in the works of nature. Now we see in the operations of nature that principles of some works are not found in something, unless those things which are necessary to perfecting these are found in it....[I]t is manifest that charity, insofar as it orders the human person to the ul- timate end, is the principle of all the good works which can be or- dained to the ultimate end. That is why it is necessary that with char- ity, all the moral virtues are infused together, by which the human person perfects specific kinds of good works. (ST I-II q. 65, a. 3).

As we know from earlier texts, the virtues cannot function properly, unless they operate together (ST I-II q. 65, aa. 1, 3). More specifically, a will that is oriented towards love of God and neighbor cannot effectively command and carry out charitable actions, unless the agent’s passions and practical intellect are disposed in such a way as to be congruent with charity and to operate harmoniously with it. Aquinas does not even consider the possibility that the acquired moral virtues might work together with charity in the requisite way, even though we know from the DVC that he is aware of this possibility (see DVC un 10.4). When we turn to his response to the first objection, we get some idea of why this might be the case.

For if the principal agent is well disposed, a perfect act will not follow, if the instrument is not well disposed. Hence, in order for the human person to act well in those things which are directed towards an end, it is necessary that he not only have virtues through which he is well related to the end, but also virtues through which he is well related to those things which are directed towards the end, for the virtue which is directed towards the end stands as principle and mover with respect to those things which are directed to the end (ST I-II q. 65, a. 3, ad 1).

In the last section, we saw that Aquinas’s claim that the acquired virtues are not proportioned to the theological virtues should be un- derstood in terms of perfection, understood as development or com- pletion in accordance with some intrinsic standard. At this point, he makes a similar claim, formulated explicitly in terms of the relation between the end pursued by charity and the ends which define the moral virtues. At the same time, this text advances our understanding of the distinction between the acquired and the infused moral virtues by calling attention to the way in which each category of virtue is de- fined in accordance with the end towards which it is oriented. In order to move forward at this point, we need to look more closely at the distinction between the acquired and the infused cardinal virtues, as Aquinas understands them. We might assume that any vir- Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 51 tue which pertains to particular goods, which can be pursued and en- joyed in this life, must be an acquired virtue. But as we noted above, Aquinas does not distinguish between the acquired and infused cardi- nal virtues in this way. These two kinds of cardinal virtues are both oriented towards characteristic kinds of particular goods—for exam- ple, acquired and infused temperance are both oriented towards the right enjoyment of pleasures of touch. These two kinds of virtues are specifically distinct because they follow two different normative standards, determined by reference to reason and Divine Law, respec- tively (ST I-II q. 63, a. 4, ad 2). We are familiar by now with the claim that the acquired cardinal virtues are governed by right reason, whereas the infused cardinal vir- tues observe a standard set by divine law (ST I-II q. 63, a. 3, q. 110, a. 3). This claim has led to the suggestion that any virtue which takes account of rational standards must be acquired, but that is not Aqui- nas’s point.13 Rather, in each instance the normative standard in ques- tion is determined by reference to the final end towards which the vir- tues are oriented. The acquired virtues are oriented towards the per- fection of human nature, in accordance with the potentialities that are connatural to it. Since reason is the distinctive mark of human nature, this implies that the acquired virtues perfect the human person by de- veloping her rational capacities in a full and appropriate way, and cor- relatively, the relevant standards can be discerned through human na- ture. The infused virtues, in contrast, are oriented towards the super- natural perfection of the human agent, inchoately through grace and fully through union with God in the next life. Since this kind of per- fection exceeds the capacities of human nature, the relevant standards must be given through divine, that is to say, revealed law. At the same time, the fundamental distinction between these two kinds of virtues lies in the way in which each is related to the final perfection, that is to say, the happiness of the individual. Acquired and infused virtues are oriented towards two distinct kinds of happiness, and in each case, this orientation towards a specific kind of happiness partially defines the virtue itself.14 This last point is critical to understanding the significance of Aqui- nas’s distinction between the acquired and infused virtues. Those who

13 For example, Decosimo says that “Infused virtue cannot apply right reason to some matter any more than acquired virtue can apply New Law [sic] or a cake-baking habit can produce sweaters,” Decosimo, “More to Love,” 55. Yet Aquinas does say that the infused virtues incorporate rational considerations into their operations; right reason does not set the normative standard for the infused virtues, but rational considerations are incorporated into its operations whenever they are relevant and appropriate to the standards set by the New Law; see ST I q. 1, a. 8, ad 2 and ST II-II q. 26, a. 6. 14 Aquinas makes this point repeatedly; the key texts within the ST would include ST I-II q. 5, a. 5, q. 51, a. 4, q. 62, a. 2, q. 63, a. 3, and q. 110, a. 3. In addition, see the studies by Mattison and Harms cited above, note 12. 52 Jean Porter defend the compatibility of acquired and infused virtues presuppose that the acquired virtues are defined by an orientation towards some kind of finite good, which can be directed towards either natural or supernatural ends. But this is not Aquinas’s view. Rather, he holds that acquired and infused virtues are both defined by reference to a for- mally distinctive kind of action, which pursues its end in a character- istic way, in accordance with some rule. This point is worth under- scoring: These two kinds of virtue are distinguished both by their ori- entation towards two different kinds of perfection, but also, and cor- relatively, by two formally distinctive kinds of objects (ST I-II q. 63, a. 4, ad 1). As we have already seen, the rule or normative standard in the case of the acquired virtues is determined by reference to the over- all rational perfection, the connatural happiness, of the individual. In- fused virtues, similarly, are defined by reference to a formally distinc- tive kind of action, which pursues a given, particular kind of good in accordance with one’s overall orientation to supernatural happiness. The point is, in each instance the formal definition of the virtue pre- supposes a distinctive standard of perfection, natural or supernatural, by reference to which the distinctive normative ideal of the virtue is determined. We are now in a better position to see why Aquinas says that char- ity cannot operate without infused cardinal virtues. Like every other virtue, charity is oriented towards a distinctive kind of action, in this case, a distinctive kind of love of God. In order to work effectively in other spheres of life, it needs to work through other virtues, which are immediately oriented towards other, more particular kinds of goods. At the same time, charity cannot work through virtuous dispositions which are oriented towards, and formally shaped by, a different end than that pursued by charity itself. Hence, Aquinas concludes, charity can only effectively operate in conjunction with moral virtues which are already indirectly oriented towards, and defined by reference to, the supernatural end of charity itself. By implication, charity cannot operate through the acquired virtues. If this is so, then it is difficult to see how the acquired virtues could continue to exist in someone who has charity. Aquinas certainly ad- mits the possibility of latent virtues, but he does not seem to allow for the possibility that a virtue might remain if its field of operation is superseded by a contrary or a higher-order habit (cf. ST I-II q. 54, a. 4).15 In the last section, we considered the possibility that the infused

15 Decosimo claims that habits can co-exist in the same faculty, if they are different in species from one another; “More to Love,” 55. But this is too sweeping. Aquinas says that specifically distinct habits can co-exist in one faculty because the faculties of the human person are oriented to more than one kind of action, each of which is informed by an appropriate habit (ST I-II q. 54, a. 1). But this does not mean that any two specifically distinct habits can co-exist—otherwise, someone could simultane- ously have a virtue and its contrary vice (cf. ST I-II q. 71, a. 3). Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 53 and acquired virtues might exist together, on parallel tracks of good- ness, as it were. But this line of analysis presupposes that the opera- tions of the acquired virtues might somehow be directed towards the final end of charity, and now it appears that this is not the case. Charity cannot command the acts of the acquired virtues because they are not proportioned to the proper object of charity, that is, supernatural hap- piness attained through direct union with God. We might wonder whether the infused cardinal virtues could fill this gap, mediating in some way between the acquired virtues and charity. But if the acquired virtues are disproportionate to charity, they are disproportionate to the infused cardinal virtues for the same reason—that is, they are oriented towards two different kinds of ends. At any rate, as far as I have been able to determine, there is no textual support for this suggestion in the ST or elsewhere. Based on what we have seen so far, it would seem that Aquinas would reject the thesis that the acquired virtues can co-exist with the infused virtues. Admittedly, he does not consider this thesis in the ST, but given his assumptions and aims, he has no reason to consider it. He argues that the theological virtues are intrinsically oriented towards infused cardinal virtues, in somewhat the same way as the first princi- ples of practical reason are intrinsically oriented towards acquiring virtues oriented towards one’s rational good. The infused cardinal vir- tues, correlatively, are intrinsically oriented towards the end of the the- ological virtues, and this shapes the proper object defining each par- ticular virtue. That is why the infused cardinal virtues can be appro- priately responsive to the theological virtues—they are already ori- ented, in limited and particular ways, towards the goal of the theolog- ical virtues. Acquired virtues, in contrast, are intrinsically oriented to- wards the connatural happiness proper to us as creatures of a certain kind. In each case, the orientation in question is not just arbitrary. The cardinal virtues, whether acquired or infused, are habitual dispositions to reason or to desire in certain specific ways, in light of one’s overall beliefs, aspirations, and objects of love. Someone whose deepest aims and desires are focused on his family, or her commonwealth, or the kingdom of ends, will reflect and judge and feel in ways that are deeply shaped by these ends. In order to think and desire in accordance with a supernatural end, the agent will need to develop a new set of judgements and desires, congruent with her final end. Aquinas be- lieves that this transformation comes about immediately through the infusion of cardinal virtues together with charity, but he acknowledges that the operations of the infused virtues may take time to become ap- parent, and may never be completely expressed (ST I-II q. 65, a. 3, ad 54 Jean Porter

2).16 Nonetheless, he holds on to the view that the transformation of the will brought about through charity is always accompanied by a transformation of the whole person, including the will in all its aspects, the intellect, and the passions.

CHARITY AND THE ACTS OF VIRTUE This brings us, finally, to two texts in which Aquinas considers charity and the virtues from a different perspective, focusing on char- ity seen in relation to acts proper to virtue, rather than charity seen in relation to other virtuous habits. The texts in question occur within the context of Aquinas’s initial question on charity in the secunda secun- dae. In ST II-II q. 23 a. 7, he asks whether true virtue is possible with- out charity, and then in q. 23, a. 8 he goes on to ask whether charity is the form of the virtues. Turning to ST II-II q. 23, a. 7, the first thing to note is that Aquinas has already addressed this question, or a close variant of it, at ST I-II q. 65, a. 2, in which he asks whether the moral virtues can exist without charity. In that article, he analyzes the issues at stake in terms of the distinction, familiar by now, between two kinds of habits, grounded in different principles and oriented towards the distinct ends of natural and supernatural happiness. In the article that we are now considering, in contrast, Aquinas frames the issue in terms of good actions, rather than good habits. The first objection makes this clear: “It is proper to virtue to produce good acts. But those who do not have charity do some good acts, for example when they clothe the naked, feed the starving, and similar works.” The second objection, similarly, observes that we find many examples of true chastity and true justice among unbelievers. Finally, and less immediately relevant to us, the third objection notes that those who lack charity do often have intellectual virtues such as art. In the main body of the article, Aquinas begins by looking more closely at what it means for something to be a good action. An action is principally judged to be good by reference to its end, and the end, in turn, can be considered from the standpoint of one’s final end, or from the standpoint of some proximate end. He goes on to say that:

16 As we have already seen, Aquinas attributes these deficiencies to contrary disposi- tions, which would not rise to the level of habits, or else to the incomplete reception of the habitual form by the potency that is its subject; in addition to the text just cited, see ST I-II q. 55, a. 1, ad 1, ST II-II q. 24, a. 11. Recently, a number of theologians have questioned whether Aquinas’s view of infusion is persuasive, arguing instead for a model of gradual infusion; for a good defense of this view, together with a summary of the arguments, see Nicholas Austin, Aquinas on Virtue, 190-212. It would go out- side the limits of this paper to address this question. I would simply observe that for Aquinas, form is always tied to identity, either substantial identity or identity under some aspect, that is to say, identity as a dog, or identity as a brown dog. In either case, identity does not allow for degrees, and correlatively, neither does form. For a good illustration of this approach, see ST I-II q. 52, aa. 1, 2. Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 55

The ultimate and principal good of the human person is the enjoyment of God...and the human person is ordained to this through charity. However, the secondary and as it were particular good of the human person can take two forms. One indeed is a true good, since it can be ordained, considered as it is in itself, to the principal good, which is the ultimate end. The other is an apparent and not a true good, because it leads away from the final good (ST II-II q. 23, a. 7).

What Aquinas has in mind here, as he goes on to explain, are those kinds of actions which correspond to similitudes of the virtues, for ex- ample, the act of cunning associated with a worldly similitude of pru- dence. The salient point is that Aquinas is contrasting two kinds of actions, those which are performed with a good motive, so far left un- specified, and those which are distorted by a vicious motive in some way. On this basis, he goes on to identify the different ways in which someone might be oriented towards final and proximate goods. True virtue in the full and unqualified sense presupposes charity. At the same time, it is possible to be oriented towards genuine proximate goods in an appropriate way without charity, and a disposition of this kind counts as a virtue in a qualified sense. He goes on to say that it is also possible to be oriented towards seeming but false goods, citing a text from Augustine to the effect that seeming virtues motivated by avarice are not virtues at all. He concludes by saying that “if that par- ticular good is a true good, for example to conserve the city or some- thing of this sort, it will indeed be a true virtue, but imperfect, unless it is referred to the final and perfect good.” This is a compressed text, and it raises a question about the inter- pretation developed so far. Read in one way, it would seem to say that charity orients the virtues directed towards particular goods towards its own final end. Aquinas does not specify acquired or infused virtues, but since he refers earlier in this article to true virtues apart from char- ity, we might think that what he has in mind are acquired virtues, di- rected by charity towards the final end. But this conclusion would be too quick. Aquinas is here contrasting a genuine particular good with an apparent good, associated with a similitude of virtue, in order to set up a further contrast, between virtues which do not stem from grace, and yet are associated with genuine goods, and similitudes of virtue, directed towards seeming goods. He then goes on to say that if such a genuine particular good is referred to the final end of charity, then it is associated with a virtue that is such in an unqualified sense. My point is that when Aquinas speaks in this context of referring some- thing to charity, what he has in mind is a genuinely good kind of ac- tion, which as such can be associated with a true virtue, but not the 56 Jean Porter virtuous habit itself.17 And this is what we would expect, since as we recall, one virtue commands another by commanding the act that is proper to the virtue. This line of interpretation is confirmed by the next article, “whether charity is the form of the virtues.” In this article, Aquinas offers his interpretation of a traditional claim that charity is the form of the vir- tues. In fact, this is an awkward claim for him, because given his over- all metaphysical commitments, it ought to imply that all true virtue is really equivalent to charity. The first objection captures this point. It observes that if charity is the form of the virtues, then it has to be either an exemplary or an essential form, and in either case, other virtues would be species of, or simply equivalent to charity itself. The second and third objections contrast the formal cause with other kinds of cau- sality that are more proper to charity, either material cause, because charity is said to be the root of the virtues, or efficient or final causal- ity. Aquinas is committed to defending the traditional claim that char- ity is the form of the virtues, but he does so in such a way as to preserve the distinction between charity and the other virtues. Charity, he ar- gues, can be said to be the form of the virtues in a qualified sense, insofar as it directs the acts of the other virtues to its own proper end:

In moral matters the form of an act is principally dependent on the end. The reason for this is that the principle of moral acts is the will, the object, and as it were the form of which is the end. Now the form of an act always follows the form of the agent. Hence, it is necessary that in moral matters, that which gives an act its order to an end also

17 The distinction between an action of a kind associated with a virtue and an act of virtue, that is to say, an act produced by a virtuous habit, is not central to Aquinas’s thought, but he is familiar with it; see ST II-II q. 32, a. 1, ad 1. This distinction is also relevant to a much-discussed text, DVC a. 10, ad 4, which reads as follows: “Since there can be no merit without charity, the acts of the acquired virtues cannot be meri- torious without charity. Together with charity, all the other virtues are infused, hence the acts of the acquired virtues cannot be meritorious, unless mediated by infused virtue. For virtues ordered to an inferior end cannot bring about an act oriented to a superior end, except through the mediation of a superior virtue.” Does Aquinas mean that the inferior virtue in question is itself somehow mediated through the superior virtue, or does he mean—as the comparison with ST II-II q. 23, aa. 7 and 8 suggests— that the act associated with the lower virtue is transformed, through charity, into a meritorious act? Taken by itself, the text is open to either interpretation. For a very helpful overview of the issues raised by this text, see Angela Knobel, “A Confusing Comparison: Interpreting De Virtutibus in Communi a.10, ad 4,” in The Virtuous Life, 97-115. At the same time, I agree with Mattison that this text can be read in such a way as to bring it into line with the interpretation of the parallel texts in the ST; see “Can Christians Possess the Acquired Moral Virtues?” 567-568. At any rate, I would argue that the texts under consideration, ST II-II q. 23, aa. 7 and 8, are not ambiguous in the same way as the DVC text, especially when we take account of the way in which 8 develops 7. Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 57

gives to it its form. Now it is clear from what was said above that through charity, the acts of all the other virtues are ordained to the ultimate end. Accordingly, this itself gives form to the acts of all the other virtues. On this account it is said to be the form of the virtues, for the virtues themselves are said to be ordered to a formed act (ST II-II q. 23, a. 8).

Does it follow that the infused moral virtues are all identical with charity? No, because charity is not, on this account, the exemplary or essential form of the virtues, as Aquinas goes on to explain: “Charity is said to be the form of the other virtues, not in an exemplary or es- sential sense, but rather in an efficient sense, since it determines the form of all, in the way set forth” (ST II-II q. 23, a. 9, ad 1). He will go on to make an almost identical argument with respect to general jus- tice, arguing that general justice is not simply equivalent to virtue in general, but rather, is general in the sense that it directs the acts of the other virtues towards its own overarching end (ST II-II q. 58, a. 6). At that point, he explicitly says what he implies here, that charity is in a certain sense the form of all the virtues, and yet is not equivalent to these. The critical point is that Aquinas’s argument here depends on the claim that charity directs the acts of the other virtues towards its own proper end of supernatural happiness. Note that he does not say that charity directs virtuous habits, as such, towards its proper end. Rather, charity actualizes virtuous habits of a certain kind by commanding the actions that are proper to those virtues. Correlatively, the virtues that are actualized in this way are oriented towards those kinds of actions which are proportioned to charity—that is to say, those kinds of ac- tions proper to the infused cardinal virtues, which are oriented towards particular goods, as referred to one’s supernatural end. It is important to note here that Aquinas does not simply say that charity operates by directing good actions to a further end. His point, rather, is that human acts commanded by charity are intrinsically shaped by the orientation to the final end of charity, in such a way as to be formally distinct from those kinds of actions which pursue particular goods in reference to a connatural final end (cf. ST I-II q. 63, a. 4, ad 1). As he says, charity gives the form to the acts of the other virtues, which correlatively are defined by reference to what he here calls the formed act, which con- stitutes the proper object of the virtue. According to those who argue for the co-existence of charity and the acquired virtues, the acts of the acquired virtues are in some way directed towards the final end of charity, directly or through the inter- mediary of the infused cardinal virtues. I believe that this text defini- tively rules out that line of interpretation. According to Aquinas, ac- tions commanded by charity are intrinsically informed by charity, in 58 Jean Porter such a way as to be intrinsically oriented towards the final end of char- ity itself. At the same time, charity, as the supreme virtue of the will, is a comprehensive and architectonic virtue, operative in every good action of the graced individual (De Caritate q. 1, a. 5, ad 3; cf. ST II- II q. 24, a. 11). Her desires, choices, and actions, insofar as they are not sinful, will necessarily be shaped and governed by the overall ori- entation towards union with God that is proper to charity. Given this, there is no space and no need for another set of habitual dispositions, grounded in purely natural principles of operation and oriented to- wards a different kind of final end. So far, we have framed the relation between infused and acquired virtues in terms of relations among different kinds of ends, habits, and actions. But for Aquinas, the infused virtues can only be understood within a wider context, set by his doctrine of grace. We now turn to a further consideration of that point.

MORAL VIRTUE AND THE OPERATIONS OF GRACE Aquinas holds that without God’s gratuitous assistance, men and women cannot desire, act towards, or attain the union with God that constitutes their ultimate happiness (ST I-II q. 51, a. 4, q. 110, aa. 2,3). Furthermore, the kind of assistance in question is distinct from God’s gratuitous acts of creation and preservation, that is to say, it is super- natural, rather than natural (ST I-II q. 110, a. 2). Without this kind of grace, men and women cannot overcome the effects of original sin, or repent, be forgiven, and healed from actual sin. More fundamentally, even innocent human nature, or for that matter, angelic nature stands in need of grace in order to attain supernatural happiness, which goes beyond the capacities of any created nature.18 Without grace, we would be capable of a kind of connatural happiness, consisting in the practice of the acquired virtues (ST I-II q. 5, a. 5). With grace, we are oriented towards and ultimately attain the happiness of friendship with God, known and loved in his full, Trinitarian reality. Aquinas’s doctrine of grace raises the same kinds of questions that run through the debate over the infused and acquired virtues. What is the relation between grace and nature, considered as two principles of operation oriented towards two distinct ends? These issues were widely debated among Aquinas scholars and theologians throughout most of the last century.19 According to one view, the natural and the

18 Aquinas develops this point in a systematic way through his consideration of a set of traditional questions pertaining to what the human person can achieve without grace; see ST I-II q. 109, aa. 1-10. 19 For a general history of the theological distinction between nature and grace, see John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tra- dition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 72-115. For an illuminating discussion of the relevance of this history to current debates over acquired and infused virtue, see Pin- set, “Who’s Afraid of Infused Virtue?” 79-80. Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 59 supernatural co-exist as two distinct, although ultimately co-ordinated spheres of existence and activity. On this view, natural inclinations and activities, the purely moral virtues, and the offer touchstones for understanding Christian virtue, while also providing common ground with those who do not share Christian faith. Above all, this line of interpretation sought to preserve the integrity of na- ture—perhaps, at the cost of giving enough weight to the necessity of grace. Beginning in the early twentieth century, Thomists and theologians generally began to react against this way of construing the relation between nature and grace. At the risk of over-simplifying, this reaction generally took the form of interrogating the claim that nature and grace are two distinct principles of operation. It may be that grace supersedes nature, or it might be said that God’s creative and sanctifying opera- tions are not really distinct, or we might regard nature as an abstraction that is never actually realized, except as in some way qualified by grace. This line of interpretation is motivated by a strong sense of the importance and comprehensiveness of grace, together with a height- ened sense of the significance of dynamism and historical process, over against a supposedly timeless nature. At the same time, if the for- mer approach tends to denigrate grace, this line of interpretation risks denying the integrity of nature, and by implication, the fundamental goodness of God’s creation. It will be apparent by now that current debates over acquired and infused virtues raise many of the same issues as do earlier controver- sies over nature and grace. Indeed, we can helpfully approach these as a continuation of these earlier debates. Those who defend the co-ex- istence of acquired and infused cardinal virtues are motivated by the same commitments to the integrity of nature and the value of reason as we find among defenders of a clear division between the natural and the supernatural. By the same token, this way of relating two dif- ferent kinds of virtues presupposes the same kind of hierarchical divi- sion between natural principles and the operations of grace that early twentieth century theologians found objectionable. At least, the claim that the acquired and infused virtues can co-exist would seem to have a strong affinity with the older, two-tier model of natural and super- natural principles of action. If that is so—and if it is indeed the case that Aquinas rules out the co-existence of acquired and infused virtue—then it might seem that we are forced to accept an attenuated view of nature, along the lines sketched above. Almost everyone involved in the current debate would reject this alternative, and rightly so. But once we admit that the infused virtues cannot co-exist with connatural, acquired virtues, are we not forced to admit that in this respect, at least, grace really does operate as a comprehensive principle, without any tethering in natural principles or the values inherent in these? In a word, no. In the 60 Jean Porter last section of this paper, I want to argue that these are false alterna- tives. The key question at this point is, what is the relation between nature and grace, considered as two principles of operation? And can we say that natural principles are in any way preserved in the opera- tions of grace? In order to address these questions, we need to look more closely at Aquinas’s views on grace, seen in itself and as a principle of virtue. We have already noted that Aquinas, like every other scholastic theo- logian, holds that no man or woman can please God or attain salvation without God’s gratuitous aid, identified with grace. Aquinas is espe- cially careful to distinguish this kind of gratuitous help from God’s free decision to create and preserve all creatures, a kind of gratuity that is expressed through the existence and orderly operations of the natu- ral world. The gratuitous assistance proper to grace, in contrast, oper- ates in such a way as to transcend the natural capacities of the human creature, in such a way as to orient her to union with God. We might understand God’s gratuitous aid in any number of ways. Aquinas addresses this question under the general heading of “the grace of God, with respect to its ,” and the first article signals the approach that he takes. In ST I-II q. 110, a. 1, he asks whether grace posits something in the soul, finally concluding that “so there- fore when it is said that the human person has the grace of God, what is signified is something supernatural in the human person, coming forth from God.” This general description leaves open just what it is that God provides, and Aquinas addresses this further question in the next article, which asks whether grace is a quality of the soul. He be- gins by observing that God can be said to aid someone gratuitously by moving him to some cognition or volition or action, and in this case, the effect of God’s aid is a motion of the soul, rather than a quality. He goes on to say that:

In another way the human person is aided by the gratuitous will of God in such a way that some habitual gift is poured into the soul by God. And this indeed, because it is not appropriate that God should provide less for those whom he loves in such a way that they have supernatural goods, than he provides for creatures that he loves in such a way that they have natural goods. For he provides for natural crea- tures in such a way that he not only moves them to their natural acts, but he also bestows on them certain forms and powers, which are the principles of acts, so that they are themselves inclined to motions of this kind. And so the motion by which they are moved by God is made connatural and easy to creatures....Much more, therefore, does he pour out certain forms or supernatural qualities on those whom he moves to attain the supernatural good of eternity, according to which they are moved by him sweetly and promptly to attain the good of eternity. And so the gift of grace is a certain quality (ST I-II q. 110, a. 2).

Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 61

Aquinas goes on to say that grace is a kind of accidental form (ST I-II q. 110, a. 2, ad 2). More specifically, it is a kind of habit, that is to say, a stable disposition towards a characteristic kind of existence and operation. As an accidental form, grace does not change the essence of the soul, but it qualifies the way in which that essence is actualized. Considered within the context of the natural order, this kind of habit- ual disposition of the soul would be superfluous, since the soul is “the completive form of human nature;” however, “if we speak of a supe- rior nature, in which the human person can share, nothing prohibits the existence of some habit in the soul according to its essence, that is, grace” (ST I-II q. 50, a. 2). Returning to Aquinas’s treatment of the essence of grace at ST I-II q. 110, he goes on in q. 110, a. 3 to consider the claim that grace is identical to the infused virtues, and he argues that it is not. The virtues, whether acquired or infused, are perfections, and a perfection implies a normative standard, determined by some antecedently existing na- ture. The acquired virtues perfect the faculties of the soul by reference to a standard set by human nature as discerned through reason, and in the same way, the infused virtues perfect the faculties by reference to a standard set by the divine nature in which the individual participates. This participation in divine nature, which is brought about through grace, is therefore prior to the infused virtues and cannot be equated with them. This brings him, finally, to the question of whether grace is in the essence of the soul as its subject, or in the potencies of the soul. Given what he has just said about the relation of grace to the infused virtues, which are habits of the potencies of the soul, he an- swers this question readily:

If however grace differs from virtue, it cannot be said that the poten- cies of the soul are subjects of grace because every perfection of a potency of the soul has the rational character of a virtue.... Hence it follows that grace, just as it is prior to virtue, so it has as its subject that which is prior to the potencies of the soul, so that it is indeed in the essence of the soul. For just as through the intellectual potency the human person participates in divine cognition through the virtue of faith; and according to the potency of the will he participates in divine love through the virtue of charity; so also through the nature of the soul he participates, in accordance with a certain similitude, in the di- vine nature through which he is regenerated or recreated (ST I-II q. 110, a. 4).

In his account of the essence of grace, Aquinas emphasizes that grace is a created quality in the soul itself. It cannot be equated with God or the Holy Spirit moving the soul as an instrument, nor is it equivalent to the virtues, nor is it a kind of super-potency or power, through which the soul carries out good actions of a certain kind. Ra- ther, it is a quality of the soul, a way of being and operating which 62 Jean Porter informs all the faculties of the soul (ST I-II q. 110, a. 4). It will be apparent by now that Aquinas’s account of grace rein- forces our earlier conclusion that the infused and acquired virtues can- not co-exist. Grace is a quality of the whole soul, comprehensively transforming all its distinctively human potencies in accordance with a participation in divine nature. This comprehensive transformation comes about through the perfection and actualization of these poten- cies through virtues and actions which stem from inchoate principles of belief and love, and reflect the standards set by divinized human nature. In order for acquired virtues to take root in this context, we would need to postulate some potencies, or some sphere of activity, that remains untouched by grace and subject to the standards of cre- ated human nature. But on the terms set by Aquinas’s doctrine of grace, there is no such purely natural sphere of activity within the soul of someone in grace. The human person can always act in ways that are not informed by grace—otherwise, those who receive grace would be incapable of sin (ST II-II q. 24, a. 11). But for those in grace, every truly good action and good habit will be in some way informed by the pervasive transformation that God brings about in the graced soul. At the same time, Aquinas’s doctrine of grace also provides a con- text for understanding the full implications of his treatment of the in- fused virtues. More specifically, Aquinas’s treatment of grace brings us back to central questions in the current debate: What is the relation between nature and grace? Can we affirm the comprehensiveness and sufficiency of the infused virtues, while at the same time doing justice to the value and integrity of human nature and the natural world more generally? Formulated in these terms, it would seem that nature and grace are two distinct principles, which may co-exist or not, but which at any rate are, so to speak, on the same ontological plane. But Aqui- nas’s analysis of what he calls the essence of grace makes it clear that this is not so. Rather, according to him grace is a habit of the soul, that is to say, an accidental form qualifying the nature of the soul in a cer- tain way. The graced human soul is still a human soul, operating through potencies which retain their natural structures and ways of operating. Aquinas’s doctrine of grace opens up a new perspective on the value of the natural order that is rightly central to the debate over two kinds of virtues. Grace, as a quality of the soul, and the infused virtues which stem from it, are not alien to human nature—rather, they repre- sent one way of perfecting human nature and its constitutive potencies. The kind of perfection brought about by grace goes beyond anything that human nature could achieve by its own powers, but it is nonethe- less intelligibly a perfection of those powers, that is to say, an expan- sion and a fuller development of human potentialities. Aquinas affirms the scholastic dictum that grace does not do away with nature, but per- fects it (ST I q. 1, a. 8, ad 2). Similarly, in the context of a discussion Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 63 of the natural and supernatural operations of the angels, he argues that the blessed angels continue to exercise their natural powers of intel- lectual understanding and volition: “It is manifest that nature is com- pared to happiness as primary to secondary, because beatitude is added to nature. It is always necessary to preserve that which is primary in that which is secondary. Hence, it is necessary that nature is preserved in happiness. And similarly, it is necessary that the act of nature is preserved in the act of beatitude” (ST I q. 62, a. 7). Aquinas is here speaking of the blessed angels, who already enjoy the supernatural happiness of friendship with God. But his observation can be general- ized: If the act of nature is preserved in beatitude, then we can be con- fident that natural operations and values are in some way preserved in grace, which is the anticipation of beatitude. This line of analysis opens up a new perspective on the infused cardinal virtues and their relation to the acquired virtues. Rather than construing these as two distinct, coeval and potentially competing sets of virtues, we should think of them as two distinct ways of perfecting natural human faculties. For this reason, we would expect them to re- semble one another in some ways. Infused temperance, for example, operates over the full range of desires and aversions relating to the pleasures of touch, and its proper actions will be acts of the passions of simple desire, as these are informed by the agent’s overall orienta- tion towards friendship with God (ST I-II q. 63, a. 4). Because the desires and aversions proper to infused temperance are shaped by this orientation, its proper object—the formal action which defines the vir- tue—is distinct from the proper object of acquired virtue. And yet, if we have understood infused temperance correctly, we should be able to see how this virtue is an authentic perfection of the capacity for desire. Certainly, if the perfection in question depends on the super- natural gift of grace, then we would expect it to take an unexpected, perhaps an initially unattractive form. But on Aquinas’s terms, it is still an intelligible expansion and full actualization of a human po- tency. At the very least, it should not move the agent to genuinely harmful or perverse actions (cf. ST II-II q. 147, a. 1, ad 2). The upshot is, on Aquinas’s showing the integrity of nature and natural values are not set aside through the infused virtues. Grace pre- serves nature and brings it to a level of perfection that would otherwise be unimaginable, let alone attainable. Because the infused virtues rep- resent the comprehensive perfection of the faculties that they inform, they are, again, not compatible with the acquired virtues, which repre- sent another kind of comprehensive perfection of the same faculty. Yet they bring about what the acquired virtues also accomplish—the per- fection of nature—and they do so in such a way as to open up new possibilities for the operations of our natural faculties. This line of analysis can also be applied to a question which runs 64 Jean Porter through much of the literature on infused and acquired virtues. Sup- pose we are now persuaded that the infused virtues cannot co-exist with the acquired virtues. In that case, what happens when someone who has already acquired the virtues experiences a conversion, turns to God in faith, hope and charity, and receives the infused cardinal virtues immediately with charity? Do the acquired virtues simply go away, to be replaced by their infused counterparts? Yes, they do; but we can admit that, without committing ourselves to the implausible view that the reception of grace in this kind of case represents a com- plete break in the continuities of individual experience and personal- ity. Aquinas does not explicitly deal with these specific questions, but he does address the more general question of motion and form. The text in question comes in the context of a discussion of the processes of procreation and fetal development. As we have already noted, Aqui- nas holds that the rational, distinctively human soul is created imme- diately by God at a certain point in fetal development. He assumes, as do his interlocutors, that before that point, the embryo has a generative or a sensitive soul. This raises the question, what happens to these ear- lier souls? This question is relevant for us because for Aquinas, the soul is a kind of form—a substantial, rather than an accidental form, but a kind of form nonetheless. He is therefore posing the question, what becomes of one form when another, as it were covering the same sphere of existence and operation, is introduced. His answer is instruc- tive:

Since the generation of one is always the decay of another, it is nec- essary to say that with respect to both the human being and other liv- ing things, when a more perfect form comes to be, the prior form de- cays, yet in such a way that the subsequent form has whatever the first form had, and has it more fully. And so through many generations and decays, the final substantial form comes into being, both in the human being and in other living things....And so it should be said that the intellectual soul created by God at the end of human generation, which is simultaneously both sensitive and nutritive, is the corruption of the pre-existing forms (ST I q. 118, a. 2, ad 2).

In order to appreciate the significance of this text for our subject, it will be helpful first to ask why Aquinas says that the generation of one thing is the corruption of another. His point is that any finite crea- ture is necessarily one distinctive kind of thing, not many things or an indefinite continuum of things. Existence and identity are punctual. Form is a dynamic principle of existence and operation, and therefore, it has no separate existence, except insofar as it is abstracted and held Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace 65 in some intellect (ST I q. 5, a. 5, q. 15, a. 1).20 Thus, when Aquinas says that the generation of one form is the corruption of another, we should not imagine the forms as discrete entities, competing for exist- ence in the same ontic space as the entities they inform. Rather, when Aquinas speaks of the generation and corruption of forms, he is refer- ring to processes through which distinct kinds of things come into ex- istence and cease to exist, seen from the standpoint of the form, the principle of determinate existence and identity. Something cannot be both a nutritive entity, while at the same time also being a sensitive entity. When through the processes of fetal development the capacities of sensitive existence emerge, the nutritive entity ceases to be, and when God bestows the rational soul, the sensitive entity ceases to be. The same general observations would apply, mutatis mutandis, to the coming into being and ceasing to be of accidental forms, which pertain to the same aspects of being and are therefore in a sense con- trasting forms. Acquired temperance, to continue with our example, is a distinctive way in which someone’s capacity for desire and aversion is configured and put into operation. Infused temperance is another, contrasting configuration of the same capacity. When the agent be- comes capable of this latter kind of temperance, her capacity for desire changes in fundamental ways. It is informed by a different dynamic principle, another form, that is to say, the infused virtue of temperance. At the same time, this new way of operating encompasses the opera- tions proper to the earlier, more limited dynamic principle—which is to say, infused temperance incorporates, as it were, the dynamisms of acquired temperance, in such a way as to reorient and transform them. This brings us to a final point. An acquired virtue, as the name sug- gests, is acquired through ongoing processes of desire and operation, which leave their traces in the agent’s memory and judgment, in such a way as to shape her character and personality. There is no reason to think that these desires, memories, and judgments simply go away, to be replaced by something else—and what could that be?—through the infusion of virtue. Aquinas speaks at one point of the relicta of habits, which remain after new habits are infused through grace. He is speak- ing of the remains of bad habits, vices, but there is no reason why we should not also think in terms of the remains of the good habits, the acquired virtues. What I am suggesting is this: Through the infusion of grace, the personality of the individual is transformed and re-ori- ented, but not destroyed or set aside. The agent’s acquired virtues cease to be, considered as distinctive habits, but the many aspects of personal experience and identity that they helped to form continue,

20 The human soul is the exception to this rule, since it persists after the dissolution of the body; see ST I q. 75, aa. 2, 3, 6. This claim is of course enormously controversial, but fortunately it is not directly relevant to the question at hand. 66 Jean Porter transformed into another kind of virtue through grace. Aquinas be- lieves that grace and the infused virtues are profoundly transformative, but he surely does not believe that they represent a rupture in personal identity. His analysis of this transformation in terms of the habits of the soul offers us a way of understanding what that transformation im- plies. Clearly, much more could be said about the ways in which the transformative effects of grace are seen and experienced in the moral life. But in order for this line of inquiry to be fruitful, it needs to begin by recognizing that the transformation brought about through charity is profound and complete. Someone who receives the grace of God is a new creation, and this implies new moral virtues as well as a new set of beliefs, hopes, and desires. We cannot fully appreciate the signifi- cance of Aquinas’s moral theology unless we take this point into ac- count.21

Citations from Aquinas are taken from the following:

Summa theologiae (ST), Volumes 4-12 in Opera Omnia jussa edita Leonis XIII PM (Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S.C. de Propa- ganda Fide, 1888-1906).

Quaestiones disputatae de virtutibus, q.1, De Virtutibus in Communi (DVC), 707-751 (Rome: Marietti, 1965). – Q.2, De Caritate, 752-791 (Marietti).

21 An earlier version of this paper was read at the annual meeting of the Catholic Theological Society of America, June 9, 2018, Indianapolis, Indiana, and I would like to express my thanks for the many helpful questions and comments offered by those present. I would also like to thank William Mattison and Joseph Wawrykow for read- ing a draft of this paper and offering me many valuable suggestions for its improve- ment. Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2019): 67-90

Catholic Social Teaching, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts

Daniel R. DiLeo

INCE POPE LEO XIII’S ENCYCLICAL Rerum Novarum in 1891, Catholic social teaching (CST) has developed as a collection of episcopal documents that, according to the U.S. bishops, S reflect on social life from a Christian perspective and “propose principles for reflection; provide criteria for judgment; [and] give guidelines for action”1 (Catechism, no. 2423). In one sense, this is cor- rect: CST includes core documents from popes and bishops that ema- nate from their episcopal teaching office and identify ethical principles which can be casuistically applied to social issues.2 In this regard, CST is a valuable tradition with which persons can analyze social chal- lenges to live a moral life. In another sense, however, this is a rela- tively narrow approach to CST that inadequately expresses two addi- tional ways of understanding the tradition that place it in deeper con- nection with the Gospel and . The first is as a re- sponse to God’s love, and the second, connected to the first, is as a set of what Aquinas calls secondary moral precepts. In what follows, I explore each approach and note the benefits of respectively thus fram- ing CST.

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING AS A RESPONSE TO GOD WHO IS LOVE Michael J. Himes writes that although we can never fully speak of God who is Mystery, the “least inadequate expression for God” is the claim in 1 John 4:8, 16 that “God is love.”3 Although the simplicity of this observation helpfully summarizes Christian belief, terminological

1 In this essay, Catholic social teaching is distinct from Catholic social thought in that former comes exclusively from popes and bishops while the latter, though inclusive of the former, incorporates the work of theologians and, to some degree, lay non- theologians. For scholarly treatment of the relationship between magisterium, theolo- gians and laity, see Richard R. Gaillardetz, Teaching with Authority: A Theology of the Magisterium in the Church (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1997), 241-246. 2 On the episcopal teaching office, see Lumen Gentium, nos. 21, 25; Christus Domi- nus, nos. 2, 3, 11, 12, 13, 30. For scholarly commentary on this topic, see Richard R. Gaillardetz, Teaching with Authority, 31-68. 3 Michael J. Himes, Doing the Truth in Love: Conversations about God, Relation- ships, and Service (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1995), 9-10. 68 Daniel R. DiLeo and linguistic issues surrounding “love” can complicate this insight. From a Thomistic perspective, Stephen J. Pope describes that “Aqui- nas viewed love in its most elemental sense as a passion and, more precisely, as the first principle in the movement of an appetite toward an object of love.”4 Edward C. Vacek similarly describes love as “an affective, affirming participation in the goodness of a being (or Be- ing)” (emphasis in original) classically distinguished between , eros, and philia that respectively love “(1) for the sake of the beloved, (2) for our own sake, or (3) for the sake of a relationship we have with the beloved.”5 Although agape is the term used for love in the of John, both Vacek and Pope Benedict XVI stress that all three are part of God and should thus be viewed as both complementary and Christian (Deus Caritas Est, no. 8).6 Love in the above Thomistic understanding is, as Pope describes, always “a response [in and by the will] to a perceived good of some kind.”7 Since God is the supreme and essential good in which all other goods participate (ST I q. 6, a. 2-3) as well as the “first mover” to which all creation responds (ST I q. 3, a. 1), a loving response to one’s relationship with God entails “willing ... and acting” for the good of another8 (initially God) and eventually extending to love of neighbor (Mt 22:35-40, Mk 12:28-34).9 Vacek thus argues, as seen in the subti- tle of his book, that love is “the heart of Christian ethics” and describes the Christian moral life as a “schema” wherein humans respond to God’s love by loving God and neighbor.10 As he writes, “Union with

4 Stephen J. Pope, “Christian Love as Friendship: Engaging the Thomistic Tradition,” in Love and Christian Ethics: Tradition, Theory, and Society, ed. Frederick V. Sim- mons and Brian C. Sorrells (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016), 211. 5 Edward C. Vacek, Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics (Wash- ington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1994), 34, 157-158. 6 Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 157-158. 7 Pope, “Christian Love as Friendship,” 211. 8 Himes, Doing the Truth in Love, 110. Paul J. Wadell describes this willing and acting as “benevolence” and identifies it as the first characteristic of loving relationship. See Paul J. Wadell, The Primacy of Love: An Introduction to the Ethics of Thomas Aquinas (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009), 65. 9 Pope, “Christian Love as Friendship,” 211. My understanding of Christian moral life as response to God’s love is based on Kenneth R. Himes’s audiobook God’s Guide to a Good Life: Catholic Moral Theology (Rockville: Now You Know Media, Inc., 2017); Michael J. Himes, Doing the Truth in Love, 55; Enda McDonagh, Gift and Call: Towards a of Morality (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1975), 72-75. I am grateful to Kenneth Himes for suggesting McDonagh’s work. The quali- fier “eventually” is used above to acknowledge – but not delve into – the question of whether one’s love of God may initially exist vis-à-vis God alone or must immediately extend to love of neighbor. Although there are a variety of opinions (see Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 141-149), it is sufficient for this project to emphasize that at some point love of God must extend and translate into love of neighbor. 10 Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 117-156; use of the term “schema” occurs on 117 and 149. I recognize that this presentation 1) is an oversimplification of Vacek’s CST, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts 69

God leads to union with God’s loves, and so we will be inclined to love the neighbor whom God loves.”11 Here, two points are worth noting. First, James F. Keenan empha- sizes that love of neighbor is enabled by rightly-ordered love of self which is the immediate fruit of one’s transformational union with God. This is because the self is the primary agent in union with God and thus the immediate subject whom the self begins to love differently after God. Thus, as Keenan describes, “The love of God makes possi- ble the love of self. And these together make possible the love of neighbor.”12 This description helps explicate ’s “greatest com- mandment” in the synoptic Gospels to “love your neighbor as your- self” (Mt 22:39; cf. Mk 12:31, Lk 10:27) and, in a sense, illustrates the aphorism, “You cannot give what you do not have”—in this case, rightly ordered love that transformatively emanates from God through oneself out to others. With respect to Vacek’s schema, we might thus say: God is love; God offers love to a person; she/he accepts God’s love and enters into transformational loving union with God; she/he rightly loves the self; she/he rightly loves the neighbor. Second, Pope Francis emphasizes that human persons are created to exist in “three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself” (Laudato Si’, no. 66). Although Francis does not explicitly here characterize hu- mans’ relationship with the earth as grounded in love, he later quotes Psalm 33:6 and 11:24 to stress that all reality is created and sustained in God’s love (no. 77). Since the love of God in which per- sons exist extends to creation, loving union with God clearly “calls us together into universal communion” in which we rightly love all cre- ation (no. 76). Thus, and again with respect to Vacek’s schema now textured by Keenan, we might outline Christian ethics as follows: God is love; God offers love to a person; she/he accepts God’s love and enters into transformational loving union with God; she/he rightly loves the self; she/he rightly loves the neighbor and all creation. This revised schema seems especially appropriate since love of neighbor is injured by ecological degradation that violates human dignity and life —especially of the poor whom we are especially called to love—and thus requires rightly ordered love of creation. By this account, we can see how Aquinas argued that the moral life is summed up by charity (caritas, Latin for agape) understood as “friendship with God and with all persons in God”13 that is enabled by seven-step schema, and 2) avoids questions about the ontological connectedness be- tween Jesus’s commandments to love God and neighbor. In my view, these compli- cated considerations are important but not central to the present discussion. 11 Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 143. 12 James F. Keenan, Moral Wisdom: Lessons and Texts from the Catholic Tradition, Second Edition (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 21. 13 Pope, “Christian Love as Friendship,” 213; cf. ST II-II q. 23, aa. 1, 8. 70 Daniel R. DiLeo

God’s operating grace and can grow through right actions freely car- ried out through cooperating grace (ST II-II q. 24, aa. 5-6; I-II q. 111, a. 3).14 Yet, while love is central to Christian morality, Vacek contin- ues that the external requirements of love, i.e. right actions, are not always immediately evident. He thus suggests that Christian ethics re- volves around a central question: “How can and ought we, who have been loved by God, live?”15 In doing so, Vacek echoes Aquinas who stresses that charity must be formally realized through the moral vir- tues among which prudence, i.e., “right reason applied to action” (ST II-II, q. 47, a. 3), is central (ST I-II q. 65, a. 1). In response to Vacek’s question, and as a “sacrament” (Lumen Gentium, no. 1) by which God uniquely advances God’s Kingdom un- derstood as loving “communion with God and among” persons (Com- pendium, no. 49), “the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gos- pel” (Gaudium et Spes, no. 4). To these ends, the magisterium, i.e., “the bishops [who] are the authoritative teachers of the apostolic faith,”16 offers teachings that help Catholics form their consciences and respond rightly to God’s love amidst their historical and contin- gent circumstances (Gaudium et Spes, no. 43). The magisterium teaches with varying degrees of authority though a discrete taxonomy of expressions and media,17 and CST includes those magisterial docu- ments that consider sociopolitical, economic and ecological issues. Since the Gospel is rooted in love to which Christians must discern- ingly respond, and since CST is an expression of the magisterium’s vocation to help persons live the Gospel through right actions, CST can thus be understood a magisterial resource with which persons work to answer the question, “How can and ought we, who have been loved by God, live?”18 Or put even more simply, CST is a resource that helps persons respond to God’s love through love of God, self, neighbor, and creation. Surprisingly, this understanding of CST seems largely absent from the magisterial documents that constitute the tradition. Of course, love features prominently in nearly all CST documents.19 Often, however,

14 I here employ the term “right actions” to denote those that “conform to rational expectations set by the ethical community.” See James F. Keenan, Goodness and Rightness in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1992), 3. 15 Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 117. 16 Gaillardetz, Teaching with Authority, 85. 17 For extended scholarly treatment of these and related topics, see Gaillardetz, Teach- ing with Authority, 101-128, 159-224, 255-273. 18 Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 117. 19 Here I take the corpus of CST documents to include Laudato Si’ plus those included in David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon, ed., Catholic Social Thought: The Doc- umentary Heritage (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2010). CST, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts 71 love is referenced in relatively legalistic terms that underscore one’s obligation to love God and neighbor.20 This is in one sense under- standable, given Jesus’s emphasis on these two commandments and their interrelatedness as such (Mt 22:35-40; Mk 12:28-34). If love is “an affective, affirming participation in the goodness of a being (or Being),” however, and if participation engages the freedom of both parties in “mutual affirmation,” then love must be understood as more than just a “one-sided” divine command to be obeyed.21 Rather, “Christian ethics must begin with God’s love for us and it must keep this love central” – so much so that Christians view the moral life as the sort of emotional, relational response described by Pope and Vacek above. On my reading, however, there are only a few places where the documents of CST speak about Christian life in these terms and thus communicate such an understanding of CST.22 Justitia in Mundo un- derscores that “our response to the love of God, saving us through Christ, is shown to be effective in his love and service of people” (no. 34). Caritas in Veritate quotes Pope Benedict XVI’s previous encyc- lical Deus Caritas Est to stress the need for a “generous human re- sponse to divine love” (no. 29). Indeed, Deus Caritas Est frames love and Christian life in terms very similar to Vacek’s schema: God “loves us, [God] makes us see and experience [God’s] love, and since [God] has ‘loved us first’, love can also blossom as a response within us” (no. 17). This encyclical, however, is not generally included in the corpus of CST documents.23 Similarly, Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium is usually excluded from the body of CST but observes that the Gospel, “which invites us to receive God’s love and to love him in return with the very love which is his gift, brings forth in our lives and

20 For example, see Rerum Novarum, no. 26; Gaudium et Spes, no. 11; Evangelii Nun- tiandi, no. 15; Centesimus Annus, no. 55; Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, no. 64. 21 Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 34, 136. 22 Other documents do move in the direction of framing CST as a response to God’s love. Gaudium et Spes implicitly identifies love as the origin of CST by emphasizing that the Church from which CST emanates “comes forth from the eternal Father’s love” (no. 40) and is “founded on the love of the Redeemer” (no. 76). Pacem in Terris identifies love as the engine of Christian social life – and by extension CST – through its stress on the need for love to be “the motivating action of all their actions” (no. 152). Octogesima Adveniens suggests that love is the telos of CST by highlighting that Church teaching “clarifies their activity in the light of the Gospel and in this way helps them to correspond to God’s plan of love” (no. 1). However, these texts do not explicitly speak in terms of a response to God’s love. 23 For example, Deus Caritas Est is not included in David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon, Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, 3rd revised ed. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2016). 72 Daniel R. DiLeo actions a primary and fundamental response: to desire, seek and pro- tect the good of others” (no. 178).24 Therein, Francis goes on to em- phasize that “our loving response to God” requires work for “justice, peace and dignity” in society (no. 180). Finally, Laudato Si’ lifts up St. Francis as a model insofar as his ecological ethic was a “response to the world” created and sustained by God (nos. 11-12). Beyond these references, however, CST does not generally seem to explicitly frame either Christian life generally, or by extension CST more specifically, as a response to God who is love and invites us to love God, self, neighbor, and creation. Moving beyond the magisterium, Catholic social thought has in some instances suggested CST as a means with which persons can lovingly respond to God’s love. Thomas Massaro notes in his out- standing book Living Justice: Catholic Social Teaching in Action that many faithful work for justice as an expression of love for God and neighbor, but must also “recogniz[e that] ... a desire to respond to God’s call to build a more just world is only the beginning step on a journey of discernment.”25 For example, persons of faith must answer questions like, “How can anyone know for certain which actions are authentic responses to God’s love?”26 Yet while this sentiment, espe- cially taken in context, clearly intimates that CST is a resource with which persons can discern appropriate responses to loving relationship with God, even this passage does not explicitly identify CST as such.

Benefits: Centrality and Spirituality Against this backdrop, this essay is an expression of Catholic social thought that seeks to unequivocally identify CST as a magisterial re- source with which persons can discerningly respond in love to loving relationship with God who is love. One may wonder about the relative value of describing CST as a resource with which to lovingly respond to God who is love. Does it really matter how the Church speaks about CST? Here, it is worth noting several pastoral and theological benefits of more explicitly re-conceptualizing CST in terms of a resource with which persons might respond to the love of God who is love. First, such framing may bring CST more firmly into the fold of Catholics’ lives. CST is often called the Church’s “best kept secret” due to many Catholics’ unfamiliarity and/or lack of engagement with the tradition. As scholars observe, this secrecy is due to, among other reasons, the

24 This passage is quoted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States with Introductory Note (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2015), 8, www.usccb.org/issues-and- action/faithful-citizenship/upload/forming-consciences-for-faithful-citizenship.pdf. 25 Thomas Massaro, Living Justice: Catholic Social Teaching in Action, 3rd edition (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 6. 26 Massaro, Living Justice, 6. CST, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts 73 relatively disengaging style of CST texts, the difficulty of topics ad- dressed by the tradition, popular associations between CST and con- troversies like those around Humanae Vitae.27 Although I agree with these diagnoses, it also seems that the secrecy of CST is partly due to a practical, perverse separation of personal faith and spirituality from social ethics (cf. Gaudium et Spes, no. 43) that would allow Catholics to compartmentalize CST as an optional, hidden “add-on” to a nar- rowly-conceived individual, spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ understood as the “true” content of Christian life. On my reading, framing CST as a resource with which to respond to God’s love can help counter temptations to separate personal and ethics in the Christian life, and in turn compartmentalize CST as an elective option extraneous to Christian faith. For Christians, spirituality can be understood as the totality of prac- tices though which persons uniquely encounter and love God who is love.28 As noted above, however, Christians’ love for God must even- tually extend to love of neighbor and all creation. Thus, Christian faith rooted in spirituality cannot be “relegated to the inner sanctum of per- sonal life, without influence on” Christians’ social engagements (Evangelii Gaudium, no. 182); rather, Christian faith rooted in spirit- uality must instead inspire and animate how believers love others (and non-human creation) in the world. Similar to how Pope Paul VI speaks of primary and secondary elements of evangelization in Evangelii Nuntiandi—wherein the former constitutes proclamation of the Gos- pel and the latter includes actions to live the Gospel without which “evangelization would not be complete” (nos. 26-29, at no. 29)29 — we might analogously say that ethics is a secondary element of Chris- tian life that follows a primary encounter with God enabled by spirit- uality and without which faith is incomplete. Or, as Richard Gula de- scribes, spirituality is the “wellspring of the moral life”30 because it facilitates the experience of God’s love to which persons seek an ade- quate response in love.31 In my view, communicating CST as a magisterial resource with which persons can respond to God’s love could help break down the

27 Edward P. Deberri, James E. Hug, Peter J. Henriot, and Michael J. Schultheis, Cath- olic Social Teaching: Our Best Kept Secret, 4th edition (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2003), 4. 28 This understanding of spirituality is informed by Richard M. Gula, “Spirituality and Morality: What Are We Talking About?” in Ethics and Spirituality: Readings in Moral Theology No. 17, ed. Charles E. Curran and Lisa A. Fullam (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2014), 45; William C. Spohn, “Spirituality and Ethics: Exploring the Connec- tions” in Ethics and Spirituality: Readings in Moral Theology No. 17, ed. Charles E. Curran and Lisa A. Fullam (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2014), 62. 29 Cf. Charles E. Curran, The Social Mission of the U.S. : A Theolog- ical Perspective (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 60-61. 30 Gula, “Spirituality and Morality,” 57. 31 Gula, “Spirituality and Morality,” 57. 74 Daniel R. DiLeo separation of spirituality and morality. This is because the notion of response that is central to this understanding of CST is also at the heart of the relationship between spirituality and morality respectively un- derstood as encounter and corresponding action. Of course, framing CST as such is unlikely to connect spirituality and morality by itself; the development of this connection will require better catechesis that more intentionally helps Catholics understand that the “fullness of faith”32 entails encounter facilitated by spirituality and corresponding moral actions. Nevertheless, the language of CST as a magisterial re- source with which persons respond to God’s love can assist that cate- chetical project. To the degree that it is successful, this understanding of CST then enables the tradition to move from the periphery to the center of Catholic life since it becomes an indispensable aid with which persons discern the concrete requirements of love in response to encounters with God (rather than, again, a superfluous “add-on” to Catholicism). In short, presenting CST as a magisterial resource with which to respond to God’s love can help break the disconnect between spirituality and morality and, in turn, help CST become an essential staple of the Church rather than a disposable secret. Just as the interpretation of CST as a resource with which to re- spond to God’s love can make the tradition more central to Christian life, so too can this understanding make spirituality more central to CST. This is because spirituality, understood as the totality of prac- tices though which persons uniquely encounter God, is the “wellspring of the moral life”33 since it facilitates the experience of God’s love to which persons seek a response aided by CST. As described above with reference to Evangelii Nuntiandi, spirituality and ethics are respec- tively the primary and secondary aspects of Christian life that would be incomplete without either. Thus, simply stated, framing CST as such can help persons appreciate that spirituality is central to the Cath- olic moral life. This insight is important because it can inspire Catho- lics’ increased commitment to spirituality and, in turn, benefit their engagement with CST in several subsequent ways. First, heightened commitment to spirituality can strengthen one’s commitment to the moral life since affective encounter with God through the Spirit “pro- vides a depth of passion and zeal that moves us more powerfully than intellectual appeals to an ideal known only in the abstract.”34 Such in- spiration is important for those committed to CST since, as Kenneth

32 I here borrow this phrase from Michael J. and Kenneth R. Himes, Fullness of Faith: The Public Significance of Theology (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1993). 33 Gula, “Spirituality and Morality,” 57. Cf. Willam C. Spohn, “Spirituality and Eth- ics: Exploring the Connections” in Ethics and Spirituality: Readings in Moral Theol- ogy No. 17, ed. Charles E. Curran and Lisa A. Fullam (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2014), 62. 34 Gula, “Spirituality and Morality,” 57. CST, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts 75

R. Himes observes, it can sustain a person amidst the inevitable chal- lenges and struggles that arise when trying to live the Gospel.35 Next, deepened spirituality can positively “affect…my feelings” (Deus Caritas Est, no. 18) since one encounters God with her entire being.36 As Pope Francis poetically emphasizes with reference to St. Francis of Assisi, this affective dimension of morality is significant and

cannot be written off as naive romanticism, for it affects the choices which determine our behaviour. If we approach nature and the envi- ronment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless ex- ploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously (Laudato Si’, no. 11).

Third, deepened commitment to spirituality can uniquely inspire and enable persons to engage CST as a tool for conscience formation and moral discernment. In the Catholic tradition, Richard Gula identi- fies three complementary aspects of conscience: “(1) synderesis, the basic tendency or capacity within us to know and to do the good; (2) moral science, the process of discovering the particular good which ought to be done or the evil to be avoided; (3) conscience, the specific judgment of the good which ‘I must do’ in this particular situation.”37 Additionally, the Second Vatican Council describes conscience as “the most secret core and sanctuary” of a person where she “is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in [her] depths” (Gaudium et Spes, no. 16) and underscored the need for persons’ “formation of their con- sciences” (Dignitatis Humanae, no. 14) implicitly with respect to the three aspects identified by Gula. In correspondence with Gula’s distinctions, Himes emphasizes that conscience formation must happen vis-à-vis “capacity, process and judgment” and highlights that spirituality understood as activities which uniquely facilitate “an encounter with” God and “open…up in- terior space for the Spirit of God to move” can aid all three formative processes.38 First, he notes that spirituality enables God to help per- sons overcome , which inhibits their natural tendency to seek the good. Since CST is a means with which persons pursue the good, we

35 Gula, “Spirituality and Morality,” 57. 36 Kenneth R. Himes, “The Formation of Conscience,” in Ethics and Spirituality: Readings in Moral Theology No. 17, ed. Charles E. Curran and Lisa A. Fullam (Mah- wah: Paulist Press, 2014), 170. 37 Richard M. Gula, Reason Informed by Faith: Foundations of Catholic Morality (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1989), 131. 38 Himes, “The Formation of Conscience,” 164, 168. 76 Daniel R. DiLeo can say for present purposes that spirituality can catalyze engagement with CST by sharpening our commitment to synderesis. Next, Himes observes that spirituality allows God to uniquely assist moral agents in the discernment of good and evil in specific circumstances. Finally, he suggests that spirituality empowers God to help persons decide what actions to undertake in particular situations. James T. Bretzke describes that in the Catholic tradition, these lat- ter two processes occur through engagement with “four sectors of sources for moral theology” (Sacred Texts, Tradition of the Commu- nity, Normatively Human and Human Experience) that exist along two axes (the former two along the Sacred Claim Axis and the latter two along the Rational Claim Axis) which “intersect” in the “sanctu- ary of conscience” where, as Vatican II emphasized, a person is “alone with God” (Gaudium et Spes, no. 16).39 Since CST is part of the Tra- dition of the Community, we can say, with respect to this project, that spirituality uniquely enables persons to engage CST as a tool for con- science formation by facilitating an encounter with God, Who can di- rect and inform engagement with CST that animates discernment and pursuit of the good. Additionally, we can also say that spirituality en- courages engagement with CST in these latter two conscientious pro- cesses that is relatively defined by “pastorality of doctrine”40 rather than excessively rigorous “tax code”41 moral legalism. This is because the encounter with God through spirituality enables me “to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ,” whose ministry to others was rooted in mercy (Deus Caritas Est, no. 18). One practical way CST might be presented to Catholics as a re- source with which to respond to God’s love is through the liturgy— and particularly integration into homilies.42 Practically, the liturgy is where most Catholics regularly encounter the Church, and the homily, as the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sac- raments notes, can provide an opportunity for “moral catechesis” that explicates “the moral demands of the Gospel” suggested by the read-

39 James T. Bretzke, A Morally Complex World: Engaging Contemporary Moral The- ology (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2004), 9-144. 40 Christoph Theobald, “The Principle of Pastorality at Vatican II: Challenges of a Prospective Interpretation of the Council,” in The Legacy of Vatican II, ed. Massimo Faggioli and Andrea Vicini (New York: Paulist Press, 2015), 28. 41 Cathleen Kaveny, “That 70s Church: What It Got Right,” Commonweal, October 7, 2014, www.commonwealmagazine.org/70s-church. Cf. Evangelii Gaudium, no. 35. 42 For treatment of CST and liturgy, see Anne Y. Koester, ed., Liturgy and Justice: To Worship God in Spirit and Truth (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2002). For classic treatment of CST and homiletics, see Walter J. Burghardt, Preaching the Just Word (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). CST, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts 77 ings and liturgical season (Homiletic Directory, nos. 21, 160). Theo- logically, incorporation of CST into the liturgy as a resource with which persons can respond to God’s love is consistent with the Church’s claim that, in the liturgy, “The Spirit puts both the faithful and the ministers into a living relationship with Christ, the Word and Image of the Father, so that they can live out the meaning of what they hear, contemplate, and do in the celebration” (Catechism, no. 1101). Simply put, liturgical integration of CST as such could help emphasize for Catholics the aforementioned inexorable connection between Christian spirituality and ethics: one’s relationship with God uniquely expressed and deepened in the liturgy necessitates concrete expression in love that can be guided by CST, which must be animated by rela- tionship with God. Incorporation into the liturgy of CST as a resource with which to respond to God’s love would increase Catholics’ encounter with Tra- dition as a source of moral theology and, pursuant to the aforemen- tioned processes, provide opportunities to help deepen individuals’ conscience formation. This integration might also contribute to the de- velopment of a communal conscience (or consciousness) that, in turn, might further shape individuals’ consciences and corresponding ac- tions.43 For example, a parish that consistently incorporates CST as a resource by which to respond to God’s love into the liturgy may, in turn, develop a robust collective social conscience expressed in a host of CST-inspired ministries. This shared consciousness, especially if understood as “theological reflection in church life” that comprises the Tradition source of Christian ethics,44 could further shape individuals’ consciences. Christian communal consciousness increasingly in- formed by CST as a resource with which to respond to God’s love might also then correspondingly shape the moral compass of society more broadly. The words and actions by individuals and groups from the abovementioned parish might inspire persons of faith and goodwill in a town or city to reform the standards with which they assess issues and policies to be more in accord with the principles of CST (e.g., the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable).45

43 For more on collective conscience, see Daniel K. Finn, “Can an Organization Have a Conscience? Contributions from Social Science to Catholic Social Thought,” in Conscience & Catholicism, ed. David DeCosse and Kristin E. Heyer (Maryknoll: Or- bis Books 2015), 167-181. 44 Massaro, Living Justice, 70. 45 This sentiment builds on notions of public theology described by David Hollenbach, “Theology and Philosophy in Public: A on John Courtney Murray’s Un- finished Agenda,” Theological Studies 40, no. 4 (1979): 714; E. Harold Breitenberg Jr, “To Tell the Truth: Will the Real Public Theology Please Stand Up?” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 23, no. 2 (2003): 65-66; Himes and Himes, Fullness of Faith, 5. For extended analyses of how U.S. Catholic persons and communities bring faith into public life, see Kristin E. Heyer, Prophetic and Public: The Social Witness of U.S. Catholicism (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006). 78 Daniel R. DiLeo

THOMISTIC SECONDARY MORAL PRECEPTS In addition to moving CST from the periphery of believers’ faith and strengthening the tradition’s connection with spirituality, framing the tradition as a resource with which to respond to God’s love allows for deeper reconciliation between CST and Thomistic . In recent years, Catholic theological ethics has seen a revival and devel- opment of Aquinas’s virtue-based ethical framework.46 In response, scholars have addressed the relationship between CST and virtue. Christopher P. Vogt suggests that virtue ethics can “concretely express a vision of Catholic social teaching” and its commitment to the com- mon good.47 James P. O’Sullivan describes that CST provides the goal of social ethics (i.e., “a just society and persons who pursue the com- mon good”) and argues that “virtues are both the means to the goal and are constitutive of it.”48 Additionally, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — though not engaged in academic scholarship — describes CST as “a moral framework for everyday action,”49 identi- fies prudence as the virtue that enables persons to apply CST princi- ples for the sake of justice, and comments that prudence “often re- quires the courage [i.e., fortitude] to act in defense of moral principles when making decisions about how to build a society of justice.”50 Current assessments of CST and virtue thus seem to view the for- mer as “ethical coordinates”51 by which persons navigate towards the latter, as well as the “pillars” that support the overarching vision of a virtuous society. In one sense, these descriptions are theologically sound and pastorally helpful. In another sense, however, efforts to show how CST – especially its norms expressed as themes – and Tho- mistic virtue ethics can work together are inadequate. This is because they imply that CST and Thomistic virtue ethics are distinct but com- patible ethical systems and inadequately demonstrate how the themes

46 For a helpful overview of these developments, see Charles E. Curran and Lisa A. Fullam, eds., Virtue: Readings in Moral Theology No. 16 (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2011). 47 Christopher P. Vogt, “Fostering a Catholic Commitment to the Common Good: An Approach Rooted in Virtue Ethics,” Theological Studies 68 (2007): 394-417. 48 James P. O’Sullivan, “Virtue and Catholic social teaching: A New Generation in an Ongoing Dialogue Toward Greater Realization of Social Justice and the Common Good,” Asian Horizons 6, no. 4 (2012): 828-845. 49 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sharing Catholic Social Teaching: Challenges and Directions (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1998). www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-so- cial-teaching/sharing-catholic-social-teaching-challenges-and-directions.cfm. 50 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, 7. 51 Kenneth R. Himes, “Globalization with a Human Face: Catholic social teaching and Globalization,” Theological Studies 69, no. 2 (2008): 269. CST, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts 79 of CST and Thomistic virtue ethics can be understood as complemen- tary parts of Aquinas’s overall ethical framework. Of course, I am not saying that CST, especially the modern tradition, was something with which Thomas engaged such that it is actually part of Aquinas’s eth- ics. What I am saying, however, is that more attention should be paid to how CST norms are an expression of a category in Aquinas’s ethical framework such that the themes of CST can properly be interpreted as essentially rooted in and, by extension, deeply connected to Thomas’s ethics, to which virtue is central. Since the same love which was ad- dressed in the first part of this essay provides an entry point from which more deeply to ground CST norms in Aquinas’s ethics, the sec- ond half of this article will continue with love to demonstrate how the themes of CST can be technically understood as part of Aquinas’s eth- ics. As many have summarized, Aquinas’s ethics proceed from his an- thropology and are inherently teleological.52 For Thomas, God who is the ultimate good created humans with intellectual and appetitive powers to attain the end of union with God which constitutes our per- fect happiness (ST I q. 6, aa. 103; I, qq. 77-83; I-II q. 3, a. 8; q. 5, a. 1). Additionally, God respectively instilled in the will and intellect of each person a desire for good and synderesis, viz. habitual knowledge that good should be done and evil should be avoided (ST I-II q. 19, a. 3, 10; I, q. 79, a. 12). Although we cannot enjoy perfect happiness in this life, humans can still enjoy imperfect happiness which “consists first and principally in contemplation, but secondarily, in an operation of the practical intellect directing human actions and passions” (ST I- II q. 3, a. 5) via reason toward particular goods (ST I-II 1. 19, a. 10).53 Since synderesis does not specify particular goods and the intellect and appetite can become misaligned towards particular ends and the will “can ignore or violate what is judged to be morally good in this or that concrete case,”54 imperfect happiness requires acquired moral virtues that habitually orient the intellect and appetites in accord with reason that grounds the natural law, are developed through repeated action, and lost via sustained inaction (ST I-II qq. 49, 55; q. 91, a. 2;

52 For example, Stephen J. Pope, ed., The Ethics of Aquinas (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002). See especially Pope’s chapter “Overview of the Ethics of Aquinas,” 30-53. I am grateful to the following scholars who helped sharpen my understanding and presentation of Aquinas’s ethics in this and subsequent para- graphs: Stephen J. Pope, Paul J. Wadell, and Conor M. Kelly. 53 Here it is worth noting the observation of William C. Mattison III that, technically speaking, imperfect happiness cannot be perfectly realized due to the pervasiveness of sin which can only be fully overcome by grace. Rather, “Saint Thomas claims it is possible to act well toward our natural end, but only occasionally and with much er- ror.” See William C. Mattison III, “Moral Virtue, the Grace of God, and Discipleship,” in Gathered for the Journey: Moral Theology in Catholic Perspective, ed. David Matzko McCarthy and M. Therese Lysaught (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 213. 54 Pope, “Overview of the Ethics of Aquinas,” 33. 80 Daniel R. DiLeo q. 53, a. 3). Thus, as William C. Mattison III writes, the acquired moral virtues direct “inner-worldly activities,”55 i.e., what Pope John Paul II calls “behaviour involving oneself, others and the material world” (Veritatis Splendor, no. 36), and include prudence, which habituates practical reason in the intellect; justice, which habituates the will; for- titude, which habituates the irascible appetite; and temperance, which habituates the concupiscible appetite (ST I-II q. 61; II-II, qq. 47, 58, 123, 141). Although humans cannot attain perfect happiness in this life, God’s grace, understood as divine assistance, enables persons to transcend the natural capacities that enable pursuit of particular goods and seek God, the ultimate good with whom we may now be united to a certain degree (SI I-II q. 109, aa. 1-5). Specifically, grace confers theological virtues that “concern God directly”56 and include faith, which orients the intellect directed by the will to believe in God based on proposi- tions revealed by God (ST I-II q. 62, a. 3; II-II q. 4, aa. 1-2, 5); hope, which succeeds faith and enables the will to trust in God’s promise of eternal happiness (ST I-II q. 62, a. 3; q. 17, aa. 1-2, 7-8; q. 18, a. 1); and charity, which succeeds hope, enables the will to enter loving friendship with God that extends to neighbor as described above, and is thus the form and thereby the greatest of all the virtues (ST I-II q. 62, a. 3; II-II q. 23, aa. 1, 3, 6; q. 24, a. 1; q. 25, a. 1). Yet, just as humans’ natural desire for good, synderesis, and practical reasoning need direction from the acquired moral virtues, so too do the theolog- ical virtues require similar direction that enables a person to concretize “general directives” amidst particular circumstances.57 This is espe- cially so with respect to charity since this virtue must extend to love of neighbor but does not, as Vacek noted, explicate what love requires in contingent situations.58 Since theological virtues’ supernatural end transcends humans’ natural capacities, however, the acquired virtues are insufficient guides. Rather, humans need the infused moral virtues that are instilled by God through grace, operate in the same subjects of the soul as the corresponding acquired moral virtues, are temporally measured against the “rule of divine law” (rather than the natural law which grounds the acquired moral virtues) and thus of a different spe- cies and lost via mortal sin.59 In short, as Mattison writes, humans need

55 Mattison, “Moral Virtue, the Grace of God, and Discipleship,” 201. 56 Mattison, “Moral Virtue, the Grace of God, and Discipleship,” 210. 57 Angela M. McKay, “The Infused and Acquired Virtues in Aquinas’ Moral Philos- ophy” (PhD Dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2004), 29-32, at 32. Cf. ST I-II q. 63, a. 3. 58 Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 117. 59 McKay, “The Infused and Acquired Virtues in Aquinas’ Moral Philosophy,” 16, 32-33, 65-66; Cf. ST I-II q. 63, a. 304; q. 65, a. 2. CST, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts 81 the infused moral virtues to “incline us to do inner-worldy activities well in the larger perspective of our supernatural destiny.”60 Considering Aquinas’s distinction between infused and acquired moral virtues, one might ask whether the latter are relevant to Chris- tian life. Aquinas is famously ambiguous about the connection be- tween the acquired and infused moral virtues, and their relationship has thus been the subject of considerable debate beyond the scope of this project. For present purposes, it is enough to make just a few ob- servations. First, as Thomas says, “Only the infused virtues are per- fect, and deserve to be called virtues simply: since they direct [one] well to the ultimate end. But the other virtues, those, namely, that are acquired, are virtues in a restricted sense, but not simply: for they di- rect [one] well in respect of the last end in some particular genus of action, but not in respect of the last end simply” (ST I-II q. 65, a. 2). Since charity directs a person to her or his final end, i.e., union with God, infused moral virtues — and not acquired moral virtues—require charity and are thus forms of it (ST I-II q. 65, a. 2). Nevertheless, we can at minimum posit that acquired moral virtues are morally signifi- cant for Christians insofar as they mitigate bad habits and correspond- ing actions that tend to obstruct grace and thus the installation, growth, and preservation of the theological virtues and the infused moral vir- tues rooted in charity.61 This is at least partly because the acquired virtues habitually orient persons to particular goods rooted in the ulti- mate good (ST I-II q. 65, a. 2) and, thus, in some sense prime someone for grace which God increases in those “who [are] better prepared for” it (ST I-II q. 112, a. 4) and upon which the infused virtues depend. Simply stated, acquired moral virtues are morally significant for Christians because they support the theological and infused moral vir- tues and, in turn, help persons better respond to the love of God through love of God, self, neighbor, and creation. As noted, acquired moral virtues are inculcated through repeated action in accord with the natural law. Since these requisite actions are not always obvious, however, Aquinas identifies the need for moral guideposts termed principles and precepts, with which rational per- sons can navigate towards imperfect happiness.62 Principles are the “self-evident” starting points of speculative reasoning, and precepts are the “self-evident” starting points of practical reasoning (ST II-II q.

60 Mattison, “Moral Virtue, the Grace of God, and Discipleship,” 210. 61 McKay, “The Infused and Acquired Virtues in Aquinas’ Moral Philosophy,” 66; John F. Harvey, “The Nature of the Infused Moral Virtues,” Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America (1955), 199, ejour- nals.bc.edu/index.php/ctsa/article/view/2399/2023. 62 Although the rest of this section references the Summa Theologiae, the citations come from the following article, which I am essentially summarizing and to which I am indebted: Daniel Daly, “The Relationship of Virtues and Norms in the Summa Theologiae,” The Heythrop Journal 51, no. 2 (2010): 214-229. 82 Daniel R. DiLeo

94, a. 2). More specifically, Thomas identifies three categories of pre- cepts — ceremonial, judicial, and moral (ST I-II q. 104, a. 1) — and two categories of moral precepts. Primary moral precepts include those “abstract and formally normative” foundations of the natural law that are known by all persons per se nota through synderesis and of which the first precept is “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.”63 Additionally, as Daniel Daly observes:

Secondary precepts are more concrete and materially normative. Fur- ther, they are not certain conclusions drawn from the first principles; unlike primary moral precepts, they are known only through experi- ence and reflection . . . . Secondary precepts are not per se nota; they are neither commonly nor easily known. Unlike primary precepts they can be ‘blotted out of the human heart,’ or be misunderstood due to imperfect human reason. They are not necessarily grasped by all per- sons because they are contingent on proper reflection and right reason. These precepts are inductively derived; that is, they are discovered through rational reflection on moral experience.64

Given this description, we can say that secondary moral precepts are inductively discovered through prudential reflections on human experience.65 Since prudence “always reflects on the means to a good end, here and now, as determined by a moral virtue,” however, the discernment of secondary moral precepts always “necessarily reflects a virtue.”66 Daly therefore observes that, for Aquinas, acquired moral virtue enables the prudential discernment of secondary moral precepts that enable agents to further cultivate acquired moral virtues.67 Addi- tionally, he underscores that for Thomas these precepts can only be properly applied by virtuous persons guided especially via prudence.68 Furthermore, secondary moral precepts of the natural law benefit the theological and infused moral virtues since the acquired moral virtues support them as described above. In sum, Thomistic secondary moral precepts of the natural law help persons cultivate the acquired moral virtues that enable their application and support the theological and infused moral virtues through which we respond to God’s love in char- ity and so love God and neighbor.

63 Daly, “The Relationship of Virtues and Norms,” 216; ST I-II q. 94, a. 2. 64 Daly, “The Relationship of Virtues and Norms,” 216-217; see ST I-II q. 94, aa. 5- 6; q. 99, a. 2, ad 1. 65 Daly, “The Relationship of Virtues and Norms,” 219-220, 225; Cf. ST II-II q. 49, a. 1; II-II q. 49, a. 3, ad 3. 66 Daly, “The Relationship of Virtues and Norms,” 225; Cf. ST I-II q. 57, a. 4; q. 58, a. 5; q. 65, a. 1; II-II, q. 47, a. 6). 67 Daly, “The Relationship of Virtues and Norms,” 225; Cf. ST II-II q. 49, a. 3. 68 Daly, “The Relationship of Virtues and Norms,” 225. CST, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts 83

Considering Aquinas’s distinction and identified similarities be- tween infused and acquired moral virtues, one may at this point rea- sonably ask two related questions: “Are there secondary moral pre- cepts of the divine law that ground infused moral virtues just as there are secondary moral precepts of the natural law that ground acquired moral virtue?” And, if so, “What is the relationship between the two types of precepts and moral virtue?” As to the first, it seems that we can plausibly surmise their existence in Aquinas’s ethical framework even though Thomas does not explicitly recognize them. As described, the acquired and infused moral virtues are structurally analogous and respectively differ only in their source, telos, species and means of loss. Against this backdrop, the infused moral virtues would seem- ingly require guideposts in the form of secondary moral precepts of the divine law just as the acquired moral virtues require guideposts in the form of secondary moral precepts of the natural law. This induc- tion seems further substantiated by Aquinas’s references to multifari- ous “precepts of the Divine law” (ST I-II q. 100, a. 5) and multiple moral precepts the Old Law (ST I-II q. 100, aa. 103; q. 99, a. 1) and New Law (ST I-II q. 108, aa. 2-3; q. 106, a. 2). Presuming the existence of secondary moral precepts of the divine law, it appears that we can respond to the latter question by saying several things. Mirroring the metaphysics of secondary moral precepts of the natural law, it would first seem that secondary moral precepts of the divine law are inductively discerned via infused prudential re- flection on experience, applied by infused prudence to the end of per- fect happiness, presume other infused moral virtues, and support the growth of both infused moral virtue and the theological virtues (since each require grace that, as noted, God increases in those who have primed themselves for it via right actions). Next, it looks as if those guided by the infused moral virtues can profitably engage secondary moral precepts of the natural law and vice versa. This is not to say that persons guided by infused moral and acquired moral virtue will en- gage one or the other set of precepts in the same way. Indeed, the two species of virtue each pursue a “different mean” in accord with its re- spective telos.69 Nevertheless, both persons can metaphysically en- gage one or the other set of precepts because the natural and divine law are related by their connection to the one eternal law (ST I-II q. 91, aa. 1-4) and because the wills of those animated by infused and

69 McKay, “The Infused and Acquired Virtues in Aquinas’ Moral Philosophy,” 64- 65. Cf. ST I-II q. 63, a. 4; Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Virtue (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), 1.10, ad 8. 84 Daniel R. DiLeo acquired moral virtue are both able to consider whatever is presented to it by reason.70 At this point, we can suggest how CST norms can be ontologically understood as categories in Aquinas’s ethical framework, such that they can be functionally interpreted as part of Aquinas’s ethics. Con- servatively (I will return to this qualifier momentarily), the themes of CST can be viewed as secondary moral precepts of the natural law. In recent years, Catholics have identified various lists of norms or, as the U.S. bishops describe them, “key themes.”71 Although these lists vary in terms of how the themes are arranged, they all present similar ethi- cal norms that the Church has inductively identified through pruden- tial discernment to be prudentially applied for the discernment of eth- ical conduct whereby the theological, infused moral, and acquired moral virtues can further develop.72 This understanding of CST themes is implicitly suggested by the syntax of the U.S. bishops’ above description of CST, since “themes” are concepts inductively discerned via reflection upon some body of experiences or material; “tradition” in this case is the unfolding body of magisterial documents that are informed by experience and within which themes are identi- fied; “building a just society” implies that ethical conduct is achieved, at least in part, through the prudential application of the discerned principles; and “living lives of holiness” implies a dynamic life rooted in the theological, infused moral, and acquired moral virtues. In addition to the structure of the U.S. bishops’ CST description, the historical development of each traditional theme further demon- strates that they can together properly be understood as Thomistic sec- ondary precepts of the natural law. This is because each has been, as Daly describes them, secondary precepts “discovered through rational reflection on moral experience” by virtuous persons for the sake of

70 On Aquinas’s metaphysics of a human act, see Keenan, Goodness and Rightness in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, 47-52. Here, Keenan engages numerous parts of ST, including I-II q. 10. 71 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Seven Themes of Catholic Social Teaching,” 2018, www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teach- ing/seven-themes-of-catholic-social-teaching.cfm. In addition to the U.S. bishops’ list, see Massaro, Living Justice, 81-124; William J. Byron, “Ten Building Blocks of Catholic Social Teaching,” America Magazine, October 1998, 9-12. 72 In his book Catholic Social Teaching, 1891-Present: A Historical, Theological, and Ethical Analysis (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), Charles E. Curran describes many discontinuities in the methods and content of CST (e.g., 63- 66, 117, 183, 233). Although I believe Curran and those whom he cites are right to note these discrepancies, I also agree with Massaro, Byron, the U.S. Catholic bishops, and others who nevertheless discern “themes” across the corpus of CST (and indeed, even Curran on p. 209 of the aforementioned text speaks about “major themes of the economic aspects of papal social” teachings). Thus, without overstating the coherence of and continuity within CST, I believe it is sound for present purposes to adopt a certain “hermeneutic of continuity” vis-à-vis the content of CST. CST, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts 85 virtue and right action. For example, Thomas Massaro observes that, while a commitment to the poor and vulnerable has always been cen- tral to Judeo-Christian life, the contemporary norm of a “preferential option for the poor” was not expressed and affirmed by the Catholic hierarchy until the Puebla Final Document, “A Preferential Option for the Poor,” and not by the papacy particularly until Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (nos. 42, 47).73 Similarly, while the recognition that human life is valuable is as old as the Fifth Commandment to not kill (Ex 20:13), James F. Keenan observes that the modern CST theme that affirms the “sanctity of life” developed out of papal reflections in, among other texts, Casti Connubii (no. 32), Humanae Vitae (no. 13), and Evangelium Vitae (no. 53).74 Finally, although the concept of sol- idarity is rooted in the Genesis insight that we are our brother and sis- ter’s keeper (4:1-16), Keenan notes that the modern CST understand- ing of this concept was not essentially formulated until Laborem Ex- ercens (no. 9), Sollcitudo Rei Socialis (nos. 38-40), and Centesimus Annus (nos. 41, 43, 49, 60).75 To Keenan’s observations, I would also add that Pope Benedict XVI further developed solidarity in his 2010 World Day of Peace Message by stressing its “intergenerational” di- mension in response to ecological challenges (no. 8).76 In sum, as Pope Benedict XVI observed in Deus Caritas Est, “Faced with new situa- tions and issues, Catholic social teaching thus gradually developed” new expressions over the course of history (no. 27). Returning to the qualified claim that CST themes can conserva- tively be viewed as secondary moral precepts of the natural law: since the themes of CST have been developed by members of the Catholic magisterium in whom grace is more or less operative, one may wonder if these norms are something more than precepts of the natural law discerned especially via acquired prudence. Rather, one may ask if the themes of CST are in fact secondary precepts of the divine law that grounds the infused virtues and have been discerned especially by members of the magisterium informed by infused moral virtue.77 As described, secondary moral precepts of the divine law that relate to infused moral virtues would appear to be part of Aquinas’s ethical sys- tem. Assuming this to be the case, it is entirely possible — even likely

73 Massaro, Living Justice, 117; Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano, Puebla Final Document, “A Preferential Option for the Poor” in Liberation Theology, A Docu- mentary History, ed. Alfred T. Hennelly (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), 253-258. 74 James F. Keenan, A History of Catholic Moral Theology in the Twentieth Century: From Confessing Sins to Liberating Consciences (New York: Continuum Interna- tional Publishing Group, 2010), 85-86. 75 Keenan, A History of Catholic Moral Theology in the Twentieth Century, 87. 76 Pope Benedict XVI, If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2010). 77 McKay, “The Infused and Acquired Virtues in Aquinas’ Moral Philosophy,” 16, 32-33, 65-66; Cf. ST I-II q. 62, a. 3; q. 63, a. 3; q. 65, a. 2. 86 Daniel R. DiLeo

— that the themes of CST which have been discerned by the magiste- rium in whom grace more or less operates are secondary moral pre- cepts of the divine law that have developed as described above but with infused rather than acquired virtue. The problem, of course, is that there is no definitive way to know whether any person, including a member of the magisterium, is animated by grace at a particular time and thus acting in an instance with infused or acquired moral virtues (ST I-II q. 112, a. 5). Thus, while we can hope, if not presume, that the themes of CST are secondary precepts of the divine law discerned via infused moral virtue, the most that we can conservatively say is that these norms are secondary precepts of the natural law rooted in ac- quired moral virtue. The good news is that this categorical ambiguity is insignificant for the purposes of practical engagement since, as de- scribed above, all persons—those animated by infused and acquired virtue—can profitably engage secondary moral precepts of both the divine and natural law.

Benefits: Development, Prudence, and the Church’s Social Mission Although identification of CST principles as Thomistic secondary precepts of the natural (and potentially divine) law may be of aca- demic interest to theologians, one might wonder if this understanding has any concrete advantages for the Church’s social mission. In re- sponse, it seems that there are at least four key functional benefits of this interpretation of CST for Catholic theological ethics.78 First, in- terpretation of CST principles in such Thomistic terms can further strengthen the interpretation of CST as a resource with which persons respond to God’s love as described in the first half of this article. This is because Thomistic secondary moral precepts, whether of the natural or divine law, exist to facilitate the inculcation of virtue which for Aquinas are all oriented to and take the form of charity (ST I-II q. 23, aa. 7-8), i.e., “friendship with God” (ST II-II q. 25, a. 4), that grounds Vacek’s abovementioned “schema” whereby persons respond to union with God through ethics for which CST can serve as a resource. Simply put, interpreting CST themes as Thomistic secondary moral precepts can help persons remember that the telos of these principles is loving response to loving relationship with God who is love. If one keeps in mind that spirituality is, as described above, how she enters

78 I will here focus on the benefits of CST themes understood as secondary moral precepts of the natural law. Given the previous discussions about CST themes as sec- ondary precepts of the divine law, it seems that much—perhaps all—of what I say in this section applies to the interpretation of CST themes as secondary moral precepts of the divine law. CST, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts 87 and deepens her relationship with God, she seems more likely to sus- tain recognition of the innate connection between Christian spirituality and ethics previously identified as requisite to the “fullness of faith.”79 Next, interpretation of CST principles as Thomistic moral second- ary precepts allows for the possible generation of new norms or devel- opment of existing ones. Keenan points out that some persons “pre- sume that principles are eternal or that principles always existed as such.”80 In response, he observes that awareness of principles’ histor- ical development can facilitate the understanding that new norms may yet emerge and/or existing ones may be further developed in response to new challenges (e.g., Pope Benedict XVI’s aforementioned devel- opment of solidarity to include future generations in response to the unprecedented scope of modern ecological challenges). Since Tho- mistic secondary moral precepts of the natural law are inductively dis- cerned over time, the identification of CST norms as such challenges the notion that CST is a static, immutable tradition. This is especially so given Thomas’s affirmation that the natural law may be changed “by way of addition” (ST I-II q. 94, a. 5). Third, identification of CST principles as secondary precepts im- plicitly underscores the importance of prudence in Catholic social eth- ics. As Daly summarizes Aquinas, secondary precepts require pru- dence—formally defined as “right reason applied to action” (ST II-II q. 47, a. 2)—since “no precept is self-applying” and must be utilized considering circumstantial particularities.81 At the same time, pru- dence requires secondary moral precepts since moral virtues identify the ends “for which prudence discerns the proper means,” and “sec- ondary moral precepts are concise normative guides directing action to the ends specified by the moral virtues.”82 Thus, when CST princi- ples are understood as Thomistic secondary moral precepts, it be- comes evident that prudence is central to Catholic social ethics—an insight that is important for at least seven reasons, or sub-points, to the third benefit of viewing CST principles as Thomistic secondary moral precepts. First, recognition of the connection between prudence and CST principles understood as Thomistic secondary moral precepts implic- itly stresses the need for moral agents to discern and seriously consider the contingent dimensions of a situation in which she/he would make an ethical judgment. Next, it confirms that conscience, which Aquinas

79 I here again borrow this phrase from Himes and Himes, The Fullness of Faith. 80 James F. Keenan, “Virtues, Principles, and a Consistent Ethic of Life,” in The Con- sistent Ethic of Life: Assessing its Reception and Relevance, ed. Thomas A. Nairn (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2008), 54. 81 Daly, “The Relationship of Virtues and Norms,” 221; Cf. ST II-II q. 47, a. 3; q. 49, a. 5, ad 2. 82 Daly, “The Relationship of Virtues and Norms,” 221; Cf. ST II-II q. 47, a. 6. 88 Daniel R. DiLeo describes as “knowledge applied to an individual case,” must be cen- tral to the prudential application of CST themes (ST I q. 79, a. 13). When these two points are considered in light of what was said about the connection between ethics, conscience, and spirituality in the first part of this essay, a third strength of the proposed approach to CST is that it can inspire a deeper spirituality in moral agents that can, as de- scribed, unite spirituality and morality, as well as help bring CST from the periphery to the center of Catholic life. Fourth, and related to the first two points, this understanding of prudence and CST principles validates and helps explain the insight in Gaudium et Spes, no. 43 that Christians may legitimately disagree with each other on matters of prudential judgment because persons may have different understand- ings of knowledge, circumstantial particularities, and other dimen- sions of “an individual case” to which CST themes are applied. Fifth, and by extension of the previous point, the connection between pru- dence and CST norms understood as secondary precepts of the natural law can help Catholics to better appreciate why prudential applications of CST principles by the magisterium are not invested with the same level of authority as dogmatic or doctrinal teachings.83 Sixth, deeper appreciation of the connection between prudence and CST norms allows for their expanded application in light of Aquinas’s multifaceted understanding of acquired prudence. Thomas observes that the species of a habit is determined by its end, notes “that individ- ual good, the good of the family, and the good of the city and kingdom are different ends,” and thus identifies three species of prudence: “‘prudence’ simply so called, which is directed to one’s own good; another, ‘domestic prudence’ which is directed to the common good of the home; and a third, ‘political prudence,’ which is directed to the common good of the state or kingdom” (ST II-II q. 47, a. 11).84 Since prudence is the virtue by which secondary moral precepts are applied, identification of CST themes as such can lead to their expanded appli- cations via different prudential species. For example, while subsidiar- ity is often applied (via political prudence) to matters of state, identi- fication of this principle as a Thomistic secondary precept could help persons recognize that it might be fruitfully applied to familial situa- tions via domestic prudence. Finally, deeper connection between pru- dence and CST explicates the importance of counsel to engagement with CST themes vis-à-vis imperfect and perfect happiness. In his dis- cussion of prudence, Aquinas identifies euboulia as a virtue distinct from but related to prudence which it perfects by inclining one to “take

83 On levels of magisterial teaching authority and corresponding responses of the faithful, see Gaillardetz, Teaching with Authority, 101-128, 255-273. 84 For more on the species of prudence, see Susanne M. DeCrane, Aquinas, Feminism, and the Common Good (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), esp. 121-124. CST, Love, and Thomistic Secondary Moral Precepts 89 good counsel” necessary to sound deliberation about how to act (ST II-II q. 51, aa. 1-2). Although perfect euboulia is a gift of the Spirit and thus, properly speaking, related to infused prudence, Thomas rec- ognizes acquired and infused euboulia by which a person habitually takes counsel about action vis-à-vis imperfect and perfect happiness, respectively. Yet, whether one speaks of acquired or infused euboulia and prudence, the general connection between them is what matters for present purposes since it underscores the need for persons to seek counsel as they engage CST themes understood as secondary moral precepts. Returning to the benefits of understanding CST themes as Thomis- tic secondary moral precepts, a fourth benefit of such an understanding that doing so helps explicate their place in the Church’s social mission specifically, as well as its evangelical mission more broadly. In its pas- toral resource “The Two Feet of Love in Action,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops identifies two ways that Catholics are called to “put the Gospel in action in response to God’s love: social justice (ad- dressing systemic, root causes of social problems) and charitable works (short-term assistance for individuals and communities).”85 Alt- hough the bishops do not cite Aquinas, this model is thoroughly Tho- mistic. First, Aquinas identifies “corporal almsdeeds” as one of the external effects of charity (ST II-II q. 32). As described, Thomas also stresses that charity requires infused moral virtues enhanced by ac- quired moral virtues the inculcation of which is aided by secondary moral precepts of the natural law. Since acquired justice is divided into three types of which two—general and distributive—relate the indi- vidual and common good, Pope Benedict XVI builds on Aquinas and insists that the love of charity requires (acquired) justice in the form of engagement with all the modern systems, structures and policies that concern the common good and impact individuals’ flourishing (Caritas in Veritate, no. 7).86 CST principles understood as secondary precepts of the natural law can thus help persons recognize how CST themes “fit into” the Church’s social mission. They help foster and inform 1) acquired pru- dence that enhances infused prudence which directs corporal almsdeeds rooted in charity, and 2) acquired justice that expresses charity. Since the Church’s social mission is part of its larger evangel- ical mission as described above (Evangelii Nuntiandi, nos. 26-29), this

85 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Two Feet of Love in Action,” 2018, www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/two- feet-of-love-in-action.cfm. 86 Cf. Divini Redemptoris, no. 49; David Hollenbach, The Common Good and Chris- tian Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 193-198. 90 Daniel R. DiLeo understanding of CST themes also helps situate them in the Church’s broader mission.87

CONCLUSION Traditional interpretations of CST have profitably shaped Catholic moral life and theological ethics for the past one hundred and twenty- five years. Nevertheless, this article has argued that a more explicit understanding of CST as a magisterial resource with which Catholics can better respond to God who is love can move CST more to the cen- ter of Catholic life and strengthen the tradition’s connection with spir- ituality in ways that benefit both aspects of Christian life. Addition- ally, this essay has made the case that reading the themes of CST as Thomistic secondary precepts significantly unites CST and Aquinas’s ethical framework, strengthens the understanding of CST as a resource with which persons respond to God’s love, provides more space within which to develop the norms of CST, highlights the importance of pru- dence in CST and Catholics’ engagement with it, and demonstrates how the themes of CST are integral to the Church’s social mission rooted in charitable works and justice. In a spirit of magis, this article thus attempts to further deepen how Catholics understand and engage the already rich tradition of CST.

87 Curran, The Social Mission of the U.S. Catholic Church, 60-61. Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2019): 91-112

Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and the Modern Economic Tradition

Andrew Beauchamp and Jason A. Heron

HE MODERN ECONOMIC TRADITION accepts the anthropol- ogy and teleology of the liberal tradition: namely, that the human person is a free and autonomous agent ordered to such happiness as she chooses to pursue. And in these few T 1 respects, she is fundamentally equal to every other person. The most eloquent expression of this anthropology and teleology is the human person conceived as a rights bearer.2 But from our perspective, the in- fluence of the liberal tradition on modern economic analysis does not sit well with economists’ peculiar silence on the subject of economic rights. Why do modern economists not use their considerable analyti- cal powers to analyze and clarify the contentious topic of economic rights? One could answer that economists do positive rather than nor- mative work. So, they stay away from the topic of economic rights. This is true, as far as it goes. But this is more than a question of method. Most economists use a limited framework to construct argu- ments in favor of the efficiency of markets and market mechanisms. However, there is no clean border where economic analysis ends and non-economic (i.e., non-rational or non-maximizing behavior) begins. The economist’s “technique” almost never clearly defines where one type of analysis ends and the other begins. So, the question of the economist’s silence on economic rights is not only a question of meth- odological scope. It is also a philosophical and theological question.

1 We would like to thank Bharat Ranganathan and Paul Anders for their careful criti- cisms of our work here. Sandra Brown and Aimee Huntley of Mount Marty College library deserve special mention for invaluable research assistance. 2 We acknowledge that there is no monolithic liberalism but rather various liberalisms contextualized by a variety of accidents of history, geography, socio-political forms, etc. From our perspective, however, contextualized liberalisms are all committed in important ways to defending and augmenting the liberty and autonomy of the individ- ual person. For our purposes in this essay, it will suffice to characterize liberal free- dom and autonomy as follows: (a) liberal freedom is the relative absence of re- strictions on the rational agent as she pursues what she defines as the good life; and (b) liberal autonomy is the relative absence of such restrictions especially as they per- tain to her ability to determine whether and how external authorities will contribute to her defining the good life. 92 Andrew Beauchamp and Jason Heron

The thesis of this essay is that the silence of modern economics re- garding economic rights is best explained in terms of a deeper silence concerning the role of reciprocity in economic relationships. Reci- procity is difficult to incorporate into rational choice theory.3 Neither is it amenable to the utilitarian calculations economists make regard- ing human choices in economic exchange.4 In this essay, in order to understand the modern economist’s silence regarding economic rights, we contrast the liberal tradition of modern economics with an alternative tradition represented by Catholic social teaching (CST) and the “civil economy.”5 Whereas the liberal tradition neglects the centrality of reciprocity for understanding the nature of economic rights, both CST and the civil economy foreground the role of reciprocal obligations in recognizing and fulfilling economic rights. Our argument is structured as follows. First, we will contrast the place

3 Attempts to incorporate reciprocity into rational choice theory do exist. Cf. Carole Jean Uhlaner, “‘Relational Goods’ and Participation: Incorporating Sociality into a Theory of Rational Action,” Public Choice 62, no. 3 (1989): 253-285, and more re- cently, Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009). Sen’s effort is a sophisticated attempt to depart from the tran- scendental approach to justice, which focuses on institutional arrangements and ideal states, and to focus instead on comparative arrangements of non-ideal states. See es- pecially pp. 87-113, where Sen provides a detailed account of “social choice theory” and how it could provide us with a more reasonable way of identifying injustices and working for possible (rather than ideal) justice. That Sen is an economist (and a 1998 Nobel Laureate) and writing has signaled to some that it is possible for modern economics to re-incorporate moral concerns (which were originally present in Adam Smith’s work) into economic analysis. See Theodore Tsukahara, Jr., “Will Understanding the Principle of Gratuitousness Help Save the Soul of a Lapsed Econ- omist?” in Jesus Christ: The New Face of Social Progress, ed. Peter J. Casarella (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2015), 276-289, for some context surrounding this hope. 4See Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, 3rd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 40-5, regarding the tendency to dichotomize civil and political rights on the one hand and economic, social, and cultural rights on the other. Especially relevant is Donnelly’s argument against the claim that economic, social, and cultural rights are actually unintelligible as human rights. Though it falls beyond the scope of our work here to defend such a claim, it is provocative to correlate this assumed dichotomy with the economist’s willingness to remain silent regarding economic rights. Further work considering whether and how this assumption colors the liberal economist’s engagement with human rights would enhance our ability to speak critically and productively about the hermeneutics making certain types of eco- nomic analysis possible and other types improbable, if not impossible. See Richard Falk, Human Rights Horizons: The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World (New York: Routledge, 2000), 7-8, for one possible correlation regarding the Cold War con- text and the West’s liberal focus on civil and political rights in contradistinction to the emphasis of the Communist states and the Non-Aligned Movement on collective rights of class, including rights to economic well-being and basic human needs. 5 The Italian Civil Humanist tradition is often referred to as the “civil economy.” This is not a paper on the fate of Italian Civil Humanism in modern economic theory, so we use the term civil economy. Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and Modern Tradition 93 of economic rights within the modern economic tradition and CST. Second, we will situate our understanding of CST within the historical context of the civil economy. Third, we will draw out the ways in which both CST and the civil economy tradition contextualize eco- nomic activity within a larger social reality that is best characterized by the virtue of reciprocity. Finally, we will return to the subject of economic rights in order to make the case that the economist’s silence regarding reciprocity entails an inappropriate and potentially harmful silence regarding economic rights.

MODERN ECONOMICS AND CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING ON ECO- NOMIC RIGHTS Mainstream economics today is the result of a particular intellec- tual trajectory. It begins with Adam Smith and David Hume in the eighteenth century, moves through the Marginalists of the nineteenth century, and arrives at the twentieth century where we witness the ex- plosion of “economic science” as a pragmatic and policy-oriented dis- cipline that enjoys a preeminent place in universities, think-tanks, and governments throughout the world.6 This intellectual trajectory relies on a strong distinction of fact from value, because that distinction rad- ically simplifies analysis. In dividing fact from value, the economist can come to believe she sidesteps moral questions.7 This belief fosters the assumption that any discussion of economic rights is a non-sequi- tur in economic analysis. Thus, economists typically confine discus- sion of economic rights to other sometimes less clearly defined disci- plines, including political economy, political science, and philoso- phy.8 The end result of this philosophical choice is that the discipline of economics as it is popularly practiced involves almost no discussion of economic “rights.”9

6 Unlike the original prizes which were established by Alfred Nobel in 1895, the “No- bel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences” was only established in 1968, a testament to the rise of economics as a “science” in the twentieth century. 7 Daniel Finn, The Moral Ecology of Markets: Assessing Claims about Markets and Justice (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 11-33, takes up this point in greater detail, outlining the moral pre-commitments of especially free-market oriented thinkers whose views are most often associated with a purely “economic” view of analysis. 8 Occasionally this confinement has been literal, with entire departments of econo- mists, who maintained a focus on various “heterodox” schools of economics (which often do admit discussion of economic rights) being dissolved. See Gill Donovan, “Economics Split Divides Notre Dame,” National Catholic Reporter, April 9, 2004, 3-6, for an overview of the Notre Dame case. 9 An exception to this rule is the interest in the study and allocation of property rights (distinct from a right to private property), which are ownership claims, not usually viewed as human rights. 94 Andrew Beauchamp and Jason Heron

CST, on the other hand, is a body of writings usually dated to Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum.10 This body of writings communicates and engages the implications of the Christian Gospel for human society. Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, CST has embraced rights-based language as an adequate ex- pression of the fundamental social requirements dictated by the trans- cendent dignity of the human person. In terms of economic rights, Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum articulated both a right to private property and a countervailing right to common use, a right to a just and living wage, a right to unionize and strike, and rights to limitations on working hours and to legitimate rest. Several CST documents since 1891 have expanded this list to include: rights to food, shelter, clothing and med- ical care; a right to free economic initiative (including the right to em- ployment); a right to life; rights to drinking water, land, education, credit, insurance, and markets; a right to pension and support of the disabled; a safe working environment; a right to migrate in search of work along with a right of return. In addition to these individual rights, the State has a right to use property for the public good, to intervene in antitrust issues, to support small-scale producers, and to control mi- gration when there is legitimate need.11 The need to specify many of these rights is a cue to us today re- garding the enduring task of defending the human person. Given the practical orientation of CST, this rights-based teaching developed as the need arose, often in response to grave crimes against persons and societies. But CST’s rights teaching is not simply an ad hoc response to the Zeitgeist. Rather, throughout the historical development of the CST tradition, certain foundational principles (derived from sacred scripture, the Church’s theological tradition, philosophical reflection, and the principles of the Natural Law, all in conversation with histor- ical experience) have undergirded this same development. The con-

10 For our purposes, we do not need to establish whether it is accurate to date CST’s origin to 1891. The relevance of the nineteenth century history of social Catholicism in Europe, as well as of the record of papal teachings on social matters prior to Leo XIII’s pontificate, extends beyond the scope of our essay. The reader is referred to two standard treatments of these historical questions: Paul J. Misner, Social Catholi- cism in Europe: From the Onset of Industrialization to the First World War (New York: Crossroad, 1991); and Michael Schuck, That They Be One: The Social Teach- ing of the Papal Encyclicals, 1740-1989 (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1991). 11 Following Leo XIII, economic rights were outlined by St. John XXIII in Pacem in Terris, by St. John Paul II in Laborem Exercens and Centesimus Annus, and most recently by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’. Additionally, numerous bishops’ conferences have clarified and extended rights-based teaching, including the USCCB and the Mex- ican Episcopal Conference in Strangers No Longer. Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and Modern Tradition 95 ventional list of these principles is as follows: (1) the transcendent dig- nity of the human person; (2) solidarity between humans and societies; (3) subsidiarity within these solidarities; and (4) the common good.12 The foundational principles of CST’s historical development ex- press a vision of the human person and her sociality. This combination of practical attention to historical circumstances with enduring philo- sophical and theological commitments has become a prophetic stance vis-a-vis contemporary utilitarian and materialist economic analysis. Though such analysis claims to be value-free, the right dialogue part- ners can expose it for what it is: a tradition replete with philosophical and theological commitments. These commitments do not make mod- ern, liberal economics a disinterested science. Instead, they determine for economists which data are relevant and how to follow where such data “inevitably” lead. In other words, CST operates with a metaphys- ical confidence complemented by a hermeneutical , whereas modern, liberal economic analysis appears to its practitioners to be in- nocent of metaphysics and so in little or no need of hermeneutics. Modern CST thus cannot remain silent regarding human rights, in- cluding economic rights. In dialogue with modern social sciences, the CST tradition continues to investigate the human person as a bearer of rights. But when it comes to economic rights, modern economics does not appear to be equipped to participate in the dialogue.

CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT AND THE CIVIL ECONOMY The divergence between modern economics and CST regarding human rights is the result of only one particular historical trajectory. Another tradition of economic analysis exists in the West. This alter- native tradition sees economics not as an independent, value-free sci- ence but as a moral endeavor implicated in philosophical and theolog- ical questions of anthropology, justice, agency, teleology, and happi- ness. This is the civil economy tradition, which was born in the Italian Enlightenment during Europe’s transition from the medieval to the modern world. Below, we look at the central commitments of the civil economy tradition. We will see striking points of convergence with CST. These convergences are important because they signal that CST is not simply failing to keep up with modern economic thought. That

12 This list of the four basic principles of CST is not to be confused with another common listing of seven “themes”: (1) the transcendent dignity of the human person; (2) the vocation of family, community, and participation; (3) the complementary re- lationship between rights and duties; (4) a preferential option for the poor and vulner- able; (5) the dignity of work and the rights of workers; (6) solidarity; and (7) care for the Lord’s creation. See Russell Hittinger, “The Coherence of the Four Basic Princi- ples of Catholic Social Doctrine: An Interpretation,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, 7, no.4 (2009): 791-838, for more on the historical context and the coherence of the four principles. 96 Andrew Beauchamp and Jason Heron is, where CST and modern economic analysis diverge, we are not al- ways simply observing the popes’ dabbling in a social science beyond their competency. Instead, the convergences between CST and the civil economy signal that CST is speaking from an alternative eco- nomic tradition that enjoys its own coherence and viability. By inves- tigating these convergences, we can better understand the ethical sep- aration between contemporary economic thought and CST. And by attending particularly to the role the civil virtues—especially reciproc- ity—play in both CST and the civil economy, we can better appreciate what is at stake in the modern economist’s silence regarding the hu- man person’s economic rights. We highlight three main points of convergence between CST and the civil economy tradition. First, both traditions identify a common, indivisible, and non-aggregable telos for economic activity. This telos is dubbed the “common good” by CST and “public happiness” by the civil economy tradition. Second, because economic activity is a con- stitutive element of the moral life of a society, both traditions call for the integration of commercial and social life. Third, both traditions admit the need for common, disinterested action—“reciprocity”—to achieve a morally praiseworthy integration of economic activity within social life. This integration of economic activity into social life is essential if both economic activity and social life are to realize their ends.

THE COMMON GOOD AND “PUBLIC HAPPINESS” Aristotle suggests that a truly individual, isolated person would have to be either a beast or a god.13 Such a person has never existed. The civil economy tradition and CST proceed according to this fact. They are both founded on a rich vision of the social nature of the hu- man person. Given the human person’s orientation toward goods and the Good, and given her social nature, both traditions presuppose that there are some goods that may only be pursued, held, and cultivated in common. These goods are indivisible. That is, in the absence of others, they are not simply “smaller” or “less.” Instead, they cease to exist. Such goods constitute what CST calls “the common good.” The latter is often described as the sum total of conditions that enable and promote the flourishing of the person.14 But the notion of a “sum total

13 Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 37/1253a. 14 Austin Flannery, Vatican Council II, Volume 1: The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents (Northport, NY: Costello, 1998), 927. This is the language of the conciliar document Gaudium et Spes, no. 26. For a more precise discussion, see the Compen- dium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, nos. 164-165. Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and Modern Tradition 97 of conditions” may obscure the doctrine of the common good by in- troducing notions of aggregation.15 To clarify the doctrine of the common good, we would focus less on “sum totals” and more on the reality of goods that are only real when cooperatively pursued and maintained. Examples of such goods abound. Teams pursue wins. Orchestras pursue performances. Spouses pursue matrimony. In each case, the social body in question, no matter its size, is oriented toward goals that are only intelligible when considered in terms of goods realized corporately. Put simply, it makes little sense to speak of 50 percent of a win or a performance or a marriage. In such cases, one should not speak primarily of divisible goods, such as the equipment of teams and orchestras, or the jointly held possessions of spouses. Rather, one should speak primarily of in- divisible goods, such as the good of playing together, the good of bonding with one another, etc.16 At a broader social and political level, we can and should speak similarly about moral education, formal ac- ademic education, religious freedom, access to legal protection, and other realities that are more realizable for more people the more every person works toward them. The “payoff” in such cases is not a zero- sum game. According to the tradition of the civil economy, even economic ac- tivity is implicated in such social activity, because one of the goals of economic activity is to further the “public happiness.” This phrase re- fers to the general condition, which is not independent of private well- being, but is not the simple aggregation of private well-being either.

15 See Iwao Hirose, Moral Aggregation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), wherein Hirose helpfully clarifies the role aggregation plays in moral reasoning gen- erally and in tough cases (especially distribution of limited medical resources) partic- ularly. Though our use of the term aggregation is not exactly a species of the sorts of aggregation Hirose analyzes, his treatment of “formal aggregation” (as over against a more utilitarian “substantive aggregation”) bears a certain relevance here. For Hirose, “What formal aggregation offers is a structure [as opposed to a predetermined utili- tarian objective]. The task...is not to identify the state we should realize. It merely identifies how the overall goodness of a state and the individual component of good are connected. Formal aggregation attempts to identify a coherent structure that bridges the individual component of good and the overall goodness of a state of af- fairs” (55). Hirose’s justification of formal aggregation, and his position on the insuf- ficiency of substantive aggregation, seem to us to be compatible with our perspective here. Further analysis of this compatibility, however, would require a separate article. We encourage the reader to keep our somewhat loose use of the term “aggregation” appropriately distinct from Hirose’s careful and technical use. 16 In Andrew M. Yuengert’s taxonomy, these goods could be described as combina- tions of character goods and social goods. See Yuengert, “What Is ‘Sustainable Pros- perity for All’ in the Catholic Social Tradition,” in The True Wealth of Nations: Cath- olic Social Thought and Economic Life, ed. Daniel Finn (New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2010), 37-62.

98 Andrew Beauchamp and Jason Heron

Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni offer three clarifications that illu- minate the nature of public happiness: (1) “The transformation of ‘in- dividual’ into ‘public’ happiness is not immediate, because public happiness is neither an aggregation nor just an unintentional result of private interest”; (2) “The term ‘public happiness’ is strictly connected with the ‘public good,’ which comes directly from the natural law tra- dition of and Civic Humanism”; and (3) “There is a di- rect link between public happiness and civil virtues: Happiness, both private and public, springs from virtues.”17 The civil economy per- spective thus stands in contrast to an important anthropological com- mitment of contemporary economics: that individuals aiming at their own interest often (even usually) achieve benefit for the larger society. For both CST’s vision of the common good, and for the civil economy tradition’s vision of public happiness, the nature of the social task re- quires not only the individual virtues associated with enterprise and practical wisdom, but also the civil virtues.18 First among the civil vir- tues is love for the larger good, or public happiness. As Bruni and Za- magni put it, “There is no happiness outside life in society and there is no society without intentional love for the public good.”19

ECONOMIC ACTIVITY AND SOCIAL LIFE Both CST and the civil economy view commercial activity as part of the larger life of society, which must pursue economic goods in common if it is to be healthy, just, peaceful, and durable. Commercial activity is thus always already moral activity, rich with moral founda- tions and implications. The philosophical and theological anthropol- ogy underlying this perspective on commercial activity sees market participants in terms of their personhood: as relational beings bearing

17 Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, Civil Economy: Efficiency, Equity, Public Happiness (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007), 47. 18 See Luigino Bruni, Reciprocity, Altruism and the Civil Society: In Praise of Heter- ogeneity (London, New York: Routledge, 2008). Bruni puts it well: “The way main- stream economic science deals with reciprocity is expressive of the more general at- titude of economics toward sociality.... It is a matter of common knowledge that econ- omists have examined, traditionally, only one form of sociality: the instrumental one. All other forms of sociality have been regarded as a sort of ‘background’ onto which economic choices were represented as essentially instrumental and unaffected by the relational context where economic interaction takes place. Economics has adopted ‘self-interest’ as the general motivation of economic agency, and anonymity as the normal characteristic of market activity (e.g. as in the perfect competition model). The pursuit of social and civic dimensions inspired by different motivations (e.g. family bonds, friendship, volunteering, etc.) was then confined to non-economic domains, leaving to other disciplines (such as Psychology and Sociology) the investigation of those more complex relational dynamics that arise in those domains” (1). 19 Bruni and Zamagni, Civil Economy, 75. Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and Modern Tradition 99 obligations that cannot be discarded when one participates in commer- cial activity.20 Pope Benedict XVI makes this point clearly in his 2009 social en- cyclical Caritas in Vertitate. In the encyclical, Benedict describes the market as an “economic institution that permits encounter between persons, inasmuch as they are economic subjects who make use of contracts to regulate their relations as they exchange goods and ser- vices of equivalent value between them, in order to satisfy their needs and desires.”21 But Benedict cautions us when he states that “if the market is governed solely by the principle of the equivalence in value of exchanged goods, it cannot produce the social cohesion that it re- quires in order to function well.” Thus, from the perspective of con- temporary CST, parity of exchange and efficiency of transaction are inadequate rubrics by which to judge not only the utility of markets, but also, ultimately, their enduring feasibility. As Benedict puts it pointedly: “Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfill its proper economic function. And today it is this trust which has ceased to exist, and the loss of trust is a grave loss.” This outlook represents a radical departure from the conventional view of markets: that the market participant’s sole aim is maximizing the value of exchanged goods.22 Instead, Benedict suggests there are forms of solidarity and trust which must be internal to the market.23 And because a market is nothing more or less than the coordinated activities of human agents, the internalization of solidarity and trust

20 See John McNerney, Wealth of Persons: Economics with a Human Face (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2016), 244ff; David L. Schindler, “The Anthropological Vision of Cari- tas in Veritate and Its Implications for Economic and Cultural Life Today,” in Jesus Christ: The New Face of Social Progress, 68-85. 21 Caritas in Veritate, no. 35. 22 For an expansion of Benedict’s thought here, see D. Stephen Long, “Profit Maxi- mization and the Death of God: Theology and Economics in Benedict XVI’s Charity in Truth,” in Jesus Christ: The New Face of Social Progress, 167-182, especially at 175-178. Long also provides a stirring characterization of what Benedict’s thought would mean for a revitalization of the notion of economic exchange. From Long’s perspective, following Oliver O’Donovan, it would be more accurate to describe eco- nomic exchange as communication between parties, for communication signifies the community created by economic activity, whereas exchange signifies closed transac- tions between isolated individuals (178-182). From our perspective, the architects of the civil economy tradition would be deeply sympathetic with this sensitivity to lan- guage. 23 Solidarity in CST refers to the willingness to sacrifice on behalf of the good of the other as other. For our purposes here, we need not attend very closely to the twofold nature of solidarity in CST: namely, that it is a metaphysical social principle and that it is a virtue that rational agents may cultivate in order to perfect their own humanity and to contribute to the common good. See Andrew Beauchamp and Jason A. Heron, “Solidarity in a Technocratic Age: Commercialization, Catholic Social Teaching, and Moral Formation,” Journal of Religious Ethics (in press). 100 Andrew Beauchamp and Jason Heron within markets amounts to the internalization of solidarity and trust within the market participants themselves.24 Without this internaliza- tion, we are not left with a market that functions poorly. We are rather left with a market that has ceased to function. But to speak of the internalization of solidarity and trust within a moral agent is to speak of the cultivation of virtue. Thus, Zamagni and Bruni’s summary of the civil economy view of the necessity of virtue for a functioning economy: “[M]ost classical eighteenth century econ- omists shared a deeper conviction that without civil virtues there is no room for market economy: The market can work properly (so bringing wealth and welfare) only among people capable of cooperation and trust. In turn, cooperation and trust require more than just self-inter- est.”25 Both CST and the civil economy tradition argue that markets fail to operate as intended when devoid of these fundamental virtues: solidarity, cooperation, and trust.26 If one agrees with this claim, then an economics (such as the modern economic tradition) devoid of the study and analysis of these virtues is similar to a biology that does not address the beginning of life on earth. This perspective regarding vir- tues as prerequisites to a properly functioning economy follows on the truth about the human person: that she is bearer of both rights and du- ties and that she cannot flourish materially or spiritually without both the goods redounding from cooperation and the good of cooperation

24 Here, and again below, we are exposing our position on a not-so-subterranean issue within this discussion of reciprocity and economic rights. The issue is whether the work for justice in society is primarily an institutional or a personal endeavor. From our perspective, when the conversation about society’s responsibilities to individual persons is cast in terms of justice, it is (perhaps) more natural (if not easier) to focus on institutional arrangements. We live in a post-Rawlsian world, after all. But when the conversation about society’s responsibilities to individual persons is cast in terms of solidarity (which we would “annex” to the virtue of justice), a focus on institutional arrangements seems less natural. This is not to say that institutions cannot cultivate solidarity. As Catholics, we certainly believe they can and hope they will. But it seems to us that the demands of solidarity, its “otherward” concern, emphasize the irreduci- bly personal aspect of social relations. Justice is most certainly oriented “otherward,” but solidarity is a form of justice not easily cast in terms of equity, balance, fairness, and other words that easily translate into institutional dimensions. 25 Bruni and Zamagni, Civil Economy, 68, emphasis original. 26 It is relevant to note that Caritas in Veritate was written in the midst of the global financial crisis of 2008-9, wherein the evaporation of trust in major institutions (e.g., investment banks, ratings agencies, government regulators) was a direct cause and consequence of the crisis. Similarly, the civil economy tradition developed following the brutal period of the Italian Wars, the infighting among independent kingdoms and city-states within present-day Italy. While many of the original civil economy theo- rists borrowed notions of civility from the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance pe- riod, they were also cognizant of the profound social disorder, particularly a lack of trade and resulting poverty, consequent to a lack of trust and cooperation. For more on “trust” in the thought of Genovesi and Smith, see Luigino Bruni, Civil Happiness: Economics and Human Flourishing in Historical Perspective (London, New York: Routledge, 2006), 62-63, 82-83. Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and Modern Tradition 101 itself. Virtue is not simply one efficient tool for attaining this level of flourishing. It is constitutive of flourishing itself.

COMMON, DISINTERESTED ACTION—AN INITIAL LOOK AT RECIPROCITY The recognition that there are moral prerequisites for market func- tioning brings us back to the history of modern economics as a story of evolution away from a larger social vision of commercial activity.27 Near the beginning of this modern story, Adam Smith devoted much space in his writing to the role of morality, focusing primarily on “sympathy.”28 During the same period, the civil economy tradition similarly argued that the social fabric of trust and cooperation is a pre- condition for market activity and functioning. But the civil economy tradition, particularly embodied by Antonio Genovesi of Naples, added to the importance of sympathy the reciprocal nature of friend- ship and interest in the public good, or “public happiness.” If both eco- nomic trajectories at their root acknowledge the necessity of certain moral prerequisites, wherein lies the divergence between conven- tional, modern economics and the civil economy? As economics evolved from Smith, it did not maintain a focus on sympathy, moral discipline, or civilizing influences. Whatever interest Smith’s heirs may have had in public happiness or the common good, they limited their analysis to self-interest as a mechanism useful for achieving the more limited end of wealth accumulation.29 While the self-interested accumulation of wealth had been treated as an end dis- tinct from public happiness prior to the work of Smith’s heirs, the two were eventually fused by the utilitarian thinkers.30 The evolution of modern economic thought can thus be read as a movement away from seeing economic activity as directed towards an anthropological and

27 See Bruni, Reciprocity, Altruism and the Civil Society, chapter two, on “Homo oeco- nomicus’ two hundred years of solitude,” for a “non-conventional history of economic thought” that informs our treatment here (pp. 13-26). 28 “No matter how selfish you think man is, it’s obvious that there are some principles in his nature that give him an interest in the welfare of others, and make their happi- ness necessary to him, even if he gets nothing from it but the pleasure of seeing it.....‘Pity’ and ‘compassion’ are labels for our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of oth- ers. ‘Sympathy’, though its meaning may originally have been the same, can now fairly properly be used to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.” Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Knud Haakonssen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1. 29 See Bruni and Zamagni, Civil Economy, 107-122, for a narration of this history. 30 Bentham’s reduction of happiness into his principle of utility and its subsequent adoption by later economists, particularly William Jevons, erased the last connections of economics to classical notions of happiness, and certainly to public happiness as it was envisioned by the civil economy tradition. 102 Andrew Beauchamp and Jason Heron spiritual end, such as public happiness or the common good, and to- ward seeing economic activity as directed towards a technological31 and material end: wealth accumulation alone. While many admitted that wealth was one among many inputs into happiness, modern eco- nomic analysis focused almost solely on material wealth.32 This redi- rection of economics dispenses with any need for sympathy in the market sphere. Although some neoclassical economists allowed for sympathy, all classified it as outside of ‘economic’ action.33 In contrast to this line of thinking, Benedict XVI again demon- strates the convergence between CST and the civil economy tradition by arguing for communal action that directs market activity towards the common good. This communal action necessarily includes moral consideration within economic circumstances. But this is not solely an issue of political power being exercised to restrain self-interested mar- ket forces. That is, when Benedict speaks of directing market activity, he is not speaking in simplistic terms of a state-market binary.34 In- stead Benedict teaches that “The Church’s social doctrine holds that authentically human social relationships of friendship, solidarity and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity, and not only outside it or ‘after’ it.”35 In short, then, the need for common ac- tion ordered to ends that surpass private interest (without leaving it behind) is not naturally or necessarily “pre-” or “post-” or “anti-” com- mercial.36 Rather, commercial activity, if it is to remain feasible, must be given its proper human context.

31 By “technological” we do not mean to suggest that markets are something more than tools. We are in agreement with CST that markets are indeed technologies de- vised by humans for their flourishing. This view of the technical nature of markets requires that we view markets as means. To conceive of a technology as an end, how- ever, is to set it up as an authority, a directive force, and thus to construct a “technoc- racy.” When the technologies of markets are viewed as ends in themselves, they take on a new scale out of proportion to their purpose. For more on technocracy, see Beau- champ and Heron, “Solidarity in a Technocratic Age.” 32 This is best seen in Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (London: Macmillan, 1945), 1: “Economics...examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of wellbeing.” Marshall implies the material requisites are not the sum total of well- being but an ingredient therein. 33 “According to Edgeworth, the market is a process of contracting, where the per- sonal dimension of sympathy and the other’s face are important.... Normally forgotten is the role he attributes to the sympathy taking place between contracting parties, par- ticularly when the market is not a ‘perfect’ and anonymous mechanism and the other becomes a ‘you.’” Bruni and Zamagni, Civil Economy, 120-121. 34 See William Cavanaugh, “‘Dispersed Political Authority’: Subsidiarity and Glob- alization in Caritas in Veritate,” in Jesus Christ: The New Face of Social Progress, 89-106, especially at 90-96 where Cavanaugh provides a helpful summary and anal- ysis of Benedict’s treatment of the state-market binary. 35 Caritas in Veritate, no. 36. 36 We would redouble the point here that this account of reciprocity in no way requires that we leave behind instrumental forms of sociality (contracts) and the mechanisms Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and Modern Tradition 103

INTEGRATING ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL LIFE To place commercial activity within its proper human context is to integrate it within broader social life, and it is precisely such an inte- gration that would make economic rights a proper subject of the econ- omist’s analysis. The modern economic tradition attempts precisely this integration via the thought of Adam Smith. But in this section, we juxtapose Smith’s most famous contribution to this work of integra- tion with the thought of Antonio Genovesi, one of the central intellec- tual architects of the civil economy tradition. In doing so, we demon- strate the need for reciprocity both practically and conceptually in eco- nomic and social activity and analysis. Genovesi’s thought is rich with anthropological and moral insight into the nature of economic activity. His thought is thus fertile for considering why an economist—or an economic tradition such as the modern one—ought to engage the issue of economic rights. Undoubtedly, the most infamous moment in Smith’s Wealth of Na- tions is his speculation regarding an “invisible hand” at work in the economy. According to Smith:

[Every individual…] neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he fre- quently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.37

Thus, in Smith’s view, by a kind of invisible providence, unin- tended public benefit arises by an aggregation of the individual pursuit of self-interest. By the providence of the “invisible hand,” the self- interested individual and the good of the broader whole of society are seamlessly integrated. And by this same providence, benefit redounds to both individual and society, though neither the individual nor the and relationships typically associated (due to our formation by one particular narrative of economic history) with economic activity. Cf. Bruni, Reciprocity, Altruism and the Civil Society, chapters three through five, wherein Bruni differentiates per chapter between “cooperation without benevolence,” friendship, and “unconditional reciproc- ity” as species of reciprocity. The point is not to jettison contractual cooperation but to situate it within an analogous hierarchy of forms of reciprocity, all of which have personal/moral, economic, social, political, and even metaphysical implications. 37 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_Wealth- Nations_p.pdf, 349. 104 Andrew Beauchamp and Jason Heron society directly intend such benefit. This providential mechanism is the modern economic tradition’s chief presupposition regarding the way to integrate economic activity into social life, and the responsi- bilities following therefrom. And when this presupposition is accom- panied by a pessimism that centralized or socialized communal actions lead to myriad unintended (and negative) consequences, we can more clearly understand the confidence with which economists after Smith continue to speak about such a mysterious mechanism. The market’s invisible hand, in all its unconscious benevolence, appears to be soci- ety’s only reliable source of the reciprocity required for public happi- ness and the realization of an authentic common good available to all (or at least, the most possible) members. All else is self-defeating in- efficiency. But from our perspective here, these presuppositions and this pes- simism are abetted by a tacit and inadequate anthropology that is by no means inevitable or unassailable. The tradition embodied in both the civil economy and CST, on the other hand, is confident that its anthropology is adequate to the truth of the human person. This is one of the chief strengths of the tradition. It remains a goal of this tradition to articulate a vision of the human person and her associations that integrates self-interested individuals into the larger pursuit of public happiness, or the common good. This goal translates into very practi- cal moral and economic considerations. For example, for both the civil economy tradition and CST, self-interest may create wealth to the ben- efit of society, but it is also insufficient for translating that wealth into livable human happiness. This simple and conspicuously practical point seems to have escaped the attention of those who believe an “in- visible hand” can perform the work of integration. Antonio Genovesi wrote in the 18th century of a phenomenon sim- ilar to Smith’s “invisible hand:”

[T]he profit and the comfort that people nearly foresee, and that may be actually reaped, makes people feel a great wish of working, trading and enriching. And notwithstanding when people endeavouring to en- rich [sic] they aim only at their own self-interest, it is no less true that enriching they promote [sic] the public advantage by enriching the whole nation.38

While both the civil economy and post-Smithian economics place self-interest under the category of mutual cooperation, the former does not confine economic activity solely to private interest achieved through mutual cooperation in the pursuit of wealth. This is an im- portant qualification. For the disagreement between the civil economy

38 Quoted in Bruni and Zamagni, Civil Economy, 85. Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and Modern Tradition 105 tradition and post-Smithian economics lies in different conceptions of human happiness and its relation to virtue. For his part, Smith argued public happiness increased with the ac- cumulation of wealth. But it is not at all clear that such an equation adequately describes the relationship between wealth and happiness. Bruni and Zamagni clarify:

Smith...thinks that the relationality expressed in market dealings is of a different nature than that found in other areas of life, such as family, friendship and civic commitment. Smaller societies or communities require sacrifice, love and affection for continued survival; commer- cial societies are unified “by a different bond,” by a “cooperation without benevolence”….This “neutral” form of cooperation is possi- ble only in commercial society, and it represents to Smith a step for- ward in history because it allows more wealth and public happiness. The market needs ties too, but only those of a weak variety....39

The civil economy tradition recognizes self-interest as operative in commercial endeavors. It is difficult to see how commercial endeavors could take place otherwise.40 But self-interest cannot be the sole mo- tivation for the human act of commercial endeavor. While the market can create wealth, it cannot translate that wealth into happiness.41 Again, CST and the civil economy merge on this point. Benedict XVI writes “Economic activity cannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic.”42 A public happiness does indeed exist that cannot be achieved or furthered by any “invisi- ble hand.” As one of the earliest writers in the civil economy tradition, Paolo Mattia Dora also recognized the necessity of placing economic activity within the larger common life of peoples: “The true essence of civil life is the helpful exchanging of virtues and natural faculties, which men give to one another with the ultimate end of obtaining hu- man happiness.”43 From a modern economist’s perspective, the idea of an “exchang- ing of virtues” must seem unintelligible. Indeed, even from a moral

39 Bruni and Zamagni, Civil Economy, 105, emphasis original, quoting Smith’s The- ory of Moral Sentiments, II 3.2. 40 By linking “self-interest” and “commercial activity” via necessity, we in no way intend to suggest that humans are somehow ontologically selfish and that economic and social analysis should proceed accordingly from this pessimistic anthropology. Rather our intention is simpler: the human is that animal who is provident for herself and ought to be. “Self-interest” here need not connote pleonexia. Instead, it can con- note the right and duty of the human person to provide for herself and those under her care. 41 See Bruni, Civil Happiness, 12-17, for a summary of the research demonstrating the lack of causal connection between wealth and happiness. 42 Caritas in Veritate, no. 36 43 Quoted in Bruni and Zamagni, Civil Economy, 90. 106 Andrew Beauchamp and Jason Heron philosopher’s perspective, the phrase is ambiguous. But we interpret the phrase as another suggestive way of emphasizing that some social problems cannot be solved using a technical, commercial logic.44 We would place economic rights alongside such social problems that are finally resistant to a purely commercial logic. Economic rights—such as the right to migrate or the right to employment with a living wage— are not simply matters of commercial exchange, though they remain thoroughly economic matters. Rather, they are matters of social and political cooperation profoundly conditioned by moral, philosophical, and theological presuppositions and ends. The “exchanging of virtues” is a prerequisite for an exchange not only of goods or services, but also of the moral selves that make it possible to claim economic rights and fulfill economic duties. Chief among the virtues relevant for such a moral exchange is the civil virtue of reciprocity.

RECIPROCITY, MODERN ECONOMICS, AND ECONOMIC RIGHTS In this paper we are demonstrating the necessity of reciprocity and for understanding economic rights and especially for our understanding of why modern economists are silent regarding eco- nomic rights. Our contention is that when economic relations and ac- tivities are placed in their broader social context, economic rights can and should become of critical interest to economic analysis. Since the fulfillment of economic rights is an intrinsically social task, the lan- guage of reciprocity is an adequate and even eloquent register that would serve the economist as she works with rights and duties as eco- nomic phenomena.45 And yet, as we stated above, the modern econo- mist’s attention to economic rights appears to be idiosyncratic to only a few economists.46 Even when economists more generally appear to

44 For our thoughts on the technocratic paradigm governing economic relations in our day, see Beauchamp and Heron, “Solidarity in a Technocratic Age.” 45 Where economic rights are not treated using the language of reciprocity, we see rich social phenomena flattened into economic concepts like altruism (satisfying one’s own preferences by caring about others). Economists often assume the concept of al- truism does the work of reciprocal social and economic structures of rights and duties, or they collapse all such dimensions of human motivation into “tastes,” which are then forced to some degree into self-interested utility maximizing theory. See Gary S. Becker, “Altruism, Egoism, and Genetic Fitness: Economics and Sociobiology,” Journal of Economic Literature 14, no. 3 (1976): 817-826, for a classic treatment. See James Andreoni and John Miller, “Giving According to GARP: An Experimental Test of the Consistency of Preferences for Altruism,” Econometrica 70, no. 2 (2002): 737- 753, for experimental evidence that altruism is consistent with utility maximization in laboratory games. Utility theory is not a morally innocuous description of human ac- tion (e.g., unidimensionality and non-satiation both carry profound moral implica- tions). See Bernard Hodgson, “The Conundrum of Moral Evaluation in Economics,” in Trends in Business and Economic Ethics, eds. Christopher Cowton and Michaela Haase (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2008), 91-130, for a fuller treatment of such issues. 46 A notable exception is the work of Robert Sugden, The Economics of Rights, Co- operation and Welfare (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004). Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and Modern Tradition 107 address economic rights—as in the case of property rights—we see their perspective occluded by inattention to the social context of the phenomenon under study.47 Thus our contention that modern econo- mists are strangely silent on urgent social and political topics that would seem to benefit especially from the analytic power of the econ- omist’s science. In order to ground our critique of this silence regarding economic rights particularly, it is important for us to be clear about our position on human rights more generally. Our Catholic perspective stands in more or less contrast with a variety of contemporary understandings of human rights. We are reluctant to endorse foundationless accounts of human rights as supposedly self-evident and needing no philosoph- ical (let alone theological) justification. We reject accounts of human rights as the possession of rational agents on account of personal au- tonomy. And we are not convinced by accounts of human rights that locate their origin purely in human convention. From our perspective, and in sync with the civil economy and CST traditions, human rights are most fully intelligible when founded on a philosophical and theo- logical anthropology.48 Indeed, from this perspective, the entirety of the social order within which rational agents are bearers of rights (po- litical, civil, social, economic, cultural, or whatever), is characterized by a philosophical and theological understanding of human sociality. Following the classical tradition through Aristotle, Cicero and Augus- tine—and counter to the modern position typified in Hobbes’s thought—Genovesi argues that human beings are social by nature.49 But humans are social in a manner distinct from the other animals,

47 We are currently at work on a paper that addresses the relationship between the economic right to migrate and the thematization of reciprocity within modern eco- nomic analysis. 48 Regarding the foundations of human rights, the literature is vast and contentious. We can only openly acknowledge the theological and philosophical foundations of our position here. Donnelly offers a philosophical and historical introduction to the nature of the contention regarding foundations along with his own reflexively foun- dationalist account rooted in a historicist and Rawlsian liberalism. See Donnelly, Uni- versal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, 55-71. See Henry J. Steiner and Philip Alston, International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 323-402, for an interdisciplinary and historical ac- count with pertinent texts of the debate about rights, their origin, and whether they are absolute or contingent. Amy Gutmann argues that a plurality of foundations is actually a boon to those who would defend human rights against various detractors. See Mi- chael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, ed. Amy Gutmann and Kwame Anthony Appiah (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), vii-xviii, especially at xix-xxi. Further engagement with such claims, in conversation with our more “paro- chial” Catholic position, would require careful analysis of how we understand the natural law and how our non-Catholic interlocutors understand religious claims. 49 Cf. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Cambridge, 2007), chapter 13, on the primordially violent and fearful condition of humans among fellow humans. 108 Andrew Beauchamp and Jason Heron most of which can also be called “social” in analogous ways.50 Geno- vesi suggests that the reciprocity ingredient within, but not confined to, economic activity distinguishes human sociality from that of other animals: “How is man more sociable than other animals?....[It is] in his reciprocal right to be assisted and consequently in his reciprocal obligation to help others in their needs.”51 This specifically human so- ciality is a central element to Genovesi’s understanding of economy and its aim of public happiness. This social anthropology departs rad- ically from an account of the economy wherein rational individuals need only resources and market institutions to meet any relevant eco- nomic need. Implicit in Genovesi’s social anthropology is the claim that there are specifically economic needs that can only be fulfilled by other human persons within reciprocal bonds. Genovesi adds to the Scottish school’s emphasis on sympathy the reciprocal nature of friendship as the foundational component of the civilizing influences on human nature. He argues that sympathy does not just drive altruism, as Smith did, but that when paired with reci- procity leads persons toward friendship. Specifically, human sociality matters for Genovesi because the end of the economy is to foster, not simply commercial transactions and wealth creation, but happiness, which is by nature public. Bruni and Zamagni call the public nature of happiness “Genovesi’s Paradox,” which Genovesi himself describes as follows: “It is universal law that we cannot make ourselves happy without making others happy as well.” This has at least three implica- tions: (1) one cannot be happy if surrounded by those who are not; (2) the market is a form of mutual assistance: “Making oneself happy doesn’t mean impoverishing others; it means instead making others rich as you enrich yourself thereby becoming happier together”; and (3) loving others is the key to finding one’s own happiness.52 Eco- nomic actions and relationships, from Genovesi’s perspective, thus or- der the means of efficiency and wealth to further human ends we would now categorize as human rights (political, civil, economic, so- cial, cultural, or whatever).

50 Here, Genovesi anticipates an issue we now face in the midst of research in evolu- tionary biology: is human sociality fundamentally the same as other forms of animal sociality? Though this topic extends too far beyond the bounds of this paper, we would affirm from a Catholic position that human sociality, while analogously related to the sociality of other animals, is indeed unique in certain critical respects, not least of which is the social reality that makes possible the human quest for meaning and for knowledge of a supernatural reality. The reader is referred to Alasdair MacIntyre, De- pendent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), and to Jean Porter’s entire body of work for further Catholic and philo- sophical engagement of this important question. 51 Quoted in Bruni and Zamagni, Civil Economy, 91. 52 Bruni and Zamagni, Civil Economy, 94-95. Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and Modern Tradition 109

This openness to and desire for the happiness of others, including broader society, is a prerequisite for the increase in public happiness. Smith, however, drew a stark line regarding how far benevolence should extend from the private into the public sphere. Alternatively, the civil economy tradition and CST argue that wealth accumulation is only one component of the larger project of obtaining happiness (or the common good) of others and it is not cleanly divisible into public and private spheres. As Bruni and Zamagni put it, the good life for the human “cannot be lived independently from others.” Instead, the good life is “about making ‘the others happy.’ Thus, we can never have full control over happiness.” Rather than control, the “human person needs reciprocity in order to realize happiness, but reciprocity comes with no guarantees and instead requires a potentially gratuitous leap.”53 So, from the perspective of the civil economy tradition and CST, there is a necessary element of self-sacrifice and risk in the process of achiev- ing public happiness or the common good. Why? Because the pursuit of public happiness or the common good requires common effort. And common effort binds the individual agent to the other, opening indi- vidual persons to a host of potential and very dear costs and benefits. Openness to others and the risk involved is one way to understand the controversy surrounding the status of economic rights within the broader human rights conversation. From our perspective in this pa- per, reciprocity is the social principle and virtue that names one’s ca- pacity to enter into such binding relations with others and thus to place oneself in the position of being able to meet their needs, while simul- taneously have one’s own needs met.54 Reciprocity thus names the hu- man person’s performative acknowledgment that the risk and cost of cooperation with others is nothing when compared to the risk and cost of separation, negligence, and isolation.55

53 Bruni and Zamagni, Civil Economy, 95. 54 The reader will recognize here a potential tension between reciprocity conceived of as a gratuitous mutuality between agents and reciprocity as an instrumental and self- interested exchange of benefits. This tension is analogous to the tension found in all eudaimonistic ethics: namely that virtue is its own reward. Given that we do not insist that personal benefit is somehow a corrosive of authentically good human action, we are not committed to giving an account of the good of reciprocity that somehow only entails sacrifice. Indeed, such an account would be, prima facie, absurd. It falls be- yond the scope of this essay for us to address any further this paradox at the heart of eudaimonism. The reader is directed to Jean Porter, Justice as a Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 106-110, for a helpful treatment of this issue. 55 We should not allow “common effort” here to paper over the disproportions at work in situations of grave inequality. From the perspective of CST, it is morally justifiable to expect more effort from those who are better off (most especially when those who are better off enjoy their luck, at least in part, at the expense of the worse off). For example, in the North American bishops’ pastoral, Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope, the bishops of Mexico and the US state explicitly: “More pow- erful economic nations, which have the ability to protect and feed their residents, have 110 Andrew Beauchamp and Jason Heron

What would this have to do with the modern economist’s task? How would thematizing reciprocity and its inherent risks enable the economist to turn her analytic powers to the issues surrounding eco- nomic rights? We freely grant that it would be a major transition for economists to start paying attention to economics rights. This would be an achievement in itself. But what to do after that? From our per- spective, if modern economists integrated reciprocity and its inherent risks into both their methodological commitments and their analytical projects, economics would simultaneously expand its scope of analy- sis and contract the scope of the conclusions which can flow from a purely economic (read: materialist) analysis. This simultaneous ex- pansion and contraction would involve incorporating non-instrumen- tal relationships and actions that are nevertheless valued by humans even more than instrumental relationships and actions. An achieve- ment of this order would be a paradigm shift in the science and would open new lines of dialogue between economic analysis and other hu- man inquiries (philosophy, theology, sociology, psychology, etc.). A shift like this would enable economists to think more accurately—that is, more scientifically, more realistically—about how the economy re- ally functions as a social phenomenon. From our perspective, this shift would be an improvement. It would signal a move toward grounding faith in markets in the larger reality of social institutions that make markets possible in the first place. Arguably the most important im- plication of this shift would be the science’s newfound ability to acknowledge trade-offs between non-instrumental goods (e.g. trust, friendship, healthy community) and material goods (e.g. income, time, effort, capital). Such trade-offs are critical to understanding human re- lationships and actions both inside and outside the domains associated with conventional, post-Smithian economic practice. They are even more critical for understanding why purely instrumental economic

a stronger obligation to accommodate migration flows” (no. 36). Similarly, Pope Francis emphasizes throughout Laudato Si’ the disproportionate obligation of those who are disproportionately responsible for environmental degradation. Whether dis- proportionate personal responsibility is relevant in a manner analogous to (or perhaps even univocal with) this disproportionate social and political responsibility is a diffi- cult question that we cannot tackle here. The reader is directed to two remarkable treatments of disproportionate responsibility and the connection between personal and social spheres of morality: G.A. Cohen’s Gifford Lectures, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), and his significant challenge to John Rawls, Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge: Har- vard University Press, 2008). Though our Catholic position commits us to significant disagreement with Cohen in certain respects, we have no interest in trying to find our way around Christ’s teaching regarding wealth and works of mercy in Matthew 19 and 25. See also Thomas W. Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008).

Economic Rights, Reciprocity, and Modern Tradition 111 analysis so often falls on deaf ears among those whose interests it is intended to further. We are currently at work on a paper in which we are applying the hypothesis of this essay to the issue of human migration—specifically the immigration question in the US context. The right to migrate for economic reasons brings to light the reciprocal relationship between a migrant and a pool of prospective employers, the local community, and the nation-state, each of which is a socio-economic agent falling within economic analysis. Furthermore, when it comes to the econo- mist’s attention to the phenomenon of immigration, the yardstick by which one can measure economic migration is reciprocity: Is the work relationship reciprocal? Are the community relationships reciprocal? Etc. Policy debate focuses on costs and benefits to either party. But the- matizing reciprocity within economic analysis would simultaneously incorporate and transcend these categories. It is easy to see that there is no reciprocity between employers and exploited workers. Of course, these conditions still entail cost and benefit. But having degraded the dignity of workers, these conditions can hardly be characterized as re- ciprocal. But reciprocity matters even in less clear-cut cases. Should a country welcome more low-skill immigrants? This depends on the ex- tent to which they can be welcomed into reciprocal relationships. Ex- cessive unemployment, discrimination, or the clear displacement of native workers are costs, but in part because they undermine the prin- ciple of reciprocity meant to characterize the relationship between im- migrants and natives. Mutual cooperation for the benefit of both par- ties, like improved opportunities for work and increased production or lower prices, are elements of a social interaction, entailing mutual gain, but also required in these circumstances are reciprocal relation- ships. The civil economy tradition would name these “friendships” and view them as a necessary component of public happiness. CST would name it “communion” and see it as integral to the common good. But in both traditions, the ingredient added to mutual gain is mutual generosity, the gratuitous giving of self, replete with profound risk but also reward. So, if our hypothesis is correct, any analysis of the economic relationships salient within the immigration question is only partial and insufficient even in terms of economic analysis if economists continue to leave reciprocity unthematized.

CONCLUSION In this paper we have proposed a way of understanding the silence of modern economists regarding economic rights. As we have shown, the genesis of this silence is in the history and evolution of economic thought after Adam Smith. This evolution has been a movement away from philosophical reflexivity, hermeneutical awareness, and moral commitment. However, parallel traditions, notably CST and the civil 112 Andrew Beauchamp and Jason Heron economy, have more or less maintained an integration of all of these when performing economic analysis and when dialoguing with the economic sciences regarding social and political questions. The major contribution of these traditions, which share much in terms of funda- mental commitments and presuppositions, is the articulation of the rel- evance of civil or social virtues, most notably reciprocity, in the eco- nomic realm of human society. Linking rights to duties, and transcend- ing a simplified social binary of state and market, we argue a treatment of reciprocity is necessary, because reciprocity is an essential element of flourishing human relations at the social level. Naturally, reciproc- ity’s absence fosters discord and ideological division within society, a discord which influences economic analysis and the advice we derive from it. Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2019): 113-121

Local Authoritarianism as a Barrier to Democracy

Cristina L. H. Traina

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church 2018 Conference in Sarajevo

EMOCRATIC NATIONS FREQUENTLY SUFFER from a vexing problem: national democracy coexists with local and re- gional politics that are authoritarian and often corrupt. D South Africa’s case is well-known: corrupt local govern- ments siphoned off national grants meant to fund local services and then charged bribes to provide those same services.1 But local author- itarianism can exist anywhere, not just in new democracies. It also plagued the southern United States after its Civil War. One-party rule, which easily becomes authoritarian, has characterized every US town in which I have ever lived. Today, my village of Skokie, Illinois, has a single-party system with a governing board that is partially ap- pointed and so only partially elected.2 If they are so widespread, are local authoritarianism and one-party rule really a problem? Is robust party democracy at the local level im- portant, as long as national politics are competitive? Recent voices have even wondered whether some form of government other than de- mocracy might be more efficient and effective at accomplishing the common good. They raise the question whether local authoritarianism might be superior to democracy’s circuitous processes and self-defeat- ing compromises as long as it is guided by solid values and yields good practical results—for instance, with regard to ecological policy, which must be enacted coherently, consistently, and promptly if it is to be effective.3

1 For example, see Sean Gossel, “How Corruption is Fraying South Africa’s Social and Economic Fabric,” The Conversation, July 12, 2017, theconversation.com/how- corruption-is-fraying-south-africas-social-and-economic-fabric-80690. 2 Village of Skokie, “Board of Trustee Members,” www.skokie.org/341/Board-of- Trustees-Members. 3 James Stavridis, “Democracy Isn’t Perfect, But It Will Still Prevail,” Time, July 12, 2018, time.com/5336615/democracy-will-prevail/. With regard to ecology specifi- cally, see Kjetil Fretheim, “Democracy and Climate Justice: Public Theology in the 114 Cristina L.H. Traina

Instead, the community-building consequences of circuitous pro- cesses and compromises are often democracy’s most important con- tribution to the common good. In addition, Christian social ethics not only assists us with reasons for democracy and with theoretical justi- fication for successful local democracies but also supplies content and practices that enrich and support healthy local democratic function.4 Above all, I argue, the communal interdependence that democracy ex- presses is an essential element of theological anthropology, not a prag- matic consequence of individual human dignity. However, before we can undo local authoritarianism, one-party rule, and related problems, we need to understand their causes. Theo- logian Leepo Modise cites individual moral failures born of the temp- tations of power: nepotism, favoritism, egocentrism, and .5 It is hard to imagine a form of local authoritarianism or one-party rule that does not involve personal sin. But as political scientist Edward Gibson shows, local authoritarianism has systemic causes as well, with strong connections to regional and national politics.6 For instance, federalism often shields local authoritarianism in the name of states’ rights, ex- pressed in terms of local freedom to decide local issues.7 Once local one-party systems are in place, the national party leadership often ma- nipulates local electoral law to discourage opposition.8 When this is the case, politics in smaller jurisdictions is often swallowed up by larger ones. My village brings Gibson’s theories to life. In some ways its board practices local authoritarianism at the village level, but, in another sense, it is the victim of local authoritarianism at the county level. Be- cause my small town is in the same county as the large, single-party city of Chicago, it has little say over its own tax system. Rather the county, which is controlled primarily by Chicago, sets the bulk of the tax rates and makes the bulk of the policy decisions that affect us. To solve my town’s problem, we need to ask why Chicago has a one- party system. According to one recent report, we owe it to the US

Anthropocene,” International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018): 56-72, at 68-71. Both answer in the negative. 4 Fanie du Toit, “Seeking to Establish Democratic Values in South Africa: Can the Truth Help Us?” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 103 (1999): 49-63, at 61- 62. 5 Leepo J. Modise, “The Notion of Participatory Democracy in Relation to Local Ward Communities: The Distribution of Power,” In die Skriflig v. 51 no. 1 (2017), doi.org/10.4102/ids.v51i1.2248. 6 Edward L. Gibson, Boundary Control: Subnational Authoritarianism in Federal De- mocracies (New York: Cambridge, 2012). Politics functions differently at local and regional or territorial levels; for the sake of this paper, “local” implies all levels that are “subnational” in distinction to national. 7 Gibson, Boundary Control, 172. 8 Gibson, Boundary Control, 170. Local Authoritarianism 115

Constitution’s unjust formulas for representation, created to accom- modate American slavery. Denying the vote to African Americans but tying representation to population, counting each enslaved person as 60% of a person, and establishing an electoral college rather than di- rect majority in presidential elections virtually guaranteed the emer- gence of a two-party system. Over time the Republican Party has come to represent (broadly) rural interests and the Democratic Party urban interests. Hence bipartisanship is increasingly rare at all levels.9 In Chicago, the national Democratic Party’s heavy investment in local politics has largely discouraged participation by other parties.10 Thus, although sin in the form of personal corruption is part of the equation, and some institutions and practices give personal sin more room to operate than others, long-established, unquestioned structural injus- tices are key causes of democratic dysfunction at the local level.

THEORETICAL JUSTIFICATIONS Before exploring democracy’s flaws, it is important to ask why Christians, in particular Catholics, support democracy. Although in the last half century the Vatican’s opinion of democracy has improved, the Vatican has never embraced democracy unconditionally. For in- stance, it has been leery of majoritarian rule and anti-religious forms of secularism, both of which not only put religious minorities at risk but can stifle the particular sort of truth and justice seeking that Cath- olic theories of the political common good demand.11 The criteria of the common good come from belief in the human as the imago dei, participating in God’s wisdom and freedom and collaborating in soci- ety. Here, “community” is an essential, not optional, element of theo- logical anthropology. To be truly human is to associate and collaborate with others for common human ends that are too massive and complex to accomplish in isolation.12 This implies a right to participate in both informal and formal processes that shape those common ends, from the face-to-face to the national and even international scale. In addi- tion, community itself is a public good, encompassing all the close relationships, neighborhoods, and community organizations that are

9 “The Minority Majority,” The Economist, July 14-20 2018, 21-24. 10 As of April 2019, there are now six Democratic Socialists on the Chicago City Council. As Gibson notes (Boundary Control, 172), persevering minority parties do eventually break through if there is sufficient grassroots organization and voter dis- satisfaction. 11 James M. Carr, “Does Vatican II Represent a U-Turn in the Catholic Church’s Teaching on Liberal Democracy?” International Journal of Public Theology 6 (2012): 228-253, especially 238, 248. 12For a Thomistic reading of the associational dimension, see Luke Bretherton, “De- mocracy, Society and Truth: An Exploration of Catholic Social Teaching,” Scottish Journal of Theology 69, no. 3 (2016): 267–280, at 273-80. 116 Cristina L.H. Traina bigger than the individual and smaller than the state. Democracy is the form of government that is accountable to people individually, realiz- ing their right to participate in governing, and is accountable to the common good at levels above the face-to-face exchange of commu- nity.13 But to fulfill its mandate, it must serve the common good at all levels from local to national. Catholic social teaching endorses democracy insofar as it promotes the common good, which is not merely a state of maximal health, wealth, and personal freedom but “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily” (Catechism, no. 1906). To be sure, material welfare (food, clothing, housing) and services (healthcare, education) are indispensable to the common good, but its true purpose is to preserve and promote holistic human dignity, in- cluding the fundamental freedom to seek truth and virtue in commu- nity.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS This understanding of the connection among democracy, dignity, and the common good hints that the criterion and goal of democracy is not merely counting votes accurately so that all are heard. That is certainly a prerequisite, but it does not necessarily promote the com- mon good. The true criteria are including all persons in the process of discussing common concerns and building relationships through ef- fective debate and collaboration. In addition, Richard Krouse notes that, as John Stuart Mill argued in the nineteenth century, local de- mocracy is “the chief instrument of popular political education” and training: it provides opportunities for election to public office.14 Run- ning for and serving in public office both informs citizens about the challenges of governing and prepares them to serve well in higher of- fices, if they should want to advance. In essence, local and regional democratic office is the apprenticeship for national office, and local and regional election campaigns are the apprenticeships for national campaigns. If lower-level democracies are dysfunctional then local of- ficials who go on to higher office will be ill prepared to represent their constituents. If lower-level democracies are single-party then local of- ficials who go on to higher office may not know how to compete or to compromise (in single-party systems, the primary determines the re- sult of the election). Functional local democracy promotes functional national democracy, but local authoritarian and one-party systems eventually endanger national democracy.

13 On the first point, see Carr, “Does Vatican II Represent a U-Turn,” 244. 14 Richard W. Krouse, “Two Concepts of Democratic Representation: James and John Stuart Mill,” The Journal of Politics, 44 no. 2 (1982): 509-537, at 530. Quote is Krouse, not Mill. Local Authoritarianism 117

PRACTICAL STRATEGIES Because so many persistent forces threaten local democracy, the effort to renew and maintain it must be unrelenting. The wisdom of political science is indispensable if we want to create local and re- gional politics that encourage virtuous, effective, community-building democratic participation. As Edward Gibson has written, federal con- stitutional democracies usually produce local and regional authoritar- ianism by one of two paths. In one case, power is decentralized. Na- tional law often gives regional governments enormous autonomy over that regulate voting, municipal governments, and distribution of national funds. In this case, citizens are at the mercy of regional gov- ernments, which can easily become authoritarian and corrupt. The first step toward reestablishing local and regional democracy in this case is for local dissenters to use the press and the courts to demand that the national government protect citizens’ rights by decreasing the auton- omy of regional governments, delegitimizing legal but authoritarian regional practices of governing. This was the means used to reestab- lish regional democracy in the American South in the early twentieth century.15 In the other case, political power is nationally centralized. National law limits the autonomy of regional governments, but parties control the politics at regional or local levels, producing de facto one-party systems that exert power behind the scenes and discourage dissent, often illegally. In this case, the first step toward reestablishing local and regional democracy is for dissenters to both shine light on illegal practices and reach out to other political parties for support, gradually building a competitive political atmosphere in the region and ending one-party rule. Gibson cites the slow erosion of the hold of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in southern Mexico as an exam- ple.16 Ideally, citizens help to preserve functional local and regional democracy through vigilance on several levels: maintaining adequate party competition, monitoring the autonomy of the state or the prov- ince, and ensuring that national anti-corruption laws are enforced.17 Importantly, Pope Francis embraces similarly practical, savvy pol- itics in Laudato Si’. He argues that when central governments fail to protect environmental goods and therefore fail at their mandate to pro- mote the common good, coalitions of grassroots organizations must speak truth to power:

Because the enforcement of laws is at times inadequate due to corrup- tion, public pressure has to be exerted in order to bring about decisive

15 Gibson, Boundary Control, 35-71. 16 Gibson, Boundary Control, 112-147. 17 Gibson, Boundary Control, 168-171. 118 Cristina L.H. Traina

political action. Society, through non-governmental organizations and intermediate groups, must put pressure on governments to develop more rigorous regulations, procedures and controls. Unless citizens control political power – national, regional and municipal – it will not be possible to control damage to the environment. Local legislation can be more effective, too, if agreements exist between neighbouring communities to support the same environmental policies (no. 179).18

Like Gibson, Francis argues that because circumstances vary, “there are no uniform recipes” for political pursuit of justice. Advocates might need to pursue a strategy of realism first and principle second, as long as the process is inclusive and empowering (Laudato Si’, no. 180). Still, coalitions, horizontal coordination and collaboration, and local demands to transform national policy are indispensable tactics.

PARTICULAR CHRISTIAN CONTRIBUTIONS Encouragingly, papal teaching and contemporary political science agree that justice and well-functioning democracy demand attention to systematic injustice at the local level. I want to turn our view slightly now to argue that Christian communities, as ready-made pop- ular communities, have particular contributions to make to democracy at this level.

Theory First, more than at any level, local democratic politics is about con- versation. Christians can infuse democratic discussion with rich con- tent. We have robust of justice, dignity, community, and flourishing. When anyone is tempted to reduce democracy to a proce- dure, and measure its success by adherence to rules, we introduce the language of the common good and human dignity. One of our most important roles is to remain alert for transgressions of both. For exam- ple, speaking of Rwandan Christians’ responsibility to keep the plight of the unacknowledged Twa people before the Rwandan government, Christine Schliesser argues,

It remains the on-going task of the churches…to question, with Bon- hoeffer, “the state as to the legitimate character of its actions, that is, making the state responsible for what it does.” This task is at the very core of a theology that understands itself as public theology. When the

18 Manfred Spieker argues that Laudato Si’, no. 179, contradicts the principle of sub- sidiarity, which demands that government be exercised at the lowest effective level, by referring local functions to the national level. This is not an adequate interpretation. When lower levels of government are not enforcing local electoral justice or respond- ing to the legitimate justice concerns of local citizens, this is an indication that elec- toral justice must be enforced at a higher level. See Manfred Spieker, “Freedom and Its Limits, 1891–2015: How Does Catholic Social Doctrine React to New Chal- lenges?” Journal of Markets & Morality 19, no. 2 (2016): 417–430, at 428. Local Authoritarianism 119

state speaks of justice and democracy, the churches…need to ask crit- ically: Whose justice is being advocated—and whose justice is being neglected? What kind of democracy is being pursued—and what are its blind spots?19

The same was true in the United States in the summer of 2018. Chris- tians were among the strongest critics of the federal government’s pol- icy of separating parents seeking asylum from their children.20 Another way to put this is that the church is on the lookout for the common good and for its failures. As Luke Bretherton argues, Chris- tian democratic politics puts “people before programme.”21 These in- sights are ecumenical. Catholics have ideals born of an eschatological vision that we share with Protestants and Orthodox, our companions in Christ. In this mode, the churches are engaged in public theology.22 We can, and do, collaborate to inject all of this content into local po- litical processes and deploy it in demands that central governments keep closer watch on regional electoral politics.

Practice Second, Christians can contribute a way of being in the world that encourages effective local and regional politics. Based on her work on Chile and South Africa, Denise Walsh has argued that the quality of democratic exchange is crucial to successful, inclusive functioning in pre- and post-transition democratic states, particularly with respect to advancement of women’s rights. No matter how many non-govern- mental associations are involved, no matter how carefully coalitions are built, no matter how robust the links to the international human rights community are, the key factor in the success of democratic pro- cesses is “open and inclusive debate conditions” to which all have ac- cess and in which counter-publics can achieve a true hearing.23

19Christine Schliesser, “Whose Justice? Which Democracy? Justice, Reconciliation and Democracy in Post-Genocide Rwanda—Challenges to Public Theology,” Inter- national Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018): 24–37, at 37; and Dietrich Bonhoef- fer, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” in Berlin: 1932 - 1933: Dietrich Bonhoef- fer Works, vol. 12, ed. Larry Rasmussen (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 361– 371, at 365. 20 For example, see Daniel Cardinal DiNardo, “A Statement from Daniel Cardinal DiNardo,” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, June 13, 2018, www.usccb.org/news/2018/18-098.cfm. In addition, see United Methodist Women, “Statement on Immigrant Parent-Child Separation,” June 4, 2018, www.unitedmeth- odistwomen.org/news/statement-on-immigrant-parent-child-separation. 21 Bretherton, “Democracy, Society and Truth,” 277. 22 Freitheim, “Democracy and Climate Justice,” 66. 23 Denise M. Walsh, “Does the Quality of Democracy Matter for Women’s Rights? Just Debate and Democratic Transition in Chile and South Africa,” Comparative Po- litical Studies 45, no. 11 (2012): 1323-1350, at 1328. 120 Cristina L.H. Traina

As South African theologian Fanie du Toit argued two decades ago, practices that Christians cultivate in community can be deployed in public spaces to create these conditions. Deep theological reflection in dialogue with the situation; careful listening to others; persistent speaking of our own deeply held truths; and perseverance in just, open discourse all contribute to defining “democratic values…[not as prin- ciples but as practices:] as the ‘way we hold hands while we are lis- tening to each other’s truths’.”24 Democracy then becomes a form of governing that arises out of and protects a communal practice of dia- logue. As Lisa Cahill wrote, citing Edward Schillebeeckx, the content of faith is as much practice as theory:

The content of the Christian faith…“is manifested historically in the way in which” the churches follow “the story of the life and death of the risen Jesus,” with “trust and hope” that “manifest themselves in a message of universal justice and peace of and for one another in a praxis of solidarity.”25

In another example of how Christian communal practice can salt public interaction, citing David Runciman’s recent work, Michael Lamb encourages us to embody and repackage the theological virtue of hope for democratic politics, helping our fellow citizens thread the narrow “space between unwarranted optimism [which leads to over- blown expectations followed by a feeling of betrayal and disillusion- ment] and unwarranted pessimism [which discourages democratic participation in the first place].”26 Both unwarranted optimism and un- warranted pessimism invite dysfunction and authoritarianism: opti- mism because it encourages people to put uncritical confidence in po- litical leaders who make outsized promises and pessimism because it cause people to withdraw from the political arena, leaving public offi- cials and political parties to do as they please unopposed. In the dem- ocratic setting, hope would be realistic, strategic, ambitious, and above all constant: exactly the virtue one needs to practice to stay engaged in a long struggle in which “better” is possible but “perfect” is neces- sarily illusory. Obviously, Christian communities themselves need to continue to develop these virtues if they are to pass them on to civic,

24du Toit, “Seeking to Establish Democratic Values,” 61. For a similar list see David A. Zubik, “9 Rules for Civility from the Catholic Tradition,” America, July 9, 2018, www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/06/26/9-rules-civility-catholic-tradition 25Lisa Sowle Cahill, “Theological Ethics, the Churches, and Global Politics,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 35, no. 3 (2007): 377-399, at 392, citing Edward Schille- beeckx, Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden (New York: Cross- road, 1993), 177. 26Michael Lamb, “Aquinas and the Virtues of Hope: Theological and Democratic,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 44, no. 2 (2016): 300–332, at 303. For more, see David Runciman, The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). Local Authoritarianism 121 democratic culture. As Michael Raposa has argued, truly embodying such democratic values will have ecclesiastical implications far be- yond the tone we use in political debate: “The positive discourse within the Catholic tradition about democracy as a form of govern- ment is an asset for understanding how Catholic theological practices might themselves be transformed.” 27 Certainly, local authoritarianism and one-party rule are a detriment to democracy’s ability to serve the common good both locally and at the national level. But even national politics can be overwhelmed by the international. Multinational corporations and big business buy in- fluence in politics at all levels, and international oversight bodies like the World Trade Organization and the World Bank are neither truly representative nor mandated to prioritize economically and politically distressed regions.28 We must not minimize their influence. At the same time, these forces seem to take hold in American politics espe- cially when solid, relational, democratic systems are not functioning at the local level. Local politics cannot neutralize multinationals, but they can make it more difficult for them to throw elections. This fact highlights the need to keep Christian theories and practices that sup- port democracy robust.

CONCLUSION Functional local and regional democracy is interdependent with na- tional democracy. In the end, one cannot exist without the other. Chris- tians have both theological justifications to demand protection for lo- cal democracy and cultural resources to infuse local democratic func- tioning with practices that ensure participation and build effective community. Christians in the global north still tend to operate under the assumption that local authoritarianism is a problem of the global south. But as Christians in the United States, Italy, and England have recently discovered, political dysfunction at local levels endangers de- mocracy at the national level. We must learn from our brothers and sisters in the global south, and quickly.

27 Michael L. Raposa, “Pragmatism, Democracy and the Future of Catholic Theol- ogy,” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 30, No. 3 (2009): 288-302, at 289. 28 David Hollenbach has argued that “some type of formal process in the process of decision-making seems one of the conditions of legitimacy for emerging international institutions.” See Hollenbach, The Common Good and Christian Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 234. Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2019): 122-139

Rectifying Political Leadership Through a Just Peace Ethic

Eli McCarthy and Leo Lushombo

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church 2018 Conference in Sarajevo

OO OFTEN, POLITICAL LEADERS UTILIZE different forms of violence to divide societies and countries. At times, this is a form of cultural violence manifested in de-humanization of T certain groups, tribalism, nationalism and devaluing of human rights; also structural violence manifested in increasing income inequality and massive spending on arms; and even more direct violence manifested in civil and proxy wars, drones, military operations, rape and sexual assault, civilians increasingly being the main victims of war, the massive refugee crisis, as well as the ecological crisis. However, we are becoming more aware of the long-term self- perpetuating destructive impact of violence, even where it may appear to achieve some limited short-term success. The global data on nonviolent civil resistance movements reveal their growing effectiveness compared to armed methods, such as being twice as effective and over ten times more likely to lead to durable democracy.1 Awareness is increasing that there are indeed much better, more effective options than violence, and more resources are being invested in such options. Although there have been some recent breakthroughs, this essay addresses the emerging trend of today’s lack of unifying political leadership.2 In the first part of this essay, we draw on Pope Francis’s 2017 World Day of Peace message on nonviolence to provide a way forward to more unifying political leadership. We use this touchstone document to help clarify the value of seeing cultural, structural, and direct violence as an integrated whole we need to address together as missionary disciples. In the context of the Catholic Nonviolence

1 Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, Why Civilian Resistance Works (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 7 and 213-214. 2 This essay is a combination of two connected essays. Eli McCarthy wrote the first part of this essay, and Leo Lushombo, who is from the DRC, wrote the case study portion. Rectifying Political Leadership 123

Initiative, we articulate how a just peace ethic offers key advantages to do that work, and thus, enables the cultivation of more unifying political leadership. In the second part of this essay, we apply this perspective to the ongoing, extensive violent conflict in the Democratic of Congo, with a particular emphasis on gender- based violence.3 We highlight Dr. Denis Mukengere Mukwege, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and associates in the Panzi Hospital who model in key ways a virtue-based just peace approach to the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.4

“NONVIOLENCE: A STYLE OF POLITICS FOR PEACE” In April 2016, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, members of the Justice and Peace Commission of the global leaders of women and men religious institutes (UISG, USG), U.S. Conferences of Women and Men Religious Leaders (LCWR, CMSM), Pax Christi International, and more than 85 representatives (including six bishops) from around the world were all part of a wonderful conference focused on gospel nonviolence and just peace.5 Many participants came from contexts of violence and war: Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Colombia. Our focus was on active nonviolence in order to help the Catholic community develop a deeper understanding and commitment to nonviolence as the power of love in action; as the path to fuller truth;6 as a spirituality, way of life, and distinct virtue; and as an effective method and constructive force for social justice, transforming conflict, challenging all forms of violence, protecting all people and the earth, and building sustainable peace. Nonviolence is positive reverence for dignity and life, as well as a contextualized, creative praxis.7

3 The fuller case study along with ten others will be published in an upcoming book entitled A Just Peace Ethic: Breaking Cycles of Violence and Building Sustainable Peace, ed. Eli McCarthy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2020). 4 The Nobel Prize, “The Nobel Peace Prize for 2018,” www.nobelprize.org/ prizes/peace/2018/press-release/. 5 Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, “About the Nonviolence and Just Peace Confer- ence,” nonviolencejustpeace.net/about/. 6 This characteristic is based on the recognition that each person has a piece of the truth to offer. Gandhi used the phrase satyagraha, meaning “clinging to truth” to de- scribe his nonviolent movement. Thus, if we kill others, we make it more difficult to apprehend the fuller truth. 7 See Pope John Paul II, “Holy Mass in Drogheda: Homily of His Holiness John Paul II,” September 29, 1979, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1979/docu- ments/hf_jp-ii_hom_19790929_irlanda-dublino-drogheda.html: “violence is evil, that violence is unacceptable as a solution to problems, that violence is unworthy of man. Violence is a lie, for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth of our human- ity. Violence destroys what it claims to defend: the dignity, the life, the freedom of human beings.” 124 Eli McCarthy and Leo Lushombo

We heard stories from Catholic leaders, such as Ugandan Archbishop Odama and Fr. Francisco de Roux, S.J., from Colombia, who successfully negotiated with very violent armed actors such as the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and the FARC and paramilitaries in Colombia. We also heard from Sr. Matty Nazik from Iraq who called us to stop the militarization of her country, to stop bombing, and to rely on nonviolent strategies.8 Mairead Maguire, who is a Nobel Peace Prize winner from Ireland, and Father de Roux both spoke about how the just war mentality was getting in the way of Catholics developing nonviolent practices.9 In the end, we crafted an appeal to the Catholic Church that included asking Pope Francis to write an encyclical on nonviolence, to scale-up key nonviolent practices and education, to initiate a global conversation, to shift our focus to a just peace ethic, and to pivot away from a just war ethic.10 Over 250 religious orders or institutes have endorsed the appeal.11 The national bishops’ conferences of Japan and Belgium also have endorsed the appeal. This energy coalesced in the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, which has a rich website that offers many educational resources, expert background papers, action guides, a page to endorse the appeal as an individual or organization as well as the book Choosing Peace, which summarizes the conference and some subsequent dialogue.12 A major follow-up workshop recently occurred at the Vatican on April 4-5th, 2019.13

8 See Rose Marie Berger, “Game Changer,” in Sojourners, December 2016, 17-23, on Sister Nazik’s contribution to the conference. As Berger quotes her: “Which of the wars we have been in is a just war? In my country, there was no just war. War is the mother of ignorance, isolation, and poverty. Please tell the world there is no such thing as a just war. I say this as a daughter of war. We can’t respond to violence with worse violence. In order to kill five violent men, we have to create ten violent men to kill them. This encourages the spiral of violence up and up. And the people are so ex- hausted because they don’t know what’s happening. It’s like a dragon with seven heads. You cut one and two others come up...[so] we try to create an environment of nonviolence.” 9 See Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, “Videos from the Conference,” nonviolence- justpeace.net/videos-nonviolence-conference-fishbowl-sessions/. 10 The specific nonviolent practices identified were nonviolent resistance, restorative justice, trauma-healing, unarmed civilian protection, conflict transformation, and peacebuilding strategies. See Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, “An Appeal to the Catholic Church to Re-commit to the Centrality of Gospel Nonviolence,” April 13, 2016, nonviolencejustpeace.net/final-statement-an-appeal-to-the-catholic-church-to- re-commit-to-the-centrality-of-gospel-nonviolence/. 11 Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, “Organizational and Individual Endorsements of the Appeal,” nonviolencejustpeace.net/organizational-and-individual-endorsements- of-the-appeal/. 12 Marie Dennis, Choosing Peace: The Catholic Church Returns to Gospel Nonvio- lence (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2018). 13 Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, “Faith Leaders, Peace Practitioners Deepen Church’s Commitment to Nonviolence and Peace,” April 6, 2019, nonviolence- justpeace.net/2019/04/03/path-of-nonviolence-toward-a-culture-of-peace/. Rectifying Political Leadership 125

One of the major fruits from the 2016 conference was Pope Francis’s World Day of Peace Message in January 2017 entitled “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace.”14 In this document, he said “I pray that the image and likeness of God in each person will enable us to acknowledge one another as sacred gifts endowed with immense dignity. Especially in situations of conflict, let us respect this, our ‘deepest dignity,’ and make active nonviolence our way of life.” He went on to explain that “to be true followers of Jesus today includes embracing his teaching of nonviolence. For Christians, nonviolence is not merely tactical behavior but a person’s way of being,” and “to cultivate nonviolence in our most personal thoughts and values,” and “daily gestures.” Reflecting on violence he says that “countering violence with violence leads at best to forced migrations and enormous suffering;” “force of arms is deceptive,” whereas “nonviolence is realistic, more powerful than violence.” Pope Francis identifies Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a Muslim and leader of the first nonviolent peace army, and Leymah Gbowee, a black woman nonviolent leader from Liberia. He pledges the assistance of the Catholic Church in every effort to build peace through active and creative nonviolence. Also, in this message, Pope Francis calls for peacebuilding to be expressed through active nonviolence, and “to limit the use of force by the application of moral norms.” Yet the Pope brilliantly identifies the Sermon on the Mount as the “manual” for such a strategy of peace- making. He says, “This is also a program and a challenge for political and religious leaders, the heads of international institutions, and busi- ness and media executives: to apply the Beatitudes in the exercise of their respective responsibilities.” He doesn’t explicitly mention the just war ethic. As Gerald Schlabach has written, “He names instead the space that the Catholic moral traditions have hoped the ‘just war’ theory would fill.”15 So how might we perhaps better fill this space today and offer a new moral framework for this larger strategy of peacemaking toward a more unifying political leadership?

JUST PEACE ETHIC This ethic arises out of our tradition of creation as a sacred gift, a biblical vision of shalom, the Sermon on the Mount, Catholic social teaching, the vocation to be missionary disciples, the World Council of Churches 2011 call for a just peace approach, and broad experience

14 Pope Francis, “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace,” World Day of Peace Message, January 1, 2017, w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/ peace/doc- uments/papa-francesco_20161208_messaggio-l-giornata-mondiale-pace-2017.html. 15 Gerald Schlabach, “Pope Francis’s Peacebuilding Pedagogy: A Commentary on his 2017 World Day of Peace Message,” January 2, 2017, www.geraldschlabach.net/ 2017/01/02/wdp17/. 126 Eli McCarthy and Leo Lushombo in cases of violent conflict. This ethic is both transformational and preventative. This ethic offers norms that focus on three distinct yet overlapping spheres or categories.16 Each of these norms also applies at all stages of conflict, and the spheres can overlap in time and space. Each sphere consists of a group of norms to guide strategy and action, such that each norm should be enhanced or at least not obstructed by any strategy or actions chosen. The spheres include: 1) develop virtues and skillsets to engage conflict constructively (jus in conflictione); 2) break cycles of violence (jus ex bello); 3) build sustainable peace (jus ad pacem). In sphere one, the norm of sustaining spiritual disciplines accents discernment, contemplation, repentance, forgiveness, fasting, and prayer, particularly for Christians a Eucharistic prayer that explicitly names Jesus’s love of enemies and rejection of violence. The norm of virtuous habits includes the key virtues of nonviolent peacemaking or active nonviolence, mercy, compassion, empathy, humility, hospital- ity, solidarity, justice and courage. It also includes a sensibility of what many Africans call “ubuntu,” i.e. our interconnectedness and interde- pendence. The norm of education about nonviolence and training in key skillsets accents skills such as nonviolent communication, strate- gic nonviolent resistance, social and conflict analysis of root causes, needs-based analysis, gender analysis, as well as racial and intersec- tional analysis. Another norm for this sphere is cultivating nonviolent peacemaking communities, institutions and cultures. In sphere two, the norm of reflexivity calls for actions to keep means and ends consistent to better ensure we truly actualize such ends.17 The norm of creative nonviolent direct action calls for actions to resist injustice and violence without responding in kind. It accents the key practices of unarmed civilian protection, mobilizing credible messengers, nonviolent civil resistance, providing sanctuary, and

16 With some adaption, these draw on the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative global roundtable on a new moral framework (2017-2018) and the synthesizing work of Ger- ald Schlabach, “What is Just Peace? A Synthesis based on Catholic and Ecumenical Christian Sources,” www.geraldschlabach.net/2018/03/02/what-is-just-peace/. The norms identified in this essay have been refined further through recent case studies and a year-long global roundtable of the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative and, thus, are updated from an earlier version published in June 2018. See Eli McCarthy, “A Virtue- Based Just Peace Ethic,” Journal of Moral Theology 7, no. 2 (2018): 92-101. Also see Jarem Sawatsky, Justpeace Ethics: A Guide to Restorative Justice and Peacebuilding (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2008); Maryann Cusimano Love, “What Kind of Peace Do We Seek?” in Peacebuilding: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Praxis, ed. Scott Ap- pleby, Robert Schreiter, and Gerard Powers (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2010); Just Peacemaking: New Paradigm for Ethics of Peace and War, ed. Glen Stassen (Cleve- land, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2008); and Ferdando Enns, Just Peace: Ecumenical, Inter- cultural, and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Eugene: Pickwick, 2013). 17 Some, such as Gerald Schlabach, consider reflexivity as a basic background as- sumption of the entire just peace ethic. Rectifying Political Leadership 127 nonviolent civilian-based defense. For example, unarmed civilian protection entails an outside party intervening in a conflict as non- partisan, with compassion for all parties, with the aim of defusing violence and of creating space for reconciliation and peacebuilding. This proven practice includes tactics such as protective presence and accompaniment, proactive engagement with armed actors, and even physical interposition. One story from South Sudan tells of when two unarmed Nonviolent Peaceforce officers directly saved fourteen women and children during an armed militia raid. The NP officers courageously refused on three separate occasions to obey the militia’s orders to leave the women and children.18 In addition, when they accompanied women to get firewood or water in South Sudan because they were regularly getting sexually assaulted or raped by armed actors from all groups in the area, they reduced these incidents from regularity to zero in those areas.19 Other organizations that offer unarmed civilian protection also include Peace Brigades International, Cure Violence, Christian Peacemaker Teams, and Operation Dove, which is a Catholic version. Also, in sphere two is the norm of re-humanization, which calls for humanizing rhetoric and image creation, as well as truth-telling and correcting of narratives that de-humanize any of the parties. Another norm is participatory processes, which calls for decision-making and action chosen to be as participatory and inclusive of as many key stakeholders as possible, especially women, young adult leaders, other marginalized groups, local leaders, and adversaries. For example, in- cluding women and local civil society leaders more directly in Syrian negotiations would have likely led to better outcomes.20 A closely re- lated norm is diplomacy and dialogue. The norm of conflict transfor- mation calls for action that draws adversaries toward partnership and addresses root causes. It accents a range of key practices such as inde- pendent initiatives to build trust, meeting human needs of all actors, and trauma-healing, such as the work of Jesuit Refugee Services in Syria. Closely related is a norm of acknowledging responsibility for

18 Nonviolent Peaceforce, “Andres Gutierrez and Derek Oakley on Their Experience of the Violence in South Sudan,” April 17, 2014, www.nonviolentpeace- force.org/blog/south-sudan-news/60-andres-gutierrez-and-derek-oakley-on-their-ex- perience-of-the-violence-in-south-sudan. 19 Mel Duncan, “Case Studies of Unarmed Civilian Protection,” Nonviolent Peace- force, March 2016, www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org/images/publications/ UCP_Case_Studies__v5.3_LQ.pdf. 20 Renee Coulouris, “Here’s Why Syrian Women Need to be Included More in Peace- building,” Atlantic Council, July 11, 2018, www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/syr- iasource/here-s-why-syrian-women-need-to-be-included-more-in-peacebuilding. In- cluding women makes peace agreements 64 percent less likely to fail and 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years, “Women’s Participation in Peace Processes,” Council of Foreign Relations, www.cfr.org/interactive/womens-participation-in- peace-processes. 128 Eli McCarthy and Leo Lushombo harm. This would accent key practices such as lament and dangerous memory, along with processes of restorative justice. The norm of in- tegral disarmament, which is Pope Francis’s term, calls for actions to diminish the “arming” sensibilities within our persons as well as sig- nificantly reducing all weapons and the arms trade.21 In sphere three, the norm of relationality and reconciliation calls for actions that invite, create, strengthen and heal relationships in ever wider (horizontal) and deeper (vertical) directions in society, with a particular accent on inter-religious cooperation. The norm of human dignity and human rights calls for actions that are consistent with and improve appreciation for the equal dignity of all people, including adversaries, by ensuring human rights and cultivating empathy. The norm of a robust civil society and just governance calls for actions that strengthen these, re-distributes power, and includes the practice of advocacy. The norm of ecological justice and sustainability calls for action that contributes to the long-term well-being of people, non- human animals, and the environment. The norm of economic, racial, and gender justice would call for actions to enable distributive and structural justice with a particular focus on the most marginalized and vulnerable. In turn, some guiding questions to reflect on in this just peace ethic would include the following: What ongoing actions and policies could help build sustainable peace? What are the root causes of the conflict? What habits (virtues/vices) are at stake and skillsets needed to transform the conflict? What practices and transforming initiatives could be scaled up to break cycles of violence?

MORE UNIFYING POLITICAL LEADERSHIP If the Catholic Church can reflect with, refine, develop, and help to mainstream a just peace ethic then we may be able to make some progress with cultivating more unifying political leadership in our societies. Imagine if political leaders increasingly focused on the three spheres of sustainable peace, the virtues and skills to engage conflict constructively, and breaking cycles of violence? The sustaining peace agenda at the United Nations is one promising initiative that could be supported and enhanced by a just peace ethic.22 Further, the just peace norms offer additional elements and practices to strengthen a sustaining peace agenda. For example, the norms of sustaining spiritual practices (centering, meditation, fasting, discernment, prayer, etc.) and cultivating key virtues (empathy, compassion, mercy, nonviolence, humility, hospitality, solidarity, courage) could be an

21 Jim Fair, “Pope Stresses Need to Halt Nuclear Arms,” Zenit, November 10, 2017, zenit.org/articles/pope-stresses-need-to-halt-nuclear-arms/. 22 International Peace Institute, “Sustaining Peace and Prevention,” www.ipinst.org/ program/sustaining-peace-and-prevention. Rectifying Political Leadership 129 area for growth in the sustaining peace meta-policy. The particular practices of unarmed civilian protection and nonviolent civilian-base defense could also enhance the implementation of the sustaining peace agenda. How might the just peace ethic impact the national security strategies in terms of guiding vision, core values, key practices, and priority issues? For instance, we would likely emphasize a vision for the well-being of all people and the earth, not merely our own country.23 We would identify values of equal dignity, interconnectedness, humility, and nonviolence. We would focus on practices of cooperation more than competition,24 and better shift our investments into nonviolent strategies while we emphasize the root causes of conflicts. Rather than calling for military dominance when dialogue appears to fail, 25 we would lift up and focus on strategic nonviolent direct action to shift power, diminish injustice, and create a more fertile ground for dialogue. We would acknowledge the need for security but also that it is most sustainably met by acting in accord with human dignity through cooperation, trust, and creative nonviolent action. The Catholic Church can take a number of key steps to help main- stream a just peace ethic. As academics, significantly scaling up edu- cation about nonviolence, particularly gospel nonviolence, is one key step. This also includes robust training in the sustaining spiritual dis- ciplines, as well as in the virtues and moral imagination related to just peace. Lederach defines the moral imagination as the “capacity to im- agine something rooted in the challenges of the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist.”26 In addition, imagine if our parishes and Catholic schools offered monthly nonviolent skill training and a robust restorative justice dis- cipline system. Another key step is utilizing the church’s “ubiquitous presence” in many places to better accompany and take on some of the risk with those in situations of injustice, profound repression and mass violence, and thus, bridge different sectors of society.27 A good exam- ple of this could be organizing direct, physical and pastoral accompa- niment teams to be with the thousands of migrants traveling in large

23 As an example to improve on, see the White House, “U.S. National Security Strat- egy, 2017,” 1, www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18- 2017-0905-2.pdf. 24 White House, “U.S. National Security Strategy,” 2-3. 25 White House, “U.S. National Security Strategy,” 26-28. 26 John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: Art and Soul of Building Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), ix, 5, 38. 27 John Paul Lederach, “The Long Journey Back to Humanity,” in Peacebuilding: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Praxis, ed. Scott Appleby, Robert Schreiter, and Gerard Powers (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2010), 51. 130 Eli McCarthy and Leo Lushombo groups from central America into Mexico and to the U.S. border.28 With the many educational institutions and its multi-sector presence, the church can also better mobilize communities and social move- ments toward just peace practices. Another key step is scaling up advocacy and institution building of nonviolent strategies and using a just peace moral framework in local, national, and international spheres as well as giving more clear em- phasis to outlawing war, as Vatican II called us to do. For example, integrating trauma-healing exercises into political negotiations could better enable such actors to build trust, identify needs, and create more sustainable agreements. Advocacy could also include requiring fre- quent, ongoing de-escalation and empathy training of police officers, as well as developing unarmed civilian protection units, nonviolent civilian-based defense, and more robust nonviolent civil society or- ganizations. Imagine if each diocese or local Christian community de- veloped an unarmed civilian protection unit, i.e. a “peace team.” Per- haps these might include interfaith peace teams as well. Building on Pope Francis’s 2017 World Day of Peace message on nonviolence, a just peace ethic helps to provide a way forward to more unifying political leadership. As we work together to develop this ethic toward such leadership, we need to work with and refine this ethic through case studies by authors from around the world. Here, we do this with a case study of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO AND GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is located in Central Africa and shares land borders with a total of nine countries, including South Sudan and the Central African Republic in the north; Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda, and Rwanda to the east; the Republic of Congo in the western part; and Angola and Zambia in the southern part. The DRC shares with Uganda a land border that stretches 545 miles in length, while Rwanda shares 137 miles of the DRC’s land border, which is the shortest of the DRC’s land borders and where genocide occurred in 1994. The rapes in the DRC spread in the regions which were afflicted by the conflicts as an aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. After the genocide, Tutsi imposed their military presence in the Eastern DRC in order to control the Hutu “genocidaires” and refugees who fled toward Congo and sheltered in the Eastern Congo’s borders, where they enjoyed the status of refugees. A Congolese leader, Laurent

28 David Agren, “Migrant Caravan departs Mexico City as new caravans merge to reach capital,” USA Today, Nov. 10, 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/news/ world/2018/11/10/migrant-caravan-donald-trump-immigration-southern-us-border- mexico-honduras-asylum/1956952002/. Rectifying Political Leadership 131

Kabila, took advantages of the chaos to initiate an armed revolution in 1996 against the dictator Mobutu, who remained in power for 32 years. He recruited soldiers, including children who came to be known as Kadogo, i.e., the little ones in Swahili. Kabila’s revolution was supported by Rwanda and Uganda who wanted to ensure the safety of their borders. These conflicts, which have been often misrepresented as “civil wars,” are not civil wars. Rather, they are part of ongoing armed conflicts involving the neighboring countries.29 These conflicts involve “armies of seven African states, and criminal groups from the armies of Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and the DRC have benefited by building up a self-financing war economy centered on mineral exploitation.”30 A 2002 panel of experts from the United Nations has shown the involvement of the neighboring countries in the wars in the DRC and the link between such involvement and the rampant rapes with the mining exploitation in the DRC.31 The 2004 UN Security Council Resolution 1533 identifies the role of Rwanda in supporting the munitions forces of the so-called rebels Mutebutsi and Nkunda and its role as a rear base for coordination of and recruitment for wars inside the DRC.32 One of the reasons they advanced to justify their invading presence was that militias opposed to their governments were based in the Kivu since the genocide.33 The UN Security Council Resolution S/2012/843 also affirmed the Rwandan government’s direct military support to and coordination of the “rebels” and Ugandan senior governmental officials’ involvement in such support.34 The reports also underline that “several traders have

29 Amber Peterman, Tia Palermo, and Caryn Bredenkamp, “Estimates and Determi- nants of Sexual Violence Against Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” American Journal of Public Health 101, no. 6 (2011): 1060–67, doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2010.300070. 30 Denis Mukengere Mukwege and Cathy Nangini, “Rape with Extreme Violence: The New Pathology in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo,” PLoS Medicine 6, no. 12 (2009): 7, doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000204. 31 United Nations Security Council, “Final report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Re- public of the Congo,” UN Doc. S/2002/1146, October 16, 2002, www.securitycoun- cilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3- CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/DRC%20S%202002%201146.pdf. 32 United Nations Security Council, “Letter Dated 15 July 2004 from the Chairman of the Security Council Committee Established Pursuant to Resolution 1533 (2004) Con- cerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo Addressed to the President of the Se- curity Council,” § 65–84, UN Doc. S/2004/551, July 15, 2004, digitalli- brary.un.org/record/5262204/files/S_2004_551-EN.pdf. 33 United Nations Security Council, “Letter Dated 15 July 2004,” § 8, 21, 22, S/2004/551. 34 United Nations Security Council, “Letter Dated 12 November 2012 from the Chair of the Security Council Committee Established Pursuant to Resolution 1533 (2004) Concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo addressed to the President of the 132 Eli McCarthy and Leo Lushombo contributed to financing M23 rebels [group whose origin is traced to Rwanda] using profits resulting from the smuggling of Congolese minerals into Rwanda.”35 Rigobert Minani, a Congolese Jesuit who has been committed to human rights in the Congo for decades, argues that, to address those militia groups, “these countries have deployed troops and sponsored militias in the eastern DRC, feeding the proliferation of armed groups. Nearly all of the illicit traffic in Congolese minerals that funds armed groups transits Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda.”36 The Rwandan and Ugandan armed groups and foreign armies, including those rising from the DRC, were reinforced by those recruited from refugee camps such as those in the DRC, Burundi, and Uganda.37 The eastern border land and waters of the DRC from north to south are full of key mineral and energy resources such as diamonds, gold, coltan, copper, cobalt, tin, manganese, lead and zinc, coal, uranium, and oil. These “rebels” are accounted among the main perpetrators of rape as a weapon of war, while exploiting the natural resources in the border lands.38 This rape refers to systematic or strategic and opportunistic forms of sexual violence that occur in the build-up to, active fighting in, and aftermath of armed conflict. It is a deliberate strategy of one or more parties in the armed conflict. This weapon is still used in war zones in Libya, Guinea, South Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Rwanda, and in the DRC. In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, several wars have been led in the DRC by the Rwandan political leadership. One key war was waged side by side with business activities by the Rwandan Patriotic Front politicians, particularly through minerals trade. Women were used as sexual slaves in mining zones that turn out to be the fighting zones and from where DRC’s mineral resources were plundered and exported to industrialized markets. While Rwanda justifies the presence of its military in the DRC as a question of security and common good, women are paying the higher price of their lives. The army groups use rape as a weapon of war while pillaging mineral resources in the mining zones in the Eastern DRC. For example, the

Security Council,” § 2-4, UN Doc. S/2012/843, November 15, 2012, digitalli- brary.un.org/record/738098/files/S_2012_843-EN.pdf. 35 United Nations Security Council, “Letter Dated 12 November 2012,” § 4, S/2012/843. 36 Rigobert Minani Bihuzo, “Unfinished Business. A Framework for Peace in the Great Lakes,” Africa Center for Strategic Studies, July 2012, www.files.ethz.ch/isn/147787/AfricaBriefFinal_21.pdf. 37 United Nations Security Council, “Letter Dated 12 November 2012,” § 74, 22, S/2012/843. 38 United Nations Security Council, “Letter Dated 12 November 2012,” § 174, 38, S/2012/843. Rectifying Political Leadership 133 region of Shabunda is rich in coltan, gold, and cassiterite. The Kabare region is rich in coltan,39 “used for capacitors in cell phones and video game consoles,” and which contains the tantalum that is used widely in electronics in the industrialized world.40 The area of Walungu is rich in cassiterite and gold. Importantly, Denis Mukwege and Cathy Nangini demonstrate that the rate of rape is directly correlated with proximity to mining zones.41 Mukwege states that “rape with extreme violence” (REV) has in- creased in the eastern part of DRC during the past 20 years. A nation- wide survey reports that up to 1.69 to 1.8 million women were reported as victims of rape in 2011. Between 1999 and 2015, 45,482 women survivors have been treated in the Panzi Hospital (in Bukavu) alone by Mukwege and his associates.42 Since 2017, more than 50,000 women survivors have been treated by the hospital.43 It is important to note that rape is listed among the crimes against humanity in the statute adopted by the United Nations Security Council in 1993.44 The 1998 ICC Statute identifies the widespread and systematic attack of rape as a “crime against humanity” in both international and non-international armed conflicts. 45 Thus, the widespread rapes have become a peace-hindering factor and a security issue, as confirmed by the UN Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820.46 The political machine behind wars in the Great Lakes region (DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi) challenges the utility of other

39 Also known as Columbite-Tantalite. 40 Jason K. Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), 296. 41 Denis Mukengere Mukwege and Cathy Nangini, “Rape with Extreme Violence: The New Pathology in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo,” PLoS Medicine 6, no. 12 (2009): doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000204. 42 Jackson Sinnenberg, “A Doctor Who Treats Rape Survivors Seen as Nobel Peace Prize Contender,” National Public Radio, October 6, 2016,vwww.npr.org/sec- tions/goatsandsoda/2016/10/06/496893413/doctor-who-helps-rape-survivors-is- shortlisted-for-nobel-peace-prize. 43 Denis Mukwege, “Using Rape as a Weapon of War Should Cross Every Interna- tional Red Line,” Time, April 24, 2017, time.com/4752092/denis-mukwege-chemical- weapons-sexual-violence-international-law/. 44 See United Nations Security Council, “Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to Paragraph of Security Council Resolutions 808 (1993),” Annex, Article 5 (g), UN Doc. S/25704, May 3, 1993, www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B- 6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/ICTY%20S%2025704%20stat- ute_re808_1993_en.pdf. This statute was approved by Security Council Resolution 827, “Adopted by the Security Council at its 3217th meeting on 25 May 1993,” UN Doc. S/RES/827, May 25, 1993, www.icty.org/x/file/Legal%20Library/Statute/stat- ute_827_1993_en.pdf. 45 Roy Gutman, David Rieff, and Anthony Gary Dworkin, eds., Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know, Second Edition, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2007), 136. 46 Kerry F. Crawford, Wartime Sexual Violence: From Silence to Condemnation of a Weapon of War (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), 91–120. 134 Eli McCarthy and Leo Lushombo predominant ethical approaches, such as the just war criterion of proportionality. Proportionality refers to the idea that “the overall destruction expected from the use of violent force must be outweighed by the good to be achieved.”47 Yet, the use of rape as a weapon of war as performed in the DRC illustrates another example of how the criterion of proportionality is too easily manipulated and abused in the context of war and thus, too often functions to enable violence and war. Such justifying logic based on proportionality might go that armed force is needed to attack those in the DRC who committed genocide in Rwanda, and thus, the good that would come from this outweighs the harm that comes from rape. Because of the consistent failure to adequately address these issues and the ongoing cycles of violence, it is crucial and urgent to consider this from a new ethical perspective, particularly a just peace ethic.

REFLECTING WITH A JUST PEACE ETHIC With a just peace ethic, we have a broader vision about conflict and a set of norms to adequately expose rape as a weapon of war as well as commit to effective, sustainable ways more likely to end both rape and war. A great example of using just peace norms is found in the Panzi Hospital, where Denis Mukwege and associates display the virtues of mercy and courage, which bring indispensable resources for a more just and peaceful world. In Mukwege’s case, mercy is that which enters into the chaos of another and takes responsibility by being in solidarity with the victims. As he states, “in every raped woman, I see my wife. In every raped mother, I see my mother and in every raped child, my own children.”48 In addition to repairing women, Mukwege also calls on the responsibility of national and international governments to effectively collaborate in bringing peace in the DRC. These actions are examples of actualizing the just peace norm of cultivating key virtues. They echo Aquinas that “we are bound to have charity towards all men” (ST II-II q. 64, a. 2). This is the main reason why we should not become “guilty bystanders.” Taking responsibility requires embracing the virtue of courage. As McCarthy put it, “The virtue of nonviolent peacemaking clarifies or expands the paradigmatic practices of the virtue of courage to the practice of suffering out of reverence for the dignity of others (and self) by risking, perhaps even giving one’s life without the distortion of our dignity created by relying on lethal force or by taking another’s life.”49 Mukwege’s approach displays a courage which is

47 Aline H. Kalbian, “Where Have All The Proportionalists Gone?,” Journal of Reli- gious Ethics 30 (2002): 16. 48 Sinnenberg, “A Doctor Who Treats Rape Survivors.” 49 Eli McCarthy, Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic So- cial Teaching and U.S. Policy (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012), 93. Rectifying Political Leadership 135 needed in everyday life to face the many fears that arise from his peacemaker’s activities, including denouncing rape and its perpetuating systems. The virtues of mercy and courage are seen throughout the Panzi Hospital’s “five-pillar process”50 to address the evil of rape and reinforce the vision of a virtue-based just peace approach in many ways. They include medical treatment, psychosocial therapy, socioeconomic support and training, community reintegration, and legal assistance. These pillars display the virtues of mercy and courage needed in everyday life to face the many fears that arise from these peacemaking activities. A virtue-based just peace ethic illuminates the needs for taking responsibility for the physical, clinical, psychological, socio- economic rehabilitation, and processes of restorative justice, as well as for addressing the roots of conflict and war at the national, regional, and international level. Mukwege’s approach suggests that the international politics and Catholic church can better mainstream a just peace ethic by including gender analysis and equality as well as addressing the mining and arms trade factors which play a crucial role in hindering peace.

REHABILITATION AND REINTEGRATION OF VICTIMIZED WOMEN Panzi Hospital has an extensive program of rehabilitation and integration of women victims to restore their physical, psychological, and socio-economic well-being. This program aims at supporting women in order for them to regain full confidence in themselves, reintegrate into the community in which they live, and take engagement to demand justice. As one of the women victims I (Lushombo) spoke with said, “I feel stranger to myself and to all the people around me. I feel like I do not fit here. I stay in my room days after days and alone. I wish they could kill me instead of doing what they did to me.” Thus, these programs illustrate and advance the just peace norm of conflict transformation, particularly the practices of trauma-healing and restorative justice. Actualizing the just peace norm of economic justice, the Panzi Hospital’s peace-making actions have gone far to provide a training center called “Cité de la Joie” or City of Joy for women to learn different kind of works to provide for their basic needs, including traditionally men’s jobs such as carpentry. The perspective of the City of Joy includes equality of gender. Mukwege explains that patriarchy is part of the problem: “We raise our sons by stripping them of any emotion and our daughters end up in the kitchen. Africa’s future

50 Sinnenberg, “A Doctor Who Treats Rape Survivors.” 136 Eli McCarthy and Leo Lushombo begins when girls know that they are equal to boys.”51 Mainstreaming the norm of gender justice, such as equality of gender, makes women victims become stronger and more freely embrace the goal of peace. Actualizing the just peace norms of sustainability and nonviolent peacemaking cultures, Mukwege believes that a sustainable just peace requires a cultural shift as well. As he puts it, “Men need to understand that to protect women is to protect themselves, and that respect for women is key to equity. Rape is not only a woman’s issue; it is humanity’s crisis to solve.”52 He continues that “Without considering women as our equals, we deprive future generations of our legacy.”53 Since women are equal to men, “we must promote accountability, coherence, and transparency ... we must understand that wisdom comes not only from men but also from women.”54 Through these three dimensions Mukwege exemplifies virtues of charity, courage, mercy, and justice. As he explains, “We have seen how medical intervention combined with psychosocial care, literacy, numeracy, and vocational training are catalysts for change, both for the short and long term.”55 Panzi Hospital has also created a training center for nurses and physicians to meet this increasing humanitarian crisis. Mukwege displays well the virtue of mercy as far as he enters into the chaos of women victims leading him to embrace vulnerability, risking his own life and living like one of them, in the hospital. As he said, “My life has had to change, since returning [from exile after being attacked in his own home]. I now live at the hospital and I take a number of precautions, so I have lost some of my freedom.” Hence, a virtue-based just peace ethic helps to drive the person to dare to take risks of suffering and even death without killing others, i.e., the virtue of courage. Mukwege’s example shows that even one single person can make the difference in helping secure a sustainable peace and build more unifying political leadership, rather than acting like “guilty bystanders,” which is how others and the governments whether national, regional, or international, too often seem to act.

NATIONAL, REGIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL LEGAL DIMENSIONS Beyond restoring the physical, psychological, and socio-economic well-being of the victims, Mukwege is embarked in another global campaign. As he puts it, “What I have seen and heard and experienced in eastern DRC is without a doubt the worst situation of violence

51 Women for Women International, “Read Dr. Denis Mukwege’s Speech Accepting the 2015 Champion of Peace Award,” November 2015, www.womenfor- women.org/blogs/read-dr-denis-mukweges-speech-accepting-2015-champion-peace- award. 52 Denis Mukwege, “Using Rape as a Weapon of War.” 53 Women for Women International, “Read Dr. Denis Mukwege’s Speech.” 54 Women for Women International, “Read Dr. Denis Mukwege’s Speech.” 55 Women for Women International, “Read Dr. Denis Mukwege’s Speech.” Rectifying Political Leadership 137 towards women in the world.”56 Hence, he has turned his energy to also mobilize international politics to be involved in a more sustainable peace-making process in the DRC. The fate of these women continues in the DRC despite the deployment of the UN’s armed peacekeeping forces, which have also been routinely responsible for direct sexual abuse and rape of women. In an interview, Mukwege claims, “I operated on a mother, then 15 years later, I’d operate on her daughter, and three years after that, I’d operate on the granddaughter - a baby.” He continues: “I absolutely have to tell the world, show the world, that there is a collective responsibility to act in DRC. We share the same humanity and we cannot continue to allow economic wars to be fought on women’s bodies.”57 Actualizing the just peace norm of conflict transformation, which seeks to address root causes, he urged the United Nations in 2014 to use all the international legal instruments to address the root causes of the regional conflicts in the DRC. These root causes include the exploitation of natural resources that benefit the industrialized countries today and around which many of the rapes are committed.58 In the face of threats, he still endorsed the Global Witness conflict mineral report on the DRC arguing that:

Congo’s minerals are exported, smelted, and sold internationally, where they end up in cell phones, laptops, or as pieces of jewelry. We know that some of these minerals sourced from conflict-areas have funded violence, abuses, and corrupt criminal networks. And yet, the response of international companies and states has been too slow and timid to make the necessary fundamental changes.59

EFFECTIVENESS OF MUKWEGE’S NONVIOLENT VIRTUE-BASED JUST PEACE APPROACH Mukwege’s approach cultivates the virtue of love in the victims rather than the vice of violence that perpetuates war. It works to make the community stronger and resistant to all mechanisms fueling war in the DRC. Mukwege’s approach makes the community more responsible, at least at the very local level, and thus, enables the conditions for actualizing the just peace norm of a robust civil society.

56 Kelly Morris, “Denis Mukwege: Caring for Victims of Sexual Violence in the DRC,” The Lancet, February 28, 2009, doi.org/10/1016/S0140-6736(09)60425-6. 57 Eliza Anyangwe and Stephanie Busari, “Denis Mukwege: The Man Who Mends Women,” CNN, October 5, 2018, www.cnn.com/2017/10/19/africa/denis-mukwege- congo-doctor-rape/index.html. 58 Denis Mukwege, “Speech of Dr. Denis Mukwege, 2014 Sakharov Prize Laureate, in Strasbourg, 26 November 2014,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujKEiMn-gGE. 59 Global Witness “Digging for Transparency: How U.S. Companies are Only Scratching the Surface of Conflict Minerals Reporting,” April 22, 2015, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/conflict-minerals/digging-transpar- ency/. 138 Eli McCarthy and Leo Lushombo

Such an approach drives them not to be passive, guilty bystanders. Rape denies another’s humanity, and no one should close his/her eyes when another’s humanity is denied. Thus, he actualizes the norm of re-humanization to break the cycles of violence. Further, when a community becomes more responsible, Mukwege explains, it can better address root causes. The virtue-based just peace approach embodied by Mukwege and Panzi Hospital is a cautionary example of what and Pope Francis call nonviolent means as a “style of politics.” Mukwege’s specific acts may not immediately end wars in the DRC, but they do have significant social and political effects that can make the end of war much more likely. To illustrate the political effects of Mukwege’s approach, it is important to note that one hundred and twenty-two countries have endorsed the United Nations’ historic “Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict” of October 2013, a Declaration issuing in part from the work of Mukwege and other peacemaker activists against sexual violence in the DRC.60 This accomplishment illustrates advancing the just peace norm of just governance and the particular practices of advocacy. Several nations, including two presidents, attended the ceremony of endorsement and made a commitment to participate in the implementation of the declaration. Such an endorsement is meant to end sexual violence as a weapon of war not only in the DRC but also around the world. Two African presidents have agreed to join the “Circle of Champions” created to exercise special influence to prevent conflict-related sexual violence. I strongly affirm that violent means would not be more effective than a change in consciousness that is materialized into politics in the long term. In accord with the just peace norm of sustainability, a more lasting peace can be reached if governments involved in the DRC’s wars affirm the sacredness of the whole human community such as the virtue of nonviolent peacemaking cultivates, not only that of their own people and their economic interests. In addition to the range of international humanitarian laws regarding rape, there is a need for a just peace response to transform conflicts in the DRC and its neighboring Great Lakes region. On the one hand, the DRC’s example and Mukwege’s just peace approach suggest that it is crucial to tackle the legal and illegal trade of weapons that benefits several countries in the region and beyond. These efforts would actualize the just peace norms of integral disarmament and economic justice. This demands a broad political will. On the other hand, Mukwege’s approach shows that to better address rape and help

60 United Nations, “A Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Con- flict,” UN Doc. A/68/633, December 3, 2013, https://undocs.org/pdf?sym- bol=en/A/68/633. Rectifying Political Leadership 139 defuse the war, there is a need to educate not only the victims but also the community on gender analysis and equality. Another method for protecting women and significantly reducing rape in the DRC might be the just peace practice of unarmed civilian protection, which has been effective, as illustrated in places of violent conflict such as South Sudan. Civil society-based organizations such as the Nonviolent Peaceforce could enhance some of the other essential efforts expressed above by Dr. Mukwege. For a sustainable peace, we need a holistic approach. Thus, unarmed civilian protection must go along with the other efforts mentioned, particularly providing basic human needs, an accountable legal system, democratization, and regional government responsibility. As lawful as it may be for the Rwandan government to hold accountable the genocidaires, any quest for “just” accountability that leads to the denial of the humanity of another group is both unacceptable and ineffective, not to mention violating the just peace norms of human dignity and reflexivity. It is time, as Lisa Cahill puts it, to “go far deeper than fending off aggressors and [supposedly] vindicating the rights of injured parties by killing perpetrators.”61 Going after perpetrators with lethal force is also killing many other lives, not to mention harming the ones who kill as they experience trauma, moral injury, and brain damage.62 There is another way. No selfish notion of peace can work out. No one can enjoy peace if one’s neighbors do not. The peace that is sustainable binds us together.

CONCLUSION This essay offered a way to cultivate more unifying political leadership through the mainstreaming of a just peace ethic. We analyzed some recent Catholic contributions to a just peace ethic and then explored the value of this ethic in a case study of violent conflict. Utilizing a case study enables us to see more clearly the value of a just peace ethic, to stir our imagination about how it might function in praxis, and to motivate a stronger commitment to its ongoing development and refinement.

61 Lisa Cahill, “Catholic Tradition on Peace, War, and Just Peace,” A Just Peace Ethic: Breaking Cycles of Violence and Building Sustainable Peace (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, forthcoming 2020). 62 Rachel McNair, Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Con- sequences of Killing (Westport: Praeger/Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002). Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2019): 140-169

Book Reviews

Resurrection and Moral Imagination. By Sarah Bachelard. Lon- don/NewYork: Routledge, 2014. x + 209 pages. $39.99.

In Resurrection and Moral Imagination, Rev. Dr. Bachelard in- vokes the practice of contemplation and the insights of the Christian spiritual tradition to articulate how Christians can let the risen Christ form their moral imagination. Building on philosophers Iris Murdoch and Raimond Gaita’s emphasis on the need for an ethical appeal to a non-theologically defined transcendent goodness, Bachelard consid- ers “not simply the content of particular moral norms or values...but the horizon against which moral life assumes its shape, force, and meaning” (58). To this end, she touches on the nature of the transcend- ent, the immanent, and secularity (and so engages Taylor’s A Secular Age) while contrasting Platonic and Christian conceptions of the good, and discussing Girard, Simone Weil, Wittgenstein, Bonhoeffer, and St. Paul. Throughout, Bachelard relies heavily on Rowan Williams and James Alison, while critically engaging Hauerwas, Wells, and Milbank. Everything is employed to offer “an important and illumi- nating model for conceptualising the formation of human self-con- sciousness and so for specifying anthropologically how the resurrec- tion of Jesus may be understood as a source of transformation of hu- man subjectivity” (71). Bachelard first summarizes Gaita and Murdoch’s re-appropriation of ’s Ideal of the Good. Bachelard then argues that, while the ex- perience of this transcendent goodness (often in the form of saintly love) is possible outside of confessional confines, it may well be nec- essary for men and women to have recourse to theological language to properly understand and respond to such an experience. In other words, Bachelard thinks that men and women require more than sec- ular ethics to effectively form them to act out of disinterested love for the transcendent good (28). Having made room for a theological con- sideration of Murdoch’s transcendent ethics, Bachelard proceeds to consider the consequences for ethics if we specify that the encounter with Transcendent Goodness is, at least in the Christian context, an encounter with the risen Christ. She asks, in other words, what hap- pens when Christ stands where the lay for Plato. The remainder of the book is the unfolding of the consequences of that move: consequences which take us into a consideration of original sin, Book Reviews 141 the import of mortality in the moral life, a focus on a personal encoun- ter with Christ, and the Christian’s awareness of forgiveness, resulting in an ethical life that is revelatory of moral meaning, vulnerable to discernment and inspiration by the Spirit, and radically compassionate (93). The exciting promise of Bachelard’s approach, however, is ham- pered first by her insistence that any system of judging between good and evil will necessarily be dualistic, and so unjustly create victims (60-63), and, second, by her inability to offer clear principles for de- termining how we can take divine law as normative. Natural law claims risk denying the transcendence of Christian ethics (105), and we must hesitate to make definitive claims about the commandments of God, lest we be too legalistic (111). While defending the validity of God’s commands eschatologically, in the current reality Bachelard follows P. Lehman in proposing what is characterized as “contextual ethics”; we must be open to obeying God and not confusing that with literal observance of commandments (112). This is not to say there are no normative principles (i.e., solidarity with victims is a constant), but Bachelard cannot see how a resurrection ethic would offer conclu- sive norms about the sinfulness of homosexuality (113–14, 182 fn.), or hold all married Christians to the full force of their vows without being unrealistic (162–63). Bachelard takes the desert fathers as com- pelling examples for living in detachment from material wealth (134) but ignores both St. Paul and the desert tradition when they claim an encounter with the risen Lord is bound up with the divinization of our bodies through chastity. In the end, while Bachelard’s articulation of the consequences of a resurrection ethic calls for courageous solidarity and forgiveness, when she touches on sexual ethics, it looks much more like an immanent progressive system than the divinizing tran- scendence arising from a radical mystical encounter. KYLE WASHUT Wyoming Catholic College

Johannine Ethics: The Moral World of the Gospel and Epistles of John. Edited by Sherri Brown and Christopher W. Skinner. Minneap- olis: Fortress, 2017. xxxvi + 319 pp. $79.

The Gospel and Epistles of John are not the most mined biblical books for moral theology. Among the Four Gospels, Matthew and Luke with their Sermons on the Mount and Plain, respectively, are far more common in discussions of Christian morality. Among all writings, the epistles of Paul are perhaps the most fre- quently cited sources for Christian moral discourse. In Sherri Brown and Christopher Skinner’s ambitious volume, Johannine Ethics: The Moral World of the Gospel and Epistles of John, however, John’s Gos- 142 Book Reviews pel and Epistles are the focus. This edited volume takes a fairly thor- ough and ecumenical look at what can be learned about Christian mo- rality from these neglected New Testament texts, relying on Catholic as well as a wide range of Protestant scholars. That they are helping to fill in such a lacuna alone merits praise. I think the most important text on this topic to date remains Jan G. Van der Watt and Ruben Zimmer- mann’s 2012 edited volume, Rethinking the Ethics of John: “Implicit Ethics” in the Johannine Writings, which the present volume refer- ences throughout. Van der Watt and Zimmermann’s volume, however, is less accessible to students, and the broad accessibility of Brown and Skinner’s volume is one of its greatest strengths. This volume is ide- ally suited to undergraduate students or early graduate students. It will be less helpful for the biblical scholar but might open up further areas of research for moral theologians seeking to incorporate more Scrip- ture in their work. The book’s straightforward organization boasts three major sec- tions. The first part centers on John’s positive commands of faith, love, and the discipleship involved in following Jesus. The three chapters in this first part, by Sherri Brown (3–24), Christopher W. Skinner (25– 42), and Raymond F. Collins (43–63), focus on these three themes in that order. Brown’s essay in particular is a helpful grounding of the entire volume because she emphasizes what I think is the most im- portant point, namely that the Johannine emphasis is on divine filia- tion, Jesus’s enabling his followers to become children of God. The book’s second part deals with ethics that are implied in Johannine lit- erature. This portion comprises the majority of the volume, with seven essays by R. Alan Culpepper (67–90), Jamie Clark-Soles (91–115), Adele Reinhartz (117–133), Michael J. Gorman (135–158), Alicia D. Myers (159–176), Toan Do (177–196), and Francis J. Moloney (197– 217). These essays deal with topics as diverse as creation ethics and the love of enemies. Reinhartz’s essay is unique in the volume in that she argues against the notion that an ethic can be found in Johannine literature and that the literature, particularly John’s Gospel, is focused more on . She argues, moreover and quite provocatively, that Jesus is depicted as lying in the Gospel of John (132). The final main section proposes taking the conversation on moral theology and Johannine literature forward beyond the status quo of contemporary scholarship. The three essays of this section by Lindsey Trozzo (221– 239), Dorothy Lee (241–259), and Cornelis Bennema (261–281), ex- amine John, respectively, in light of its context as a bios, a Greco- Roman biography, in light of whether or not it might contain “a dis- tinctive and plentiful store of ethics” (241), and from the standpoint of virtue ethics. In the end, these scholars have produced a useful volume that would help students explore questions of moral theology from within the framework of Johannine literature. More than an introduc- Book Reviews 143 tion to such a topic, I think the volume will be best suited for produc- ing further studies on moral theology in Johannine literature, as well as scripturally-grounded moral theology, because of the many ques- tions the essays raise. JEFFREY L. MORROW Seton Hall University

Putting Others First: The Christian Ideal of Others-Centeredness. By T. Ryan Byerly. New York: Routledge, 2019. xi + 186 pages. $140 [e- book $54.95].

In this recent addition to the Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory, T. Ryan Byerly makes a valuable contribution with his exam- ination on the Christian discipline of “others-centeredness.” He de- fines others-centeredness as a “disposition to treat the perceived inter- ests of each other person as more important than one’s own perceived interests for purposes of deciding what to do, just because they are another’s” (5). Byerly relies on Philippians 2:3 to argue that the Chris- tian moral life orbits around this obligation to others-centeredness. This means cultivating the character trait of putting others first, which he explores from religious, philosophical, and scientific perspectives. Chapter 1 defines key terms, explaining the methodological ap- proach for the subsequent chapters, and offers a literature review to provide context. Chapter 2 examines others-centeredness in the New Testament, focusing mostly on Philippians 2:3 and its immediate con- text (35–42) before exploring other related passages in the Pauline corpus and the Gospels (43–46) in order to propose a “New Testament theology of others-centeredness” informed by Aquinas and Barth (50– 56). Chapter 3 explores the normative status of others-centeredness by reviewing the value of interpersonal union through cooperation (62) and navigating challenges of directly knowing the other (64) and in- debtedness to the other (65) before moving on to resources for others- centeredness drawn from consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, and Christian metaphysics. Chapter 4 addresses objections to others- centeredness, accomplished by discussing the debate between egoism and altruism (94–104) and the question of harm to self, especially given concerns raised by feminist theologians like Barbara Andolsen (104–118), which Byerly characterizes as “fundamentally misguided” (118). Chapter 5 considers the relationship between others-cen- teredness and related virtues (humility, generosity, and love) as well as opposing vices (hate, malevolence, schadenfreude, , , and greed). Chapter 6 unpacks the science of others-centeredness, includ- ing predictors for others-centeredness and prosocial behavior like em- pathic concern, secure attachments, and personal responsibility for in- terpersonal union with others to benefit other persons (174–175). 144 Book Reviews

This book weaves together moral theory in philosophy and Chris- tian theology, skillfully engages biblical scholarship, and is helpfully informed by social sciences. In this regard, it is a strong example of an interdisciplinary approach to ethics. Byerly’s interest lies more in the moral theory of others-centeredness than in how it organizes moral duties in the ordo amoris (as discussed in texts like Augustine’s City of God, Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, Outka’s Agape: An Ethical Analysis, and Vacek’s Love, Human and Divine). He does not resolve questions about how one is to negotiate the many demands of an oth- ers-centered life where one is pulled in different directions by obliga- tions to a spouse and co-workers, children and parents, family and friends, neighbors and strangers. This would make a stronger contri- bution to moral theology if it were framed by love of God and neigh- bor, and responded to theologians who explored the costliness of oth- ers-centeredness like Dietrich Bonhoeffer (especially in his Letters and Papers from Prison). Regrettably, Bonhoeffer’s theology—and the political implications of this radical commitment to existence for others—is left out completely. Byerly, in addition, could have strengthened the argument by al- luding to the Jewish roots of an others-centered life. A great many passages in Jewish Scripture command a moral priority to the weakest, most vulnerable members of society (e.g., Deuteronomy 15:7–8, Isaiah 58:5–7, and Amos 5:7–15). Indeed, the works of Buber and Lé- vinas that accentuate the radical otherness (the unknowability and moral priority) of the other also deserve mention. How can one live an others-centered life when the thoughts, feelings, and needs of others are sometimes hidden? These concerns, as well as the past and present abuses of marginalized groups (including women, people of color, and indigenous persons), leave lasting questions about the dangers of pa- ternalism and presumption inherent in others-centeredness, not just vices like hate, pride, or greed. A more liberative approach—incorpo- rating the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable on a personal, social, and institutional level—could help construct a more robust vi- sion of others-centeredness, where the church builds community that lives up to the standard of Philippians 2:3 just as much as the image of the Christian moral life depicted in Luke 10:25–37, Matthew 25:31–46, and Acts 2:42–47. Aside from these shortcomings, this book offers an interesting per- spective on the possibilities of the normative status of an others-cen- tered life. The author’s philosophical style and the expense of the text may make this a challenge for adoption in an undergraduate course. Still, as a reference text for churches, universities, and seminaries, it will surely spark new insights and questions about the moral demands of Christian discipleship for many years to come. MARCUS MESCHER Xavier University Book Reviews 145

Fragile World: Ecology and the Church. Edited by William T. Cavanaugh. Studies in World Catholicism, vol. 5. Eugene, OR: Cas- cade, 2018. xix + 368 pp. $45.

In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis stresses the close link between the cry of the poor and cry of the earth. These essays, the product of a confer- ence sponsored by the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University in April 2015, allow us to hear and learn from these twin cries. The diversity of perspectives, focused in the Global South and predominantly Catholic part of the globe, makes this fragile world truly our common home. The collection transports readers to places like the Agusan Marsh and villages in the Niger Delta region and makes the victims of Hurricane Yolanda and other suffer- ing communities our neighbors. It includes the contributions of bish- ops, priests, missionaries, theologians, scientists, and historians (though no economists) extending across five continents, so as to pre- sent “a global angle on a global crisis” (1). While featuring established figures in the field like Celia Deane-Drummond, Michael Northcott, and Cardinal Peter Turkson, the volume also introduces readers to a number of insightful and significant voices that might be less familiar. The first part focuses on how Catholic social teaching addresses the twin cries. Michael Perry, minister general of the Order of Friars Minor, nimbly surveys the church’s discourse on the environment in his essay. He acknowledges the tensions within the development of that tradition: specifically, how “human ecology” and “natural ecol- ogy” became virtually autonomous categories in previous pontificates. Perry demonstrates how in Laudato Si’, by incorporating the integral vision of St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis urges instead that these ecologies are “one and must be approached in a unified, consistent, and holistic manner” (84). Some attention to how St. Francis’s irre- pressibly doxological spirit inspires the encyclical’s prayerful tenor could have strengthened Perry’s perceptive argument regarding this integration. The second part affords several case-studies on the shape of the twin cries in the Global South. Exemplifying the sharing that the com- munio ecclesiarum promotes, Bishop Luis Alfonso Santos Villeda re- counts the political, social, and environmental ramifications of metal mining in Honduras. The section’s other two articles supply similar soundings from the Pan-Amazon region and Africa. The third and fourth parts offer some theological and ethical resources for respond- ing to these cries. Of particular note is the liberationist contribution of Daniel Castillo, quickly becoming a leading voice in the field, and his proposal that a “praxis of prophetic mourning” can sensitize the church to the cries of the earth and the poor and, as such, challenge technocratic indifference (152). 146 Book Reviews

The fifth part examines some pastoral activities undertaken by lo- cal churches to answer the cries of the earth and the poor. Emmanuel Katangole’s article on the Bethany Land Institute in Uganda, which he helped found, stands out as a superb piece in the section. Theologically developing an African agrarian standard, Katangole narrates how his institute aims to help Ugandans recover a sense of belonging to the land, otherwise lost through modern understandings of development. In this light, he prophetically calls the church to be an agent of com- munion rather than displacement, the latter tragically more often the church’s legacy in Africa (224). Katangole implicitly raises the ques- tion of how the church throughout the world might form its members in a genuinely sacramental worldview. The sixth part fittingly concludes with eschatology. Using James Berger’s discussion of the “post-apocalyptic” and the theology of Jo- hann Baptist Metz, Daniel Pilario brilliantly recounts how an apoca- lyptic spirituality of hope emerged from the “Ground Zero” of Hurri- cane Yolanda. Humbly conceding the ways in which he himself was numbed by modern pretensions of progress (283), Pilario—dean of the St. Vincent School of Theology in Manila—movingly narrates how this spirituality spurred hurricane survivors into practical solidarity with their neighbors. In the end, the world’s fragility can be revelatory; those who cry out incarnate what it means to be a community of hope in the world. This volume offers a powerful meditation on the twin cries echoing across our common home. While that theme received magisterial im- primatur in Laudato Si’, the conference was held shortly before the encyclical’s release. In fact, Cavanaugh tells us how most contributors revised their articles afterwards in light of the encyclical (4). Unfortu- nately, as a result, some articles simply proof text from the encyclical rather than allow it to catalyze their reflections (e.g., the studies of eschatology might amend an underdeveloped theme in Laudato Si’). By no means does this shortcoming undermine the content of the arti- cles; instead, reframing them in this manner would better showcase their relevance. Indeed, some of the volume’s articles could be used in an advanced undergraduate course on the global church, environ- mental ethics, or environmental science. The entire volume could suit graduate courses on the same topics. Such courses are of paramount importance if we are to follow the challenge that this fine volume sets: to safeguard our fragile world and those crying out within it. LUCAS BRIOLA Saint Vincent College

Book Reviews 147

Because Water Is Life: Catholic Social Teaching Confronts Earth’s Water Crises. By Gary L. Chamberlain. Winona, MN: Anselm Aca- demic, 2018. 188 pp. $21.95.

Gary L. Chamberlain (1938–2018) was Professor Emeritus of Christian Ethics at Seattle University (Washington), where he served in the Theology and Religious Studies Department as a faculty mem- ber and department chair. Chamberlain had a long teaching career and was involved in civil rights and social justice issues. He was a critical figure in the development and growth of Seattle University’s Environ- mental Studies Program. Just prior to the publication of this book, Sep- tember 10, 2018, at age 80, he succumbed to a long battle with lym- phoma. Chamberlain’s first foray in dealing with the global water crisis, Troubled Waters: Religion, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis (Row- man and Littlefield, 2008), examined the central role of water in vari- ous religious traditions and rituals, arriving at creative approaches to the growing water crisis worldwide. He described many practices from the world’s religions that support sustaining and restoring water; set out ways to revive old technologies and to begin using new ones; and submitted several important action principles to assist the world’s peoples of faith (personally and communally) in meeting the growing water challenges through conservation and water management poli- cies. In contrast to his earlier volume, this work focuses on Catholic so- cial teaching (CST) as “an excellent tool for ethical analyses of ques- tions about the use and abuse of water” (7). This is possible, he says, because CST sets out a new water ethics that is quite polemically op- posite to what has governed how humans have understood and valued water, especially since the eighteenth century, that has led to the cur- rent water crisis. Thus, through the lens of Catholicism’s “best-kept secret”—the social doctrine of the church—Chamberlain explores the major water issues. Chamberlain’s first chapter reveals “the secret” with a clear and concise introduction of the principles of CST. For each of a dozen CST documents, he indicates that, though it arose from particular historical circumstance, each has clear relevance for water issues today. The strength of this treatment of CST is that Chamberlain begins this dis- cussion with Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ and works backward histori- cally, stressing both development of the doctrine as well as its consid- erable continuity. The subsequent seven chapters “examine the prin- ciples in relation to a specific water issue” (18). Issues analyzed in- clude: the violence of climate change; racism, environmental injustice and preferential option for the poor; water scarcity, participation, the common good, and equity; extraction issues, fracking, and worker 148 Book Reviews rights; water scarcity and the privatization of water; and finally the human right to water, cultural integrity, and indigenous peoples. Chamberlain’s final chapter, “A New Water Ethic: Because Water Is Life,” rightly discusses new and old technological approaches to resolving the water crises and suggests that more fundamental ques- tions must be asked. But then, under the heading, “Part II—A New Water Ethic and an Ecological Spirituality,” (153) Chamberlain only treats new water management policies, earth rights (153–54), “New Water Ethic: Catholic Environmental and Social Teaching” (157–58), and “A New Ecological Ethic in CST” (158–59). A mere three and three quarter pages directly address in any way “A Spirituality of Wa- ter” (159-63). This is truly disappointing, considering that, throughout the canon of CST that Chamberlain presents, each document has far more to say on this topic—e.g., what constitutes “ecological conver- sion.” Nor is there much said concerning the vocation of Christians by virtue of their baptism. Indeed, baptism is merely mentioned on several pages (66, 74, 159, 160, 161), but mostly to illustrate a contrast between “sacrament” and “sacramentality” but never elaborated upon in terms of the Christian calling as “prophet, priest, and king.” Sadly, spirituality seems relegated to an afterthought here. In fact, none of the Review Questions or the Discussion Questions for this section deals with spirituality. Beyond this shortcoming, Because Water Is Life is an excellent text for undergraduate classes in environmental ethics. It could also be use- ful for adult faith formation sessions in other pastoral settings if sup- plemented with additional material on spirituality. Chamberlain ex- plores narratives about real people and scenarios to unpack six con- temporary water crises. With review and discussion questions and rec- ommendations for additional research and reading, Because Water Is Life not only encourages critical thinking on some of today’s most pressing issues but also catalyzes action and inspires hope for devel- oping a new water ethic. It has a fine set of “Additional Resources” (165–69) that include books, articles, websites, and films for both “Water” and “Catholic Social Teaching.” There are also helpful foot- notes and an index. DAWN M. NOTHWEHR, OSF Catholic Theological Union

All Creation is Connected: Voices in Response to Pope Francis’s En- cyclical on Ecology. Edited by Daniel R. DiLeo. Winona, MN: An- selm Academic, 2018. 238 pages. $24.95.

The twelve essays comprising All Creation is Connected explain, analyze, and develop aspects of Laudato Si’ (LS). The collection meets its goals of (1) helping ministers and a broad audience answer the Book Reviews 149 question “why care about the environment?” and (2) developing strat- egies for ecological conversion and ethical actions by individuals and communities. Readers already concerned with or researching ecolog- ical questions will find new insights and spiritual considerations for their work. Many essays discuss or mention how Pope Francis continues the theological ecological work of his predecessors Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Likewise, consistent emphasis is given to Pope Fran- cis’s claim that “The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, then, are not two crises, but rather ‘one complex crisis which is both social and environmental’ (LS 139)” (113). While slightly repetitive, common themes do mean that each group of two to three essays can be assigned separately. However, collectively reading the essays provides a more complex and comprehensive view of Pope Francis’s ecological theol- ogy in LS. The reader moves through (1) information on the encyclical itself and its reception to (2) an understanding of nature and the cos- mos, to a consideration of (3) theological and scientific influences on LS to more deeply comprehend the integral ecology Pope Francis ad- vocates. Finally, (4) the reader encounters essays on the need for eco- logical conversion and virtuous behavior by both individuals and com- munities, ending with essays connecting LS and ecological theology to Catholic social teaching. Kevin Irwin, Walter Grazer, and Michael Agliardo, S.J., provide a robust introductory framework for LS, its methodology, and its recep- tion in the USA. Irwin recommends a “careful and prayerful study” of LS. Grazer’s work showcases how Pope Francis remains in and devel- ops the tradition of his papal predecessors, with examples from his use of episcopal conferences’ statements. Agliardo notes that how we “take up” LS is “inevitably…within a context already structured by preexisting alliances, debates, and rhetorical constructs.” Thus, in LS Pope Francis’s “capacity… to challenge people to rethink their stand- ing assumptions is what makes him and Laudato Si’ so provocative” (45). Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim, and Drew Christiansen, S.J., en- courage readers to see that the environmental crisis requires more than practical, technological, or ethical solutions. We need a mystical spir- ituality that recognizes the cosmos’ grand beauty and attunes us to all of creation’s interconnectedness. Various essays model Gaudium et Spes’ mandate to seek truth about our world from both science and theology. Richard Miller ex- amines the scientific background in LS. Dawn Nothwehr, O.S.F.’s thought-provoking analysis of the inferred influence of Leonardo Boff’s “Franciscan Liberative Ecological Theology” on LS raises questions about implicit influences on all theology. Daniel Scheid looks at how LS develops Catholic social teaching, while Tobias Win- right argues that integral peacebuilding flows from the theology of LS. 150 Book Reviews

Virtue ethics as a source for moral conversion expands beyond the consideration of the theological and cardinal virtues. Jame Schaefer, Nancy Rourke, and David Cloutier emphasize how Pope Francis de- mands not only a conversion of affections and intentions but actions that instantiate change. As Cloutier writes, “It is not enough to feel something” about various aspects of environmental degradation; “one must do something” (178). Schaefer articulates the need to nurture our moral capacities to be “open to awe and wonder, grateful, humble, re- spectful, cooperative, protective, compassionate, responsible, coura- geous, and contemplative” (138). Rourke details the various virtues (attentiveness and awareness) and attitudes (i.e. honesty, responsibil- ity, and humility) LS deems necessary for ecological conversion. The book is suitable for parish groups and undergraduate class- rooms. Each essay concludes with both review and in-depth questions which can be used for discussion. Many focus questions encourage and require the reader to delve into the primary text under considera- tion, Laudato Si’. Therefore, having LS available when reading and discussing the accompanying essay questions will be beneficial. The suggested readings, along with the in-depth questions, could form the basis for undergraduate research papers. Graduate students will find excellent examples of theological writing in clear and accessible lan- guage for various audiences. This collection delivers an accessible entryway into Pope Francis’s ecological encyclical while fostering consideration of our own ecolog- ical ethics. KATHRYN LILLA COX University of San Diego

Illuminating Justice: The Ethical Imagination of The Saint John’s Bi- ble. By Jonathan Homrighausen. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018. ix + 122 pages. $24.95.

The Saint John’s Bible, a beautiful handwritten and illuminated Bi- ble commissioned by the Benedictine community of St. John’s Abbey and University, naturally inspires scholarly, artistic, and devotional re- flection. A body of secondary literature on this magnificent manu- script is growing, spearheaded by volumes by Christopher Calder- head, Michael Patella, and Susan Sink, who address the making of the Bible, its hermeneutics, and its art respectively. Jonathan Homrighau- sen’s book complements these studies by bringing an ethical lens to The Saint John’s Bible. Its creators envisioned it not only as a work of art and of biblical interpretation but also an expression of “the Chris- tian mission at this point in the history of the world” (Patella). Hom- righausen honors this intention by helping readers to see more clearly the call to conversion found in the interplay of text and illumination in The Saint John’s Bible. Book Reviews 151

Homrighausen focuses on the different levels of intertextuality that The Saint John’s Bible employs to convey ethical ideas. He examines three particular “intertextual conversations” that occur across the Bi- ble: the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, the role of women, and care for creation. In each case, he chooses several themes of “conversation” as they are expressed in a series of images that share iconographic symbols. For example, he looks at the motif of “Eve and the Serpent” as it appears in three different yet repeated ways in the illuminations for Genesis 1–3 (entitled Creation, Adam and Eve, and Garden of Eden). Some themes emerge through a much broader array of texts, including links between testaments. In his exploration of the creation theme “From Chaos to Order,” he uncovers connections be- tween the illuminations for Ecclesiastes 1:1–11 and Proverbs 8:22–9:6 as well as the New Testament image entitled Milkweed and Butterfly that accompanies Mark 16. The intertextual resonances across different illuminations are the focus of Homrighausen’s analysis, but he also shows the way that in- dividual images draw on intertexts beyond the Bible itself to awaken readers to more contemporary experiences of injustice. Homrighau- sen’s reflection on Donald Jackson’s Suffering Servant illumination for Isaiah 52:13-53:12 exemplifies the way that the The Saint John’s Bible acts as “an invitation to read the Bible with a heart for social justice” (107). In this illumination, one finds references to the chain links of fences at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and allusions to the Door of No Return at Elmina Castle in Ghana, through which Africans passed on their way to slavery in the New World. Homrighausen also shows how Jackson places these contemporary “intertexts” in dia- logue with an understated visual of the cross, which appears again in NT illuminations. Such rich but often subtle intertextualities of The Saint John’s Bi- ble come through clearly in Homrighausen’s book, which will cer- tainly lead readers to a greater appreciation for the intricacies of the illuminations. The volume includes all of the images that it addresses so that one need not have a copy of The Saint John’s Bible itself to understand this book. The accessibility of this volume and its beautiful aesthetic render it useful in a variety of different devotional and peda- gogical contexts. Pastors and preachers may find that it can enrich their own homiletical preparation. It can also serve as a helpful tool in faith formation settings. In the undergraduate classroom, it would be a fitting companion in theological ethics and biblical courses alike. No doubt it is also a beautiful addition for any individual library, espe- cially those that also include all or part of The Saint John’s Bible itself.

CATHERINE PETRANY Saint Vincent College

152 Book Reviews

Sin: A Thomistic Psychology. By Steven J. Jensen. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018. ix + 306 pp. $34.95.

In good Thomistic fashion, Steven J. Jensen begins his latest book with a quaestio as to how an evil will is possible, identifies three tasks that must be accomplished in order to answer it, and divides these in turn into parts. Along the way, Jensen’s general approach is to identify objectors to Aquinas’s account, explain their arguments, and then show how (often by making a distinction) Aquinas would respond. The first task, “understanding the order to the ultimate end” (14), consists of five parts (Chapters 2–6). Briefly, Jensen argues that on Aquinas’s account those in the state of grace habitually order their ac- tions to the , and yet the person who commits venial sins establishes only a “weakly ordered set of goods” (82) such that his or her life is not an ordered whole. The fullness of pursuing the beatific vision is realized when one seeks the ultimate end as an order of love, not only “a good to be attained…[but] God as a person for whom the good is desired” (101). The second task goes directly into the causes of sin itself as out- lined by Aquinas: passion, weakness of will, and an evil will. Re- sponding to Donald Davidson, Jensen first explains that Aquinas con- siders sins of passion to be the result of the emotions swaying reason toward forming an argument with a flawed minor premise, and that this ends up being quite similar to Davidson’s own view. Second, the will is a dispositive cause; through habituation the will is disposed to receive the kind of good the agent has previously pursued, and thus those who at least occasionally pursue pleasant goods render them- selves subject to letting passion sway their reasoning power in partic- ular situations. Those who continue down this path form an evil will such that they err regarding the universal judgments to be formed. Fi- nally, Jensen concludes this second task with an inquiry into sins of ignorance as well as sins of omission. The third and final task of the book is to consider the agent’s cul- pability for sin given the realization that all sin involves a kind of ig- norance. Even if the agent’s first wicked act is only a “proto-sin,” there is still responsibility here given that there is a free choice made (Ch. 12). This insistence on the fundamental freedom of the will looks in- compatible with Aquinas’s claim that the will follows intellect, and Jensen attempts to situate Aquinas in the contemporary libertarian camp in order to explain away this problem (Ch. 13). Ultimately, the freedom of the will is located in its ability “to bend back on its own actions” (281) and “continue…or cease deliberation” (284). Jensen has established himself as an important voice among con- temporary Thomists, and this is yet another fine book of careful rea- soning and engagement with a wide array of scholars. And, thinking now of this book’s suitability for research and classroom use, this is Book Reviews 153 the rare work of contemporary scholarship that both advances our un- derstanding of the thinker as well as the topic at hand and holds a place in an intermediate or advanced undergraduate class. As readers of his The Good Life know, Jensen is a teacher first and foremost, and even in books like this one, where he is directly engaged with other schol- ars, he never loses sight of those students who are thinking on these things for the first time. The only caveat I have is to acknowledge that Jensen is a moral philosopher, not a moral theologian. One should not, therefore, expect to find a focus on sin and redemption in salvation history, on how grace operates in preventing sin (specifically the role of infused virtues, gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit), or on the cen- trality of the sacraments in moral formation. Happily, Jensen ends his book with a call to action, to choose God over self, and the theologian recognizes that this call is not to empower one’s will but to offer it up to the refining fire of God’s love. MICHAEL P. KROM Saint Vincent College

Apocalyptic Ecology: The Book of Revelation, the Earth, and the Fu- ture. By Micah D. Kiel. Collegeville: Michael Glazier, 2017. xxvii + 160 pp. $19.99.

Though often seen as an apocalyptic antithesis of the endurance of God’s good creation, the Book of Revelation may play a vital role in developing an ecological ethic, or so argues Micah Kiel, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at St. University, in his new book, Apocalyptic Ecology. Viewed in light of its original context and its historical and ongoing reception, the Book of Revelation reveals a powerful critique of imperialist, over-consumptive culture and a vi- sion of hope for the coming of a truly theo-centric—as opposed to an- thropocentric or even biocentric—world order. Kiel scaffolds his reinterpretation using the extended metaphor of biography. He contends that, as persons are understood in relation to their personality, ancestors, upbringing, career, and legacy, so, too, must we read the living book of Revelation; as a result, these catego- ries frame the five chapters that follow. This pedagogical strategy— along with Kiel’s conversational prose and frequent allusions to con- temporary music, film, and literature—suggest that Kiel intends pri- marily an undergraduate audience, although he engages several con- temporary sources in biblical and environmental scholarship, espe- cially Richard Bauckham and Barbara Rossing, the latter having au- thored the foreword to the book. In Chapter One, Kiel advocates for an “eclectic” blending of the historical-critical method, which by itself remains an overly “white- European-male reading strategy,” with an “ecological hermeneutics” that attends more carefully to the literary and artistic legacy of these 154 Book Reviews works and to contemporary exigencies (17–18). Therein, Kiel hopes to uncover the “ecological personality” of Revelation. His strategy is twofold. Along with Barbara Rossing, Mark B. Stephens, and Douglas Moo, Kiel emphasizes the prominent natural imagery in Revelation and the points of continuity between the present world and Revela- tion’s vision of the world to come. Simultaneously, he emphasizes the discontinuity of Revelation’s “annihilation imagery,” which he links to critiquing and dismantling the hegemonic control of human empires over all human life and imagination (20–26). In its peculiar “person,” Revelation balances these forces. Chapter Two explores the literary ancestor of Revelation, 1 Enoch, in search of an “incipient theological environmentalism” in the larger apocalyptic genre (55–56). Here, Kiel highlights that both Enoch and Revelation place theodicy within a cosmic framework (46–48), and, far from withdrawing from sin and oppression into flights of fancy, critique their respective socio-political contexts and issue a call to re- form (51–52). In Chapter Three, Kiel presents his strongest case for reading Rev- elation as an intentional response to its rocky “upbringing” amid the multiple ecological crises occasioned by Roman rule. He persuasively argues that Revelation represents a direct challenge to the idolatry of the imperial cult before detailing the truly shocking extent of Rome’s environmental abuses, suggesting (albeit less convincingly) that Rev- elation intends to criticize these practices as well (65–73). Chapter Four explores the historical reception of Revelation through selections from the medieval manuscript tradition and sug- gests that many artists saw in Revelation an invitation to contemplate and celebrate the natural world, a claim made more effective by the pictorial reproduction of several illuminations. Contending that these ecologically relevant readings of Revelation are more than historical aberration, Kiel also treats two ecologically-informed illuminations from the recently-finished St. John’s Bible (106–109). Finally, in Chapter Five, Kiel explores Revelation’s ongoing leg- acy, situating its nascent environmental ethic in relation to Laudato Si’s integral ecology (116–120), Deep Ecology (121–124), and several contemporary economic critiques (124–130). While there are places where Kiel’s claims would admit of greater restraint, proof, or argumentation, particularly regarding the actual en- vironmental awareness of Revelation’s author, this book offers an ef- fective apologetic against those who would sideline Revelation as anti-creationary. Kiel rejects the hubris that underlies attempts to cre- ate an ecological culture ex nihilo and employs a creative mix of re- sources for re-appropriating the Christian tradition. However, while Kiel recognizes the role of eschatology in shaping the horizons of hu- man imagination and action, he comparatively neglects the transcend- ent and apocalyptic aspects of Revelation. Greater attention to these Book Reviews 155 elements would stretch the resources of Kiel’s already-terse argument, but their omission results in an immanentist eschatology. Still, to- gether with its approachable style and good pedagogical sense, the rel- ative brevity of Kiel’s argument may render it useful for undergradu- ate Scripture study, particularly in relation to Christian ecological eth- ics. BENJAMIN J. HOHMAN Boston College

Dying and the Virtues. By Matthew Levering. Grand Rapids: Wm. Eerdmans, 2018. xi + 348 pages. $45.00.

Though Christians can trust that “God made not death” (Wis. 1:13), and we are assured of Christ’s victory over death in the Paschal Mys- tery, we nevertheless continue to ponder and fear the process of dying, as well as continue to raise perennial and difficult questions, such as “Why must God redeem us through suffering?” or “What kind of country might we expect on the other side of death?” Do we see suf- fering and death as blessed opportunities to actively prepare ourselves for the eternal life promised for us by God in Christ? Matthew Levering dedicates the first half (chapters 1–5) of his work to the first set of questions, exploring the role that virtues such as love, hope, faith, penitence, and gratitude play in the dying process. The second part addresses the “difficult questions” concerning death and suffering through the lens of the virtues of solidarity, humility, surrender, and courage. By establishing the framework of these nine virtues, he consciously places the new contribution in this book within both the larger ars moriendi tradition (which he treats explicitly in the second chapter), and within its revival in recent years through the work of theologians such as Allen Verhey and Christopher Vogt. Levering contributes in a new way to the recent appropriations of the older ars moriendi tradition, whose goal was to help Christians to die well (especially by arguing that the best preparation for a good and virtuous death was a good and virtuous life). He draws upon a diverse set of authors, reaching beyond Christian theological sources by en- gaging the New Age movement, medical professionals, philosophers, and also returning to the Church Fathers and the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He continually places these figures in dialogue both with one another and, more importantly, with the Scriptures. While the earlier ars moriendi tradition drew variously upon Stoic resources, medieval exempla of saints, and contemporary stories that were meant to engage their readers’ and hearers’ imaginations, Scrip- tures were sometimes relegated to a secondary role. Here, Levering offers a supplement by beautifully weaving biblical reflections into each of his chapters, each of which engages several authors, gathered around the virtue at hand. He begins the book with a reading of Job as 156 Book Reviews a story not so much about the suffering of the innocent, as about the enduring love of God despite the prospect of annihilation by death. “We must learn that even if death looks like annihilation, we are not wise enough to know what death is unless God reveals it to us,” and we must “seek to receive what God has willed from creation to give us: his divine love” (28). From the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7), read in conjunction with Ezekiel’s prophetic remembering of Israel’s sins (Ez. 20), and the meditation on faith in Hebrews 11, we learn that death offers the moriens an occasion to remember sins with deep pen- itence “in order to render oneself fully open to receiving and sharing God’s mercy” (78). Further, Levering argues that Jesus’s passion was the “eschatological tribulation” that was meant to bring about the ran- som, restoration, and New Exodus for the people of Israel, and we see that the humility that Jesus exhibits, and which we are called to imitate in death, is “the interior reversal of the self-deifying pride that is at the root of human violence, greed, , and oppression” (120). Of particular note is Levering’s discussion of redemptive suffering, the first difficult theme of the second part of the book (chapter 6). He draws upon classic Pauline texts (cf. Col. 1:24; Rom. 8:17; 2 Cor. 1:5) to argue the importance of a topic that is both lacking and contested in contemporary literature on death and dying. Yet, Levering creatively draws upon the liberation theology of Jon Sobrino, S.J., and the mys- tical experiences of Saint Faustyna Kowalska, putting these figures into dialogue with one another to show how suffering is a “sharing in Christ’s crucifixion, a situation that urgently calls for solidarity in love” (109). Levering returns to this theme in a more liturgical key when he argues in his conclusion that the “virtues of dying are those that enable us to exercise” a “priestly offering,” which is a sacrificial role into which we have been placed “as dying members of Christ’s body” (168). The liturgical rites such as the Sacrament of the Anoint- ing of the Sick, therefore, take on a central function in teaching the self-surrender in which Christ makes of the sick “a holy offering to the God who loves them” (147). Levering’s book is supplemented by substantial endnotes, which make up almost half of the page count, and which often carry forward arguments, or engage in a substantial way with his secondary litera- ture. This work is a welcome contribution to an area of increasing im- portance in contemporary moral theology. JOHN SIKORSKI University of Notre Dame

Narrative Theology and Moral Theology. By Alexander Lucie-Smith. New York/Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. vii + 227 pages. $140.25.

Books about methodology are among the most difficult to write. They always strive to propose an ingenious, new method that stays Book Reviews 157 true to the best insights of the field while overcoming their problems and dead ends, but they seldom accomplish such a titanic task. Most of the time, instead, they merely rehash well-known arguments and counter-arguments while failing to offer a genuine breakthrough. Al- exander Lucie-Smith embarked on the laudable enterprise of assessing the use of narrative in moral theology to correct what he perceives as the limits of this approach and offer us a way forward. It is a compli- cated task, and the book comes up short. Lucie-Smith starts by considering the work of three scholars who have played a fundamental role in making narrative a staple of theo- logical conversations, namely, MacIntyre, Hauerwas, and Engelhardt. He agrees with these authors’ description of the essential role that nar- rative plays in human experience, the link between morality and tradi- tion, and the necessity of a community for the moral formation of in- dividuals. Despite its positive impact on the field, though, their pro- posal appears fundamentally flawed to Lucie-Smith’s eyes. He ac- cuses them of championing closed narratives incapable of dialogue with those who are outsiders, unsuited to offer a rational justification for being preferred over alternative stories, and condemned to offer moral precepts that lack universality. These criticisms are not entirely misplaced and are, indeed, not new. MacIntyre, Hauerwas, and Engel- hardt have carefully responded to all of them but, since the book is not concerned with providing an in-depth analysis of their body of work, their nuanced answers do not find much space in the text. This is a problem, though, because Lucie-Smith ends up misrepresenting some of their views and fails to recognize the resources that are present within their work to answer these challenges. Instead, he feels the need to bring John Rawls into the conversation as the one capable of rescu- ing narrative theology from its shortcomings. According to Lucie-Smith, the Rawlsian Original Position is itself a narrative that—contrary to the ones proposed by MacIntyre, Hau- erwas, and Engelhardt—rises above historical particularity and allows people to distance themselves from their culture to discover universal moral norms. Rawls’s contribution is especially significant for the work of moral theology for it embodies the supposedly traditional vir- tues of impartiality, fair-mindedness, and universal charity and helps Christians find convergences in the public realm with people from other traditions. Indeed, Lucie-Smith thinks that there is a form of Catholic Rawlsian liberalism that can be developed to allow Christians to stay rooted in their comprehensive doctrine while dialoguing and cooperating with outsiders. This is an underdeveloped claim in the text, but it seems to be one that plays a crucial role in Lucie-Smith’s overall assessment of narrative theology. There is a growing literature of Christian and secular thinkers alike that profoundly calls into ques- tion the compatibility of Rawls’s overlapping consensus and genuine 158 Book Reviews religious expression in the public sphere but, unfortunately, it is nota- bly absent from the book. Lucie-Smith’s overall concern is to show that even the Christian narrative is, like Rawls’s, capable of discovering universal moral truths. To this end, Lucie-Smith turns to Augustine. Two of his most important works, the Confessions and the City of God, take the form of a story and show us how a narrative rooted in time and space can have universal resonance and application. Furthermore, Augustine himself exemplifies perfectly a person who is culturally informed and yet able to criticize and transcend that cultural formation. He is a di- vided self “one that is both encumbered and embedded...and at the same time capable of disencumbering itself and entering the Original Position” (134). In fact, Lucie-Smith thinks we are all divided selves and that an authentic narrative moral theology has such selves as its protagonists. Scholars invested in narrative will perceive Lucie-Smith’s criti- cisms as somewhat trite and directed to a straw man rather than to the best the field has to offer. Those who have fundamental objections against narrative theology, instead, will remain unconvinced by the author’s proposed third-way, for it is ultimately unable to answer the objections it is meant to defeat. For those who are just now turning their attention to the place of narrative in moral theology, I would rec- ommend reading MacIntyre, Hauerwas, Engelhardt, or Augustine themselves.

ALESSANDRO ROVATI Belmont Abbey College

Biotechnology, Human Nature, and Christian Ethics. By Gerald McKenny. New Studies in Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2018. xix + 235 pages. $99.99.

Gerald McKenny provides a thorough and long overdue explora- tion of claims about the normative status of human nature “in light of the growing capabilities of contemporary biotechnological enhance- ment to implicate human nature” (xv), claims increasingly urgent as the technological development accelerates. McKenny clearly outlines the scope of the book from the outset, persuasively contending that, since human nature is not a matter of indifference for Christian ethics, the latter cannot be indifferent to the implications of biotechnology on human nature. I applaud the author for postponing the consideration of post-humanism to an appendix, demonstrating an awareness of tendencies to overstate the current possibilities in biotechnological en- hancement, as well as acknowledging that our concept of human na- ture is so contested and indeterminate that we cannot establish the Book Reviews 159 point at which we might change human beings into something other than we now are. McKenny identifies four versions of the normative status claim for human nature in the context of biotechnology. The first (NS1) claims that human nature is a given, rendering it off-limits to intentional hu- man action. The second version (NS2) sees human nature as the ground of human rights and goods, asking whether altering our nature might imperil these rights and goods. Version three (NS3) concentrates on human nature as malleable and indeterminate while the final version (NS4), McKenny’s construction, explores concepts of the imago dei and how humans are equipped for a certain form of life with God. McKenny states that the role of human nature in the biotechnological enhancement debate has long been hampered by misunderstandings of these normative claims, alongside the inability of those defending the claims to present their strongest accounts. By offering what he be- lieves to be their strongest versions, McKenny allows for dialogue be- tween Christian, Jewish, and secular thinkers that cuts across the divi- sions between those who endorse or oppose enhancement. McKenny outlines the theological convictions underlying each of the versions, including Augustinian and Irenaean accounts of creation, and Aristotelian-Thomist accounts of goods and their ordering in cre- ation; Christians are urged to rediscover the biblical significance of human biology, which the author believes is rarely given its due. The book boldly confronts from the outset objections that often suppress the debate and explores nuanced objections and replies to the argu- ments proposed. It is refreshing that, while acknowledging the flaws of each version, McKenny argues persuasively that they remain rele- vant by raising important questions for the ongoing debate. As it ap- pears increasingly likely that this technology will persist, Christian ethics must continue questioning and debating with thinkers of various persuasions to ensure attitudes and practices surrounding these bio- technologies are not left unchecked. McKenny favors NS4 because he believes it overcomes the weak- nesses of the other versions while embodying their strengths. Despite the imago dei being notoriously difficult to define, McKenny contends that the concept is indispensable and devotes a great deal of time to Barthian claims about it. McKenny argues robustly that Barth’s con- ception of the imago dei takes adequate account of human responsi- bility, vulnerability, and interdependence, from which Christian ethics can subsequently arrive at the principles of autonomy, safety, and fair- ness that dominate the current debate. More space could have been given to the implications of Barth’s work for our understanding of bi- otechnological enhancement rather than an extended exposition of Barth’s claims. It would also be illuminating to hear how NS4, which is restricted to Christian ethics, features in the wider debate where it is not universally recognized that “the burden of proof is on proponents 160 Book Reviews of biotechnological enhancement to show how attainment of the life with God for which we have been created can be facilitated through biotechnological enhancement” (156). McKenny’s work is an invita- tion for Christian theologians, ethicists, and bioethicists to explore more rigorously the translation of Christian claims into the principles of autonomy, safety, and fairness, one I hope is accepted enthusiasti- cally. Although a demanding read, the book repays careful study and is of relevance to a wide audience. I hope that this will prompt greater participation in the debate by Christian thinkers since, though the im- plementation of biotechnological enhancement may be inevitable, the debate surrounding the use of biotechnologies is far from over.

GEMMA BAKER University of Oxford

Good Intentions: A History of Catholic Voters’ Road from Roe to Trump. By Steven P. Millies. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2018. ix + 275 pp. $24.95.

The historical research Steven P. Millies has marshaled in Good Intentions is simply invaluable for academics wanting to take a deep dive into the forces which have driven US Catholic voting patterns over the past several decades. It is tight and well-cited—with the pos- sible exception of Millies, without references, marking Roe v. Wade as the turning point the US Catholic political imagination (27). Daniel K. Williams’s Defenders of the Unborn (2016) documents how a vig- orous Catholic pro-life movement was interested in abortion as a pri- mary issue well before Roe and had significant ties to the anti-war movement. But, overall, Millies’s historical scholarship is strong. His attempt to draw a line from such scholarship to his primary concern in the book, however, is weak. Millies is disturbed that 49 percent of voting Catholics could “sup- port” Trump, but his primary example is Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life. Pavone is an extremist, not at all indicative of a “powerful trend” as Millies insists (192). A great many of the Catholics by whom Millies is disturbed didn’t vote for Trump. They voted against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, the party whose 2016 convention saw boos and heckles rain down in protest of the opening prayer, the party which has tried to force Catholic institutions from California to Michigan to provide abortions, the party which puts “religious free- dom” in scare quotes and reduces it to misogyny and homophobia, and, most important of all, the party which changed its 2016 platform from pro-choice to genuinely pro-abortion. It called for legalization of abortion on request for any reason through all nine months of preg- nancy. It obliterated conscience protections. It asked pro-lifers to pay Book Reviews 161 for abortions. It even suggested abortion was “core to women’s, men’s, and young people’s health and wellbeing.” Millies does not do justice to how utterly loathsome many millions of pro-life Catholics found the only politically viable alternative to Trump. A Clinton victory would have ensconced abortion in law and culture as a positive good (even now those who worked hardest for her election refer to “abortion care” and encourage women to #ShoutYourAbortion) and continued our cultural march toward reli- gious institutions and people losing their freedom to refuse to pay for and even participate in abortion practices. Many voters deeply disliked both Trump and Clinton. Of those, Trump got their votes by a 2-1 margin. In the key state of Wisconsin, 61 percent viewed Trump unfavorably, but one-in-five of those voted for him anyway. It is a mistake, without further evidence, to think of votes for Donald Trump as support of Donald Trump. A major part of what made 2016 so unusual—something to which, again, Millies fails to give appropriate attention—was the terrible place in which the Democratic party put pro-life Catholics. When we remind ourselves that Joseph Cardinal Bernardin insisted it was misuse of his views to consider the evil of abortion as less im- portant than other issues—and that Pope Francis believes contempo- rary abortion practices are akin to Nazi crimes—Catholics who voted for Trump because of abortion become significantly less disturbing. I’ve argued at length that pro-lifers should think twice about voting for Republicans. I would never and could never vote for Trump. But Millies dismisses Catholics who did too easily, claiming that while they “wanted the right things, they have not gotten any of them.” On the contrary, these pro-lifers have held at bay an abortion es- tablishment (which, after 2016, includes the Democratic Party) which would have ensconced the practice in law and culture far more than it is now. Especially by enacting dozens of state abortion restrictions, pro-lifers have helped dramatically lower the US abortion rate. Pro- lifers helped replace Roe with Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a deci- sion which made most of these laws Constitutional. And with the con- firmation of Trump-appointed like Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, pro-lifers can be reasonably certain that more restrictions on currently legal practices (that, again, Pope Francis decries as Nazi-like) will be found Constitutional. And they can be absolutely certain that prenatal children are far more legally protected now than they would have been if Clinton had been making the appointments. The strategy Millies to- tally dismisses as nothing more than “good intentions” has in fact had important practical victories—victories which have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of the least among us. CHARLES CAMOSY Fordham University

162 Book Reviews

Faith, Hope, Love, and Justice: The Theological Virtues Today. Ed- ited by Anselm K. Min. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. xxv + 238 pp. $110.

The theological virtues of faith, hope, and love have traditionally been recognized as the cornerstone of the Christian life. But have we become so familiar—and perhaps too comfortable—with these virtues that we fail to recognize how they are aggressively undermined by a variety of social, cultural, economic, and political forces? This ques- tion informs Faith, Hope, Love, and Justice, a book emerging from a 2016 conference held at Claremont Graduate University. Each of the contributors was asked to reconsider the meaning and relevance of these virtues in a world where an increasing number of people find faith, hope, and love, precisely as theological virtues, untenable. The result is a thoughtful, compelling, challenging, and often inspiring analysis of exactly why the theological virtues deserve ongoing exam- ination. While there are differences in how each author probes the meaning of these virtues for today, three themes link several of the chapters together. First, as the book’s title suggests, in light of the dehumaniz- ing forces in the world today, there can be no credible analysis of the theological virtues that does not include sustained attention to the vir- tue of justice. Francis Fiorenza argues that, if Christians can hold that God can be described as a God of justice and of love, then justice should become a fourth theological virtue. Anything less not only dis- torts the nature and work of God but also relegates justice to a second- ary status that makes it easier to overlook. Naming justice a theologi- cal virtue alerts us to the demonic forces that Christians, in contrib- uting to the redemptive activity of God, are called to help overcome. Mary McClintock Fulkerson proposes that faith, hope, and love must be embodied in order to be effective and suggests that worship is the principal context for such ongoing formation to occur; that cannot hap- pen, however, without first acknowledging the wounds (she focuses on colorblindness) that unfaithful celebrations of the Eucharist con- ceal. And in “Faith, Hope, and Love in an Age of Terror,” Elaine Rob- inson cogently distinguishes violent acts of terrorism from the soul- crushing terror in which millions live, terror that is expressed in end- less cycles of poverty, in growing income inequality, in mass incar- ceration of young black males, and in lack of adequate health care. Thus understood, the reign of terror unleashed by injustice aggres- sively undermines Shalom, which Robinson identifies as the telos of faith, hope, and love. Second, a particular strength of the volume is that several contrib- utors identify hope, typically the most overlooked of the theological virtues, as the one most urgently needed today. In a chapter that ex- amines the theological virtues in the writings of Pope Benedict XVI, Book Reviews 163

Thomas Rausch, S.J., stresses that hope “addresses the deepest long- ings of the human heart, including the hope that justice will one day prevail and evil will be overcome” (16). M. Shawn Copeland discloses the necessity and efficacy of hope, particularly for those who are op- pressed, through the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer. They embodied hope in lives that revealed how “hope dreams new possibilities, inspires different futures, generates new so- cial imaginaries” (142). And because without hope we will not act, given the collective action that is necessary if all human beings—in- deed, the whole of creation—are to flourish, Anselm Min elevates hope as the crucial virtue for our times. A final strength of the book is that some of the authors (most nota- bly Robinson and Min) propose that a crucial calling of the church today is to be the community where the theological virtues are incar- nated. Churches may sometimes sabotage the theological virtues more than they live them, but that grievous failure does not erase the ur- gency of the calling. Faith, Hope, Love and Justice is an impressive contribution to scholarship on the theological virtues. The academic nature of the book makes it perfect for graduate seminars. More than anything, these essays refute any notion that nothing more needs to be said about virtues that must inform every dimension of the Christian life.

PAUL J. WADELL St. Norbert College

God’s Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the Argument from Evil. By Mark C. Murphy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. x + 210 pages. $47.

Given the attention that has been showered on the problem of evil, it is hard to believe that anything truly fresh and original could be said on the topic. Yet, this is precisely what Mark Murphy has achieved in this splendid volume. Beyond that, he has provided model treatments of a significant range of topics that will be of interest to philosophers and theologians. It will also provide a strong intellectual work-out for graduate students. Theologically, Murphy develops a carefully crafted version of An- selmian theism. On this front, he argues for an industrial strength ac- count of perfection in which the relevant divine attributes are con- strued as comprehensive in scope. With this in place, he then works through the relation between divine love and moral goodness. He re- jects the claim that divine goodness requires that God be committed to the production of creaturely good; he affirms the claim that divine goodness forbids that God ever intend to do evil. Central to these con- clusions is the further claim, following Joshua Gert, that we operate 164 Book Reviews with a distinction between justifying and requiring reasons. The for- mer reason is represented by the promotion of familiar, welfare-ori- ented goodness. Intuitively, given our form of life, we naturally apply this kind of reasoning in our account of God’s relation to human agents. However, this by no means entails that God must abide by such reasoning. The relevant standard is the stricter standard of having re- quiring reasons; this is why divine goodness merely requires that God not intend to do us evil. Formally, the distinction is as follows: “A requiring reason is such that if an agent who has that reason fails to act on it, then either that agent is not practically rational or that agent has some superior, incompatible reasons that render acting on it prac- tically irrational. A justifying reason is a reason that is such that an agent that acts on that reason acts practically rationally, unless there are some incompatible reasons that render acting on it practically irra- tional.” Requiring reasons, therefore, impose rational constraints; jus- tifying reasons provide rational opportunities. The application of this distinction to the problem of evil is the bur- den of the second half of the volume. Standard treatments of the prob- lem of evil focus on the absence of justifying reasons for the existence of evil in the world. However, if divine perfection does not have to meet this standard, the problem of evil has been effectively dissolved. The relevant standard to apply is that of requiring reasons. It is enough that God does not intend evil for his creatures; it is not required that God promote their good in the welfare-oriented sense. Moreover, this move does not entail that God is not worthy of worship or of alle- giance; contingency rather than necessity is enough to secure ration- ally these dispositions. I have been channeling a Mozart Symphony through the register of an Irish tin whistle, for this volume is replete with a finely-tuned net- work of nuanced distinctions and intricate arguments. It is a first-rate contribution to the literature. There is one caveat. Murphy throughout takes God to be an Agent; at one point he suggests that the more basic category for understanding God might be that of Being. To preserve this, he gives a nod to the old saw that truth in philosophy may be different from truth in theology. His work gives ample reason to drop the notion of God as Being and stick to the idea of God as an Agent. To be sure, a mysterious, tri-personal Agent in the Christian tradition, but an Agent nonetheless. WILLIAM J. ABRAHAM Southern Methodist University

Book Reviews 165

Is God Christian? Christian Identity in Public Theology: An Asian Contribution. By D. Preman Niles. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017. 216 pages. $34.00.

D. Preman Niles, originally from Sri Lanka, is an Asian theologian who has had a long firsthand familiarity with various Asian realities and the efforts to respond theologically to those realities, coupled with a broad experience and solid knowledge of worldwide Christianity. These traits qualify him uniquely to introduce some significant theo- logical methods in vogue in Asia today that have a direct bearing on public life in different Asian contexts and to put them in dialogue with a number of Western theological concepts and trends. He does that wonderfully in this book entitled Is God Christian? Christian Identity and Public Theology: An Asian Contribution. That provocative title is meant to highlight the fact that, due to complicated colonial histories, the Christian “God” as well as Chris- tian biblical and theological language are frequently perceived by and large in Asia as “Western.” Niles makes reference, therefore, time and again to the problem of the “two stories”: (1) the perceived Western story of Jesus and Christianity, and (2) the various “stories” (in the broad sense including mores, tradition(s), mythology, values, etc.) that Asians have inherited from their particular cultures. Unfortunately, these two stories have often not meshed too successfully in Asia in the past. The heart of this work is a critical survey of different admirable efforts among Asian theologians to bridge the gap between the two stories in a better way in order to show that God is, indeed, also found in a profound way in the stories, contexts, and theological reflections both old and new that the different peoples of Asia treasure. With this intention in mind, Niles takes us on a tour de force of Asian theologies. He begins with the strategy of cross-textual reading between two texts or between text and reality (chapter 2) by which one makes the Christian texts and traditions meaningful in Asian contexts (27). We learn about Gandhi (India), who read the Bible from a Hindu stand- point using the Bhagavad-Gita; Lakshman Wickremesinghe (Sri Lanka), who read the Hindu scriptures from a Christian standpoint and used that reading to reformulate a more meaningful Christian faith; Anh Byung-mu, who pursued the reality of Jesus in and through the minjung (masses) movement in Korea. Next, Niles deals with postcolonial hermeneutics in chapters 3 and 4. Postcolonialism, fashioned in a significant way by Third World émigrés located in the West, can be considered a strategy to free “the first story” of colonial entrapments. Niles points out that there is some unease with this enterprise in Asia itself (108), probably because it “advocates, but does not engage directly in praxis” to change public life for the better (120). Nevertheless, Niles seeks a better interaction 166 Book Reviews with postcolonial theory and even seeks to institute or restore a mean- ingful conversation (123). He does this by touching on different facets of the relationship be- tween the Bible (its interpretation and translation) and colonialism while highlighting this theme’s Asian connection. Next, Niles en- dorses a “contrapuntal reading” of texts as a way of releasing and re- storing subdued voices in biblical interpretation. He focuses on some feminist theologians such as Kwok Pui-lan and Pushpa Joseph as con- crete examples of this method. He ends this section with Sri Lankan S. Wesley Ariarajah’s strategy for releasing the Bible in a religiously plural world. If postcolonialism dealt with “the first story,” subaltern hermeneu- tics, the subject matter of chapter 5 presents the radical challenge of “the second story,” namely, Asian realities themselves. Niles gives the examples of Korean Suh Nam-Dong, who discovered that storytelling can be a form of “counter theology,” and Dalit Christian theologian Arvind Nirmal, who used his unique Dalit contexts and perspectives to contest the caste system. Both are concrete cases of how Asian re- alities could be utilized in theology forcefully to confront systemic oppression in concrete life situations. A thoughtful reading of Niles’s work will give the reader (Asian as well as non-Asian) a good and solid exposure to important character- istics of Asian theologies today as they relate to wider global theolog- ical currents. This is a very important contribution to the field and an excellent catalyst for further conversation to take place between Asian theologies and other theologies the world over. JULIUS-KEI KATO King’s University College at Western University

Aquinas and the Theology of the Body: The Thomistic Foundations of John Paul II’s Anthropology. By Thomas Petri, O.P. Washington DC: The Catholic University of America, 2016. xiii + 338 pages. $34.95.

Thomas Petri’s book is a well-argued historical and exegetical presentation of the Thomistic underpinnings of John Paul II’s Theol- ogy of the Body. In the long-standing debate as to whether Karol Wojtyla, who in 1978 became John Paul II, was a phenomenologist or a Thomist, Petri effectively and competently argues that Aquinas’s an- thropology “is the implicit but necessary foundation of the spousal meaning of the body” (235). Thomistic realistic metaphysics sets Wojtyla’s biblical anthropology on firm ontological foundations. In other words, according to Petri, without being grounded in scholastic and metaphysical thought, The Theology of the Body would remain too idealistic and too spiritualistic. Petri identifies five points of conver- gence between Wojtyla’s theological anthropology and that of the An- gelic doctor. These are: (1) a strict unity between body and soul; (2) Book Reviews 167 presentation of love as the out-of-oneself movement toward perfec- tion; (3) ordering of that movement through virtue; (4) view of mar- riage as the highest form of friendship; and (5) seeing the conjugal act in light of the hylomorphic unity as both biological and personalistic. Petri’s book is, thus, an indispensable background presentation for anyone who desires to study theology of the body in depth. The book could be an ideal text for college or seminary students interested in modern Catholic sexual ethics. Petri’s book is both conceptually and linguistically accessible to a wide audience. It also provides a compre- hensive introduction to the thought of Thomas Aquinas and Karol Wojtyla, as well as to the theological and pastoral debates surrounding the publication and reception of Humanae Vitae. Petri’s book, though well-researched, is not without some short- comings. I would like to mention two of them. First, sometimes it be- comes very difficult for a reader to follow Petri’s understanding of the concept of nature. He uses this concept in at least three different senses—biologically, metaphysically, and phenomenologically—es- pecially on pages 135–39. The reader can become easily confused since it takes considerable mental gymnastics to follow the author’s presentation. Simply adding an adjective, like biological or metaphys- ical, before “nature” would do the trick. My second point of criticism of Petri’s book is its bibliography. The book, as I mentioned, is well-researched, but I miss the presence of non-English sources. I have in mind especially two publications I consider indispensable for studying the thought of Karol Wojtyla. The first one is Ángel Pérez López’s De la experiencia de la integración a la visión integral de la persona: Estudio histórico-analítico de la in- tegración en “Persona y acción” de Karol Wojtyla (Valencia, 2012). This book traces the development of Wojtyla’s anthropology and its mature presentation in The Acting Person through the lens of the con- cept of integration. Petri says that the notion of integration is crucial in Wojtyla’s thought and yet does not provide the reader with any sources to more deeply understand the concept. The second volume is Przemysław Kwiatkowski’s Lo sposo passa per questa strada… : la spiritualità coniugale nel pensiero di Karol Wojtyła le origini (Siena, 2011). This book, on the other hand, explores and presents the origins of Wojtyla’s thought on conjugal life from the point of view of spirit- uality. For Wojtyla, marriage was not only the highest form of friend- ship but also the spouses’ mode of living out their relationship with God. Wojtyla’s anthropology is not only deeply metaphysical but also deeply mystical. FR. MAREK J. DURAN University of St. Mary of the Lake

168 Book Reviews

Driven by Hope: Economics and Theology in Dialogue. Edited by Steven C. van den Heuvel and Patrick Nullens. Christian Perspectives on Leadership and Social Ethics. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2018. xxiv + 223 pages. €56.

This volume is the latest in an ongoing series of interdisciplinary projects published by the Institute of Leadership and Social Ethics, a research institute sponsored by the Evangelical Theological Faculty of Leuven, Belgium. The work explicitly sets out to bring theology and economics into deeper conversation surrounding the role of hope in economics and in human flourishing, specifically focusing on Chris- tian hope as opposed to what might be termed “economic” hope—an aspirational desire for greater wealth or material prosperity. With its focus on hope, this work echoes an emerging minor thread within eco- nomics. The economics of hope as articulated by economists usually focuses on new developments in such areas as innovation and automa- tion and their implications for economic growth and individual wealth. Economics is rarely interpreted as a source of, or a vehicle for, Chris- tian hope, so this volume represents a real contribution to both eco- nomics and theology in bringing together differing understandings of the concept of hope and pointing them all toward the common goal of human flourishing, in spite of the differing understandings of what ‘flourishing’ would entail within the two disciplines. Beginning with a definition of hope as a “central human experi- ence” (xv), the work is divided into 14 chapters in three sections. The first section, “Economic Perspectives,” begins with a chapter analyz- ing the different dimensions of hope and developing an instrument to measure those different dimensions, the “hope barometer.” Other chapters in this section focus on differing economic perspectives and how hope might challenge or transform those areas of inquiry. The second section, “Theological Perspectives,” will likely be of most in- terest to theologians, as it focuses explicitly on theological under- standings of hope and how they inform economic perspectives. This section includes chapters addressing the following: biblical prophecy and economic forecasting, drawing on the work of Jacques Ellul; the methodological challenges of dialogue between the two disciplines, using John Wesley as a resource for establishing a framework for dia- logue; the impact of sin on social progress and the application of Emil Brunner’s work in theological anthropology to this problem; and an examination of neoliberal assumptions about markets, money, and hu- manity, critiquing these assumptions using Edward Schillebeeckx’s theology of hope. The third section of the book, “Case Studies,” ap- plies the insights of economics and hope to specific situations. While all of the chapters offer interesting and useful insights, two stand out as especially useful for understanding and appropriating the Book Reviews 169 intersections between economics and theology. The first is “Econom- ics as a Discipline of Hope,” by Lans Bovenberg. This essay argues for a transformation in the teaching of economics, shifting from a fo- cus on resources and individuals toward a focus on human dignity, relationships, and flourishing. Christian hope informs and supports this transformation because it begins from human dignity, is realistic about human limitations, and yet spurs action toward an ideal (40). Although focused on the teaching of economics, Bovenberg describes both the current and the proposed economic concepts and models in a way that makes them understandable and compelling, even for those who are not students of economics. A second chapter which is especially helpful is “Hope: An Essen- tial Capacity for Human Development,” by Steven C. van den Heuvel. This essay appears in the third section of the book and is focused on the “poverty trap,” a suite of economic factors that seriously impede the efforts of the poor to escape poverty. While much of the essay fo- cuses on the work of two economists, the author’s refutation of their conclusions about the poverty trap provides a convincing argument in itself for the importance of the social and moral dimensions of hope in the fight against poverty. Hope is an essential element in any attempt to address poverty, either globally or locally, and it is an important source of empowerment for both individuals and societies. Economists and theologians, as well as philosophers and those of other disciplines that involve hope and human flourishing, will find much to agree with and much to argue with throughout this work. As it assumes a high level of understanding of both economic and theo- logical work, this volume would be very difficult for undergraduates, making it best suited for graduate students in economics or theology, along with related disciplines, and for individual research.

MARI RAPELA HEIDT Notre Dame of Maryland University 170

CONTRIBUTORS

Andrew Beauchamp is associate professor of economics at Wright State University. He teaches and researches on the intersection of Catholic social teaching and economic analysis.

Daniel R. DiLeo is assistant professor and director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program at Creighton University. His scholarship fo- cuses on Catholic social teaching, with particular attention to Laudato Si’ and climate change. He earned his PhD in theological ethics from Boston College.

Jason A. Heron is instructor of theology at Mount Marty College. He researches Catholic social teaching, modern Catholic history, and so- cial/political theory.

Angela Knobel is an associate professor in the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America. She specializes in ethics, espe- cially the ethics of Thomas Aquinas and the notion of infused moral virtue. Her publications have appeared in a number of journals, in- cluding The Thomist, The Journal of Moral Theology, and Studies in Christian Ethics.

Leo Lushombo is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a consecrated woman in the Teresian Institute founded by Saint Pedro Poveda in Spain in 1914. Leo is finishing her dissertation for a PhD in theological ethics at Boston College. She has studied abroad and has been in touch with several cultures. She has interdisciplinary experi- ences that inform her theological research. Drawing from her theolog- ical studies but also her ministry as a consultant, community organizer, and teacher, she stands for inclusive politics which are open to listen to all voices with an open mind in order to nurture a rigorous and col- laborative understanding of a just peace ethic. Prior to her current PhD studies, Leo completed Masters in Theological Ethics at Catholic The- ological Union in Chicago, in Sustainable Development at the Univer- sidad Pontificio Comillas in Spain, and in Economics & Development at the Catholic University of Central Africa in Cameroon. Leo has ex- tensively worked (1) against rape of women used as weapon of war in the Eastern Congo since the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide; (2) to bolster political rights of women in the Congo in the perspective of peace, governance, and gender equality; (3) as Consultant-Trainer re- garding issues of degradation of environment and affordable housing programs in the Congo, Cameroon, and Peru. Since 2015, she has pub- lished eight articles and two book chapters. 171

William C. Mattison III is an associate professor in the Department of Theology, and the Senior Advisor: Theological Formation in the Alliance for Catholic Education, both at the University of Notre Dame. He wrote Introducing Moral Theology: True Happiness and the Vir- tues (Brazos, 2008), which is widely used in university ethics courses throughout the country and abroad. His most recent book is The Ser- mon on the Mount and Moral Theology: A Virtue Perspective (Cam- bridge, 2017). He is currently working on a book tentatively titled Aquinas on Habit, the Last End, Graced Virtue.

Eli McCarthy, PhD, teaches at Georgetown University in Justice and Peace Studies. Eli has published a book called Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic Social Teaching and U.S. Policy (2012), and has a forthcoming book A Just Peace Ethic Primer: Building Sustainable Peace and Breaking Cycles of Violence (2020). He has numerous journal articles such as “Breaking Out: The Expan- siveness of Restorative Justice in Laudato Si’,” “Good Practices of Unarmed Civilian Protection: Case Study in Israel and Palestine,” “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: Toward a More Just U.S. So- ciety,” and “Called to Holiness: Integrating the Virtue of Nonviolent Peacemaking.” He also serves as the Director of Justice and Peace for the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, which is the leadership conference of all the U.S. Catholic men’s religious orders. This ena- bles him direct advocacy experience to influence U.S. policy as well as collaboration with the Vatican, such as two presentations on a just peace ethic at recent Vatican conferences. Eli has been formed by mul- tiple trips to Haiti working with people who are poor, working with people living on the streets in Boston and DC, and monitoring the Pal- estinian Elections in 2006 with the Nonviolent Peaceforce. He also co- founded the DC Peace Team, which offers training in nonviolent com- munication, restorative justice, and bystander intervention, as well as unarmed civilian protection deployments.

Jean Porter is the John A. O’Brien Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of numerous articles and six books on the history of the Christian moral tradition and its contemporary relevance. She has a particular interest in the moral the- ology of Aquinas and his scholastic predecessors and contemporaries.

Cristina L.H. Traina is professor and chair of Religious Studies at Northwestern University. A specialist in feminist Christian ethics, she specializes in Roman Catholic ethics of sexuality, touch, and moral agency and also does work in economics, politics, and environment.

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INTERN Patrick T. Fitzgerald, C’19 Mount St. Mary’s University, is from Calverton, NY, and earned a double major in Theology and Philoso- phy.

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