Diversity: A Catholic Understanding

Abstract

DiversityA Catholic Understanding Justin M. Anderson (bio) Key Words Diversity, DEI, Creator-centered diversity, Aquinas and diversity Much of our society remains aflame with concerns regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI]. Taking only diversity, one can point to several conversations in which it looms large today: access to education, especially higher education, school curricula, racial/ethnic diversity, intellectual diversity in higher education, cultural diversity, religious diversity, biodiversity, and national discussions regarding immigration. Few people argue against diversity as a fact of modern occidental liberal societies, though more become wary of embracing diversity as a normative ideal, as something to be pursued. Diversity as an ideal is typically where the debate rages and how scholars working on diversity and associated concepts (e.g., multiculturalism, affirmative action, etc.) engage the issue today. Typically, these debates are the province of socio-political studies, and thereby often focus on policies within a particular social body. In today’s modern liberal democracies, social bodies each of which are predicated on an identification and ranking of preferences in a utilitarian calculus, diversity as an ideal can promote a great deal of good.1 However, because it is based primarily on a calculus of group preference rankings, the same ideal-slogan can potentially promote [End Page 27] a number of policies and practices any one group would find wrong or even morally wicked. A quick survey of the discussions into which diversity is brought today reveals that institutions of higher education in some ways are at the forefront of these considerations. Many of these institutions are Catholic and, accordingly, seek to base their DEI approach on their Catholic intellectual tradition. While the world today embraces slogans—like diversity as an ideal to be pursued—at an ever-quickening pace, one wishing to be guided by a particular intellectual tradition must understand these terms and movements within that tradition. Understanding diversity in relation to a Catholic (or even more general Christian) tradition is a first crucial step towards being fruitfully connected and guided in an approach to DEI. Unearthing the deeper roots of a notion such as diversity renders it more fruitful, leads to greater institutional integrity, and provides greater indefatigability for all the good authentic diversity can bring with it. The aim of this essay is to present a Catholic account of diversity, a positive presentation of a Catholic understanding of diversity. The aim is not to juxtapose and judge a Catholic versus rival ways of approaching diversity. So, the essay will not occupy itself with critiquing errant aspects of modern theories or applications performed in the name of a diversity-ideal. Instead, its intention is to articulate a rational grounding for an account of diversity from within the Catholic intellectual tradition. As will become apparent, I think its grounds so foundational that it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to acknowledge the doctrine of the Creator and creation as a Christian classically would and simultaneously reject its conclusions for how one thinks about diversity. I call this particular Catholic understanding of diversity “a Creator-centered account.” I do this because—while it is based in the thought of a bright light of the Catholic intellectual tradition, Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274)—many of its central tenets are not only available to the Catholic or even Christian. Indeed, the basic rationale Aquinas presents for diversity is likely something that can perhaps be embraced by any of the great [End Page 28] Abrahamic religions. Consequently, I take Aquinas not only as a persuasive proponent of the specifically Catholic intellectual tradition, but of a larger canon of religious and philosophical thinkers capable of giving a well-reasoned justificatory account for the value of diversity and thereby greater inclusion. Still, ultimate judgment regarding how this sort of Creator-based account can enrich non-Christian perspectives is left to others to determine. I will contend that Aquinas’s fundamental rationale can help us both to view diversity not merely as a fact, but even as a good to be pursued, that is as an ideal. Precisely because diversity is worthy of pursuit, it will involve deliberate human acts. As such, diversity-as-an-ideal necessarily lies open to moral analysis. A...