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Essay on Approaches to Natural Theology
The theology of virtues formulated by Thomas Aquinas follows an Aristotelian model in which the virtues, as new quasi-faculties, flow from a distinctive life form, grace. During the past years some Protestant ethicians have found an ethics of virtue attractive. Why.? Perhaps because it seemed to be original and yet had a venerable pedigree; it was formal but not legalistic, human but not transcendental. An ethics of virtue, unlike approaches based on natural law, can suggest biblical words. However, in arguing for the value of virtues, often as a reaction to the recent history of secular liberal or Protestant ethics, some new advocates of an ethics of virtue have largely ignored the distinct and diverse history of Catholic moral theology which century after century had included not a few theologies centered on virtue.( Romano Guardini (1985))
Some advocates of virtue ethics adopted the posture of discovery and originality. But for Catholics this discovery occurred as the ethics of virtue was completing a cycle of influence within Catholic moral theology; any claim of a restoration of an ethics of virtues overlooks the many presentations on virtues in Catholic moral theology from 1860 to 1960 (or from 1560 to 1860) in numerous neo-Scholastic journals and multivolume moral treatises.( Romano Guardini (1985)) If influential Catholic moral theology texts such as those by Arthur Vermeersch, Heribert Jone, and Aloysius Sabetti took an approach drawn from the commandments, nevertheless not only manuals but also catechisms and devotional books often treated virtues.
Recent summonses to an Aristotelian-Scholastic ethics have been accompanied at times by a monitory tone: modernity is evil, and Catholicism is slipping into a modem abyss by setting aside its Baroque seminary form of moral theology. For enthusiasts of these ethics of virtue it must have been disappointing that the wide world of Roman Catholicism did not join immediately and universally in this renewed discussion of virtues....................
