| Since Vatican II, various Catholic moral theologians and schools of moral theology have taken different approaches to the question of the influence of poor upbringing and damaging environments upon moral agents. On the one hand, various papal encyclicals and apostolic exhortations of the Catholic magisterium have emphasized that these impediments do not ordinarily prevent a person from fulfilling the Church's teachings. Even when facing the "gravest of hardships," they claim, God's grace can always sustain the moral agent. On the other hand, in varying degrees "revisionist" moral theologians such as Bernard Haring and Charles Curran have insisted that significant negative moral formation can present a formidable obstacle to living a more ideal moral life. In many cases, they claim, factors of upbringing and environment can effectively and understandably prevent an agent from realizing moral norms.; However, in making these claims "traditionalists" and "revisionists" alike have primarily focused on the impact of negative formation on an agent's subjective guilt, her moral obligations, and the objective wrongness (or correctness) of violating moral norms. These juridical analyses have been pursued to the exclusion of examining the influence of upbringing and environment in its own right. They have not provided a comprehensive means of understanding when and why some moral agents are or are not effectively prevented from leading more ideal lives. Moreover, both traditionalists and revisionists have been unable to provide a fitting framework for counseling the victims of negative formation. The dissertation explicates these claims, and, as an alternative to primarily juridical approaches, explores the adequacy of several contemporary accounts of Christian virtue ethics. It proposes that their central concern with moral formation, considered in itself, provides a better means of both understanding and advising negative formation. |
