Boston College’s Situated Ethical Theology: From Casuistry Through Political Liberalism, Based On The Jesuit Concept Of Discernment

Abstract

What is the relationship between ethics and politics in the field of theology when it deals with public demands in the context of the political liberalism of the United States? I venture to say −starting from a previous investigation that will be developed here in a synthetic way−, that it is a situated modality of theology, an attempt of effective attention to concrete social demands to guarantee the human dignity. It draws on trinitarian principles translated in interdisciplinary language, which facilitates the public debate, and has as a condition of possibility a political liberalism −secular but not secularist−, as a guarantor of expression freedom of all, and in each sector. I discover, in the research process, that this ethical-theological modality, a Catholicism in a liberal context responds, in part, to a Jesuit logic as a situated modality of the
Catholic teaching theology, which has its origins in the context of 16th century series with authors ranging from Erasmus of Rotterdam to Saint Ignatius of Loyola, passing through Duns Scotus and William of Ockham.