Theological Ethics and Moral Helplessness in the Anxious Present: Responsibility and Repair

Abstract

Theological ethics has inadvertently contributed to the diminished autonomy many feel amid the anxieties of daily life. The shift from act-based ethics to totalizing ethics, and Vatican II’s universal call to social justice, urged Christians to work for earthly justice without offering tools for assessing one’s moral goodness when these projects fail. Virtue ethics that is attentive to moral luck can help combat moral helplessness by observing moral agency in action patterns that shape the self’s dispositions.