The Common Good and Christian Ethics rethinks the ancient tradition of the common good in a way that addresses contemporary social divisions, both urban and global. David Hollenbach draws on social analysis, moral philosophy, and theological ethics to chart new directions in both urban life and global society. He argues that the division between the middle class and the poor in major cities and the challenges of globalisation require a new commitment to the common good and that both believers and secular people must move towards new forms of solidarity if they are to live good lives together. Hollenbach proposes a positive vision of how a reconstructed understanding of the common good can lead to better lives for all today, both in cities and globally. This interdisciplinary study makes both practical and theoretical contributions to the developing shape of social, cultural, and religious life today.
Executive SummaryThis essay proposes some ethical perspectives that can help in the task of reassessing the structure of the global refugee protection system in light of the extraordinarily high levels of refugee movement and forced migration occurring today. It addresses two chief areas. First, it considers whether ethical duties reach beyond the borders that separate nation-states and the implications of such duties for the treatment of refugees and other displaced persons. Drawing on classical ethical perspectives found in secular moral thought and in several religious traditions, the essay argues that national borders have moral weight, but that grave violations of the rights of displaced persons can create responsibilities that are more stringent than duties to co-citizens of one's own country. Second, the essay examines whether the duties to co-citizens or to displaced persons should take priority in various contexts. Negative duties that have particular urgency in the effort to shape a more adequate response to forced migrants are proposed, drawing upon classic criteria in the ethics and law of war. These include the avoidance of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other violations of justice that often lead to mass displacement. Positive duties to come to the aid of the displaced are also developed in light of several standards: the needs of the displaced, the proximity and capability of the responder, whether the response is a last resort, and if the response can be carried out without disproportionate burden on the responder. These negative and positive duties are then drawn upon to argue for a significantly more active response to the needs of forced migrants by developed nations in the global north, by regional and global intergovernmental organizations, by secular and faith-based humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and by citizens at large.
During the past three or four years an intense debate and self-examination has been underway in the American churches over the question of the ethics of church investment. The discussion has been brought about by a growing realization that the way the American economy functions is intimately intertwined with the freedom and well-being of men and women in the United States and in the poor nations of the world. The concern of the churches to aid in the attainment of a just society and to provide moral leadership based on the message of Christ has made this discussion an inevitable development in our increasingly interdependent society. Also, because the relationship between social responsibility and investment mores challenges the churches to address evolving social structures and social values in an innovative way, this development is highly significant for the future shape of the churchsociety relationship. It would not be extreme, I believe, to compare the present state of the movement for social responsibility in investments to the early days of the involvement of the churches in the American labor movement.The issue of what the church should or should not do with its investment funds is a highly complex one. It involves the disciplines of economics, finance, and law. Any concerted effort by the church to deal with this question in a sustained and systematic way will require reliance on the expertise of persons trained in these fields who are at the same time trained in and sensitive to the ethical questions which are at the heart of our modern economy. But the knowledge of law and economics is not sufficient. There are ethical, theological, and religious questions which themselves must be dealt with in evolving an appropriate stance for the church in the United States. This article will try to clarify a few of these ethical and religious matters for one segment of the Roman Catholic Church: orders or congregations of religious men or women who have committed themselves to a particular style of the Christian life through the vow of evangelical poverty.How much money the religious congregations of the United States have invested in stocks and other securities is difficult to determine. The amount varies greatly from order to order, and the highly decentralized financial organization of the American Catholic Church puts all attempts to discover the amount on shaky ground. In his recent and lively study of the wealth and financial power of the Catholic Church in the U.S., James Gollin estimates that the holdings of the 8 Codex juris canonici, canon 1523. The translation is that of John A. Abbo and Jerome D. Hannan, The Sacred Canons: A Concise Presentation of the Current Disciplinary Norms of the Church 2 (rev. ed.; St.
A SURVEY of the horizon of contemporary social ethics suggests that some moral questions are indeed perennial. The late 20th centurywith its brave new technologies, frightful capacity for destruction, and growing web of political and economic interdependence-confronts the human race with ethical choices that are genuinely new. But in their efforts to address many of these new issues, a number of ethical thinkers have recently begun to debate the meaning and practical relevance of an idea that can be traced back to Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. I mean the notion of the common good. This essay will highlight some of the most important discussions going on in social ethics today by viewing them from the perspective of this debate about the meaning of the common good.First, some of the reasons why the question of the common good has re-emerged as a matter of serious moral argument will be outlined. Second, a theological argument for a pluralistic, analogical understanding of the common good will be outlined, an argument that draws on several themes present in Augustinian and Thomistic sources. Third, the possibility of reinterpreting the common-good tradition in a way that enables it to contribute to a nonindividualistic understanding of human rights will be explored. This essay will present only a sketch of some current discussions of the common good. It will focus on a theoretical question that cuts across numerous practical ethical discussions: whether the idea of the common good is meaningful and usable at all in present historical circumstances. If this essay is able to clarify the state of this question within the framework of theological ethics, it will have achieved its purpose. RE-EMERGENCE OF THE COMMON GOODThe debate about the meaning and utility of the concept of the common good is unfolding on a number of levels in contemporary intellectual life. Business and EconomicsIn some discussions of the future of American business and economic life the ethical category of the common good has surfaced in a variety of forms as an idea whose time has once again come. A recent interdisciplin-70
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