The Structures of Virtue and Vice by Daniel J. Daly (review)

Daniel Daly aims to make a significant contribution to Catholic theological ethics by teaching his readers to recognize and deal with structures of virtue and vice. He hopes to reach his fellow theologians, Church authorities, and as many Catholic lay people as possible.

In the introduction to his book, Daly says that he had one ultimate, and two proximate, goals in writing. The proximate goals are achieving "an understanding of the relation of social structure and moral agency and an updated Catholic virtue theory" (3). Both of these proximate goals serve Daly's ultimate goal, which is to develop "concepts capable of ethically categorizing and scrutinizing social structures" (ibid.). Moral agency refers to the role played by the free choices of individuals in setting up structures, especially those that do harm. For example, the U.S. Constitution initially protected the institution of chattel slavery in the southern states. Both the law and the culture justified the existence of slavery as a positive good for the slave and slave owners. The practice of slavery defended by the law and public opinion set up an opinionforming structure that was hard for Southerners to resist.

Daly aims to teach his readers to recognize and deal with structures of virtue and vice, which come into existence both by the free choices of individuals over time and by causes of an "impersonal" nature (12). Societal structures sometimes take on a life "independent of human agency," he emphasizes. "Structures" is the term used to identify various aspects of the political and economic order, institutions, organizations, and practices that incline people to live well or badly. Daly puts a lot of emphasis on the structure created by the manufacturing of clothing in the so-called sweatshops in the Third World that employ poorly paid workers. On April 24, 2013, a building owned by Sohel Rana, located in the vicinity of Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed, killing 127 people. Although engineers had told Rana that the building was unsafe, he nonetheless ordered workers to take their places. Daly asks who is responsible for the deaths of the workers—the owner, Sohel Rana; the manufacturer, the Children's Place; the retail clothing company; or consumers seeking a bargain (12-13). It is unclear from Daly's treatment whether he considers the last group as an example of "impersonal forces." What is clear is that Catholic ethicists need to forge an instrument capable of structural ethical analysis. This kind of instrument will enable Catholics to put ethics into practice in every aspect of their lives. This is another way that Daly defines the book's ultimate purpose—developing concepts by which to categorize and scrutinize social structures.

"In turning to the social sciences, Catholic ethicists may come to more fully understand how to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this new age" (30). They have to explain, for example, how individuals may protect themselves from neglecting their duties toward the exploited of the world. Daly believes that the study of the social sciences is indispensable for grasping the nature of reality, especially the nature of good and bad social structures, including their good and bad effects on "the moral character of the person" (35). As an example, he notes that Pope John Paul II's "account of structural sin remained substantially … underdeveloped from a sociological point of view; the pope lacked an incisive account of what a structure is, how it shaped action and outcomes" (41). Daly has more regard for Pope Benedict because he says "the Church's wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and the structure of society" (43). Daly, however, is unhappy that Benedict was mostly silent on unjust structures, focusing instead on vicious persons, whose individual actions alone generate structures of vice. While the studies of sociology and psychology are helpful to Catholic ethicists, I would add that familiarity...