| This thesis explores the interaction and integration of spirituality and ethics in a revised natural law approach to ethics. The project retrieves and recasts basic features of a Thomistic natural law ethic as a critical basis for integrating spirituality and ethics in the context of a graced theological anthropology. There is a focus on virtue formation which is closely connected with eco-social and economic justice issues in that growth toward authenticity occurs through engagement with diverse and conflicting narratives; this engagement reveals issues of eco-social location, power relations and differing degrees of access to social systems and structures. In addition, narrative analysis raises questions about the distribution of resources and opportunities in communities. The project's emphasis on practical reasoning is highlighted particularly in terms of the development of skills for recognizing and critiquing how narratives are shaping personal and social patterns of relating. The thesis also spotlights eco-social and economic issues as primary faith concerns and points to spiritual and moral formation as critical to addressing these issues, for instance, in terms of taking responsibility for the narratives which shape personal and social patterns of relating as well as engaging in critical theological reflection on a vision of a good life. The project attends to the debate on proportionate reason as a context for examining the challenges, questions and insights which emerge from efforts to address historicity in natural law. It uses narrative analysis and a study of the distribution of resources and opportunities as a basis for furthering key questions from the debate, and studies the ethical implications of LaCugna's approach to Trinity as a basis for critically shaping a vision of a good life, identifying normative patterns of relating and key ethical values, and integrating spirituality and ethics in ways which can enrich and deepen ethical analysis. These various elements then are applied to issues connected with child poverty in Canada to demonstrate the viability of the proposed ethic for linking the spiritual and moral life. |
