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AQUINAS'S DOCTRINE OF MORAL VIRTUE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR THEORIES OF FACILITY RENEE MIRKES, 0.S.F. Director, Centerfor NaProEthics Omaha, Nebraska THOMISTIC COMMENTATORS from the postScholastic era to the modern period generally restricted their discussions of Aquinas's doctrine on the relationship between the acquired and infused virtues to the question of facility, that is, whether or not each kind of virtue facilitates the acts of the other. R. F. Coerver1 gives 1943 as a cutoff date for contemporary discussion of the question of facility in the infused virtues. His 1946 dissertation on the topic notes that many theologians of his day had discarded the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic facility and, with the exception of the manuals of Merkelbach (1871-1942) and Herve {1881-1958), "few of the modern theologians devote much space to the interrelation of the acquired and infused moral virtues."2 'See Rev. Robert Florent Coerver, C.M., The Quality ofFacility in the Moral Virtues, The Catholic University of America Studies in Sacred Theology 92 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 1946). 'Ibid., 113. A literature search from 1946 to 1994 (The Guide to Catholic Literature, Catholic Periodical and Literature Index, and American Theological Library Association Index) confirms Coerver's observation. The subject of facility in the moral virtues has not appeared as a topic of theological investigation since the 1940s. An exception is Romanus Cessario's Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics ([Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991], introduction, 10), which contains a section on the relationship of the acquired and infused moral virtues. After a discussion of Aquinas's distinction between the facility of acquired and infused virtue respectively, Cessario demonstrates how the development of the virtuous life of the Christian depends on the "dynamic interplay which exists between the exercise of the acquired and the enjoyment of the infused virtues." An article by John F. Harvey ("The Nature of the Infused Moral Virtues," Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Convention ofthe Catholic Theological Society of America [1954]: 172-221) gives extended space to the relation of the infused and acquired moral virtues in terms of facility but relies primarily on Coerver's 1946 research. The small number of articles written after 1950 on the relation between acquired and infused 189 190 RENEE MIRKES, O.S.F. More recently, however, theologians such as Jean Porter3 and Otto Hermann Pesch4 have recognized that, in order to facilitate a critical appropriation of Aquinas's doctrine of virtue amidst the contemporary revival of a virtue-based ethics, it is critical that the exposition of his theory be complete. In attempting to assemble such a substantive account, however, one encounters a lacuna in the area of moral virtue. While insisting on the two species of moral virtue, acquired and infused, Aquinas devotes the greatest proportion of the Secunda secundae of the Summa Theologiae to the analysis of the acquired moral virtues and neglects a correspondingly full exposition of their infused counterparts .5 Then, in the scattered references in which he does compare and contrast the two species of moral virtue, although he affirms that they can coexist in the Christian,6 and that the presence of acquired moral virtues exerts 7 a positive impact on moral virtues demonstrates a shift in thinking from interest in the relation between the acquired and infused moral virtues in terms of facility to their significance within the divine-human unity of Christian moral activity. This article reconsiders the earlier facility discussion in light of the reconstruction of the divine-human unity of moral activity as proposed by Aquinas. 3 Jean Porter ("The Subversion of Virtue," The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics [1992]: 38) opines that to appropriate Aquinas's virtue theory for contemporary purposes, one needs "to offer some account of the relation of acquired to infused virtues in the case of the individual who possesses both." In the same article Porter argues that because Aquinas does not systematically address the question of the relation between the acquired and infused virtues in the Summa Theologiae, one must reconstruct his theory on the basis of his explicit teaching on virtue and related topics. My research into other...

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