A New Horizon: Structures of Virtue

This proposed definition of solidarity as political friendship perfected in its origin and purpose accounts for most of the distinguishing aspects of solidarity identified in the previous chapter. It expresses the roots of solidarity in human interdependence and unity amidst diversity. Likewise, it identifies the central role of the common good. What remains to be examined is the specifically social dimension of the virtue: what makes it, in John Paul II’s terminology, a

habitus socialis (SRS, no. 38). An ethic of virtue always communicates an implicit human

anthropology. Historically, the emphasis in virtue ethics has been on the individual agent, even when acting within society. Thus for Aquinas, the cardinal virtues govern the different parts of the human person: the intellect, the will, and the passions. Similarly, when James F. Keenan proposed a new set of cardinal virtues rooted in an anthropology of relationality, his virtues of justice, fidelity, and self-care continued to govern the acts of an individual amidst varying sets of relationship (respectively: universal relations with all people, particular relationships, and a unique relationship with ourselves).282

Yet, as Hobgood forcefully argues, SRS runs a strong risk of sentimentalizing and spiritualizing the structural challenges to development that we face.283 _{Though individual virtue}

and moral conversion are good and undoubtedly necessary elements of striving toward the common good, there is a risk that an overemphasis on these privatized components can

overshadow or negate the structural questions we face. The promotion of the virtue of solidarity cannot supplant or replace organized (and often conflictive) struggles for social justice. A recognition of the structural dimensions of virtue (and, in turn, a view of structures through the lens of virtue) provides a possible avenue through which SRS’s apparent vulnerability becomes a strength. Rather than deemphasizing the social and political dimensions of justice and

development, solidarity as a structural virtue raises the stakes: it looks beyond what we do as a society and considers who we are. A vocabulary that adequately expresses the functioning of virtues on a social level remains underdeveloped. While such a project remains far beyond the scope of this dissertation, this chapter will conclude by highlighting one recent and fruitful attempt at cultivating such a language.

Drawing on the development of ‘structures of sin’ as a central theme in Catholic social teaching over the past forty years, and recognizing the post-Vatican emphasis on virtue in moral theology, Daniel J. Daly proposes structures of virtue and vice as new moral categories.284

Whereas structures of sin properly highlight the moral dimension of social action, structures of virtue and vice both broaden and deepen this insight. Daly defines a structure thusly:

283 _{Hobgood, “Conflicting Paradigms in Social Analysis.”}

284 _{Daniel J. Daly, “Structures of Virtue and Vice,” New Blackfriars 92, no. 1039 (2011): 341–}

A structure is an institution, a practice, a value laden narrative, or a paradigmatic figure that people find already existing or which they create on the national and global level, and which orientates or organizes economic, social and political life. Once objectified, structures tend to become fixed and fossilized as mechanisms relatively independent of the human will, thereby promoting or paralyzing social development and causing either justice or injustice.

While the notion of structures is not foreign to Catholic social thought, Daly offers two distinct insights: first, on their own structures are neither inherently good nor evil, it is rather how they are constructed and to what ends that determines their moral merit. Second, though human autonomy always plays a role in their creation and maintenance, they in turn have a formative role within the community, shaping each individual and the society as a whole with a particular moral character.

Recognition of the formative dimension of society stretches back to Leo XIII’s Rerum

Novarum who himself draws on the classical tradition.285 _{It was a given in Greek political}

thought that one role of politics was the creation of a virtuous people. In contemporary Catholic social thought, the emphasis has almost universally been on the negative dimension of society’s influence: the formative role of consumerism and the culture of death. Yet the inescapable process of socialization is itself neither good nor evil. Rather, it is the content that the culture communicates that determines moral merit or culpability. Shifting the terminology to reflect this ambiguity reveals a broader spectrum of possibilities.

Moreover, the language of virtue and vice more accurately reflects the moral quality of social structures. These structures, whether capitalism, participative democracy, or institutional racism, are not realized in any single act or omission. Rather, like personal virtues, they are perpetuating systems that suggest consistent outcomes across an array of specific situations. Moreover, they share with virtues a certain reflexivity: they not only determine the quality of the

outcome but also the character of the community. A society whose structures are just is not only more likely to realize the common good, it is more likely to form a community committed to this end. Conversely, a society whose structures are shaped by possessive self-interest is more likely to internalize this vice in its population.

A challenge that this new frontier shares with structures of sin is the location of the virtue or vice’s accountability. For any moral action, there must be a degree of freedom and

intentionality. As John Paul II makes clear in his most extensive systematic treatment of social sin in Reconcilatio et Paenetentia, though agency may be diffuse and difficult to discern, it is never lost.286 _{We are each individually accountable for our freely participating in sinful social}

structures, no matter how remote their origin or outcome. So also must structural virtues and vices as moral categories retain roles for individual human agency. Fortunately, efforts to discern this mechanism have already begun in theologians’ analysis of structural sin. The most fruitful model remains Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s Social Construction of Reality, who offer the dictum: “Society is a human product, society is an objective reality, the human is a social product.”287 Berger and Luckmann present a dialectic relationship in which the individual is first formed by society and in turn actively participates in society’s formation. Yet through this

process, social structures become an objective reality of their own. Yet while it is helpful to think of society operating with a degree of agency, it is important to remember that its autonomy is only analogous: social structures remain human constructs which we shape and participate in freely.

286 _{John Paul II, Reconcilatio et paenetentia, 1984, no. 16.}

287 _{Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the}

Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor Books, 1967): 61., Cited in: Kenneth Himes,

“Social Sin and the Role of the Individual,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, 1986, 183–218.

This emphasis on structures of virtue suggests fruitful opportunities for the central concern of this dissertation: solidarity as a virtue and its realization within Catholic higher education. Traditionally, educating for justice has emphasized the formation of individual moral agents capable of resisting and someday transforming unjust social policies and structures. Creating such moral giants is a daunting task, and not getting easier in our contemporary context. It requires teaching students to recognize, challenge, and resist elements that they were

socialized to accept willingly. By shifting our attention from individual pupils to the social structures themselves, not only does society itself more closely achieve the common good, the individual is more virtuously formed through mere participation in the community’s narratives and practices. While this perspective is still emerging within the field or moral theology, religious educators have wrestled with the question of socialization within a community for several decades. In part inspired by MacIntyre’s After Virtue but also drawing on earlier theorist, religious education is undergoing a ‘turn to practices’ which in fact reflects a much older