Virtue Of Solidarity Research Articles

Appalachia - Bridging the Opioid Epidemic Amid the Fentanyl Crisis.

Although the opioid epidemic and fentanyl crisis are nationwide problems of immense proportions, calming the storm raging across the isolating geo-economic framework of Appalachia demonstrates the need for courageous, culturally effective programs that have the power to address and overcome the grave situation of addiction in this region. In the Appalachian region, unjust social structures are embedded in the communities' socio-economic conditions. As this reality poses even greater barriers to addressing the opioid epidemic in these communities, the restoration of social relationships within a community becomes vital to the development of a broader approach to social functioning and human flourishing. Faith traditions and faith communities can play an important role in helping to establish and support such social cohesion through attention to the individual, social, and spiritual needs of the community. This essay explores the complex problem of the opioid epidemic compounded by the fentanyl crisis. It considers the importance of public health research within the regional geo-economic framework of Appalachia to (a) inform policies that improve health inequities and promote social cohesion, (b) develop social solutions with a spiritual dimension, and (c) reveal remedies capable of informing moral norms in support of building a more just society. Reflecting on the virtue of solidarity, this essay also highlights the witness of the Catholic Church's response to the suffering experienced within the communities and the societies within the Appalachian mountains. While there may be considerable interest in viewing this article as a research document, foundationally, this essay utilizes a literary narrative approach through a Catholic lens to inform ethical deliberations, reasoning, and practice while supporting ethical reflection and consideration of the responses raised. Further, the reader is strongly encouraged to reference the comprehensive footnote system provided for extension and verification of the data presented.

The Antimonumental Impulse in Korean Contemporary Art

This study examines the genealogy of the antimonument in South Korean contemporary art as it manifests in the works of three artists: Bahc Mo, Suh Do Ho, and Oh Inhwan. Born in the period around 1960, the three grew to maturity during South Korea’s rapid economic development in the 1970s and witnessed the violent struggle for democratization in the 1980s. Public monuments were grandiose structures deployed in the nation’s period of military dictatorship as propagandistic expressions of collective identity. In this essay, I argue that in their own unique ways each of these artists embraced antimonumentality as an idiom that could subvert the grammar of official monuments and reveal the dialectics at play in the sociohistorical and psychological processes of forming national identity. Humble, fragile, and often antagonistic, the artists’ antimonuments, which began to appear in the 1990s, challenge established views of Korean society and its gendered ideology and complicate the nation’s notions of communal values and the virtue of solidarity.

The Holy See and the Global Environmental Movements

Laudato Si has garnered acclaim from world leaders and actors who support care for the environment. The encyclical has received praise for its ability to communicate the Church’s environmental views to the secular world. Yet the views of the Holy See in global environmental issues prior to Laudato Si have received inadequate attention. We conduct a historical review of the Holy See’s involvement in United Nations environmental efforts from the mid-20th Century to the present day. This reflects much of the work done in the late 20th Century by local dioceses all over the world. In doing so, we draw from the Holy See’s record of apostolic letters and speeches penned by Popes and various Church officials in the 20th Century, which we draw from the Vatican archives and libraries. We show that a clear critique of industrial pollution first emerged in the official addresses and letters penned by Pope Paul VI in the early 1960s. We also show that the Holy See has joined the global community on the pursuit of sustainable development that promotes human dignity, and the right to development and to a healthy environment for all, mainly the poorest populations. We argue that Laudato Si is better thought of as a culmination of the Catholic Church’s social teachings, which state that concern for the environment means respect for human life and dignity, promotion of the common good and the virtue of solidarity, and exercising responsibility to the poor and vulnerable. These are principles that align closely with the secular discourse on sustainable development.

Virtue of solidarity or vice of laziness: Understanding the existence of Philippine community pantries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Virtue of solidarity or vice of laziness: Understanding the existence of Philippine community pantries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Risk, Health, and Physical Enhancement: The Dangers of Health Care as Risk Reduction for Christian Bioethics

AbstractMedicine increasingly envisions health promotion in terms of reducing risk as determined by quantitative risk factors, such as blood pressure, blood lipids, or genetic variants. This essay argues that this vision of health care as risk reduction is dangerous for Christian bioethics, since risk can be infinitely reduced leading to a self-defeating spiral of iatrogenic effects. Moreover, it endangers character because this vision of health is connected to a reductionist vision of the body and an understanding of individual risk that undermines the more communal virtue of solidarity. The essay concludes by discussing how recent Thomistic analyses in favor of physical enhancements illustrate some of the problems that envisioning health care in terms of risk reduction holds for Christian bioethics.

An Ethical Foundation for Social Good: Virtue Theory and Solidarity

Purpose: Virtue theorists debate qualities of society leading to human flourishing. Thus, aspects of scholarship on virtue theory may refine conceptualization of social good. We focus on the virtue of solidarity and its contributions to the ethical foundations of social good, providing a core connection to macro-level social work interventions and settings. Methods: We first identify a theoretical gap in the conceptual framework of social good, then use virtue theory and the example of solidarity to connect the concept of social good to social work professional values and macro practice. Results: Our primary critique of the concept of social good is the lack of a sufficient ethical frame that addresses social justice, value foundations, or power analysis. Discussion: Without this, the discussion of social good lacks tools needed to critically assess relevant systems of change and innovative technologies. Consequently, the work of social good risks reinforcing existing status quo and oppressive systems.

DETERMINANTES SOCIALES DE LA SALUD MENTAL. ROL DE LA RELIGIOSIDAD

The social determinants of mental health with respect to the role of a person’s religiosity are examined in this paper, based on personal experience and a review of the literature. The objective is to hypothesize that religiosity can influence a person’s mental health through three factors: a sense of moral value, support from a community of faith, and exercise of spirituality. The Medline and SciElo databases were reviewed as of 1990, in English and Spanish, using the keywords: spirituality, belief, religion and social determinants of mental health. The references related to the subject were taken into account as well. The article concludes that it is important in bioethics to incorporate the theme of religiosity as a factor in mental health, based on deliberative dialogue and considering the patient’s position as an interlocutor. It also is imperative to bear in mind the support provided by a community of faith that has embraced the virtues of solidarity and acceptance of others.

Book Review: The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights. By Meghan J. Clark

Book Review: The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights. By Meghan J. Clark

The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights by Meghan J. Clark

The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights by Meghan J. Clark

The Digital Divide

This essay examines the digital divide through the lens of integral human development and identifies strategies for erasing or, at best, mitigating, the chasm. It proceeds in four parts. First, I will introduce the digital divide, identifying critical demographic and sociological data, to demonstrate how more than half of the world is digitally handicapped. Second, I will offer a critical assessment of this inequality from the perspective of integral human development. Next, I will propose the virtue of solidarity as a concrete way to motivate the global community to resolve the digital divide and, in turn, bring access and distribution of information technology in line with the demands of solidarity. Finally, I will demonstrate solidarity in action for integral human development through various in-place practices and long-term proposals for rectifying the technological gap. Since its introduction into the public square thirty years ago, access to the World Wide Web (Web) through the Internet has transformed social communication, commerce, and politics in revolutionary ways. This explosive growth of information communication technology (ICT) is often celebrated as a democratic and participatory medium where everyone is ‘LinkedIn’ on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms. This popular sentiment, however, fails to acknowledge that the transformative impacts of communications technology have been limited in its reach. Such a claim of universal unfettered connectedness is based on an uninformed understanding or a lack of exposure to scientific data. A sizeable portion of the global village remains disconnected entirely from accessing the WEB and enjoying its “significant positive impacts.” While the “new velocity” of communications technology has enhanced the quality of social, economic, and political participation and increased exchanges in all these areas, there is a large portion of the world’s population which does not has or has limited access to the Internet. The socio-economic political construction of what has been termed the “digital divide” has marginalized an often already vulnerable segment of the global 1 This is not to ignore the ways that ICT has impacted cultures and peoples in a negative way. Pope Francis in Laudato Si offers an honest appraisal of ICT teaching that “The social dimensions of global change include the effects of technological innovations on employment, social exclusion, an inequitable distribution and consumption of energy and other services, social breakdown, increased violence and a rise in new forms of social aggression, drug trafficking, growing drug use by young people, and the loss of identity.” (Pope Francis, Laudato Si, retrieved June 23, 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papafrancesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html, no. 46). While this may be true and well-documented by scholars evaluating some of the significantly challenging imports of ICT on societies, I would argue that overall the positive advancements ICT offers outweigh the negative ones. (See: Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. [WW Norton & Company, 2011]; Keen, Andrew. Digital Vertigo: How Today's Online Social Revolution is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us. [Macmillan, 2012]; Schmidt, Eric, and Jared Cohen. The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives. [Vintage, 2013]; and, Powers, William. Hamlet's blackberry. [HarperCollins, 2010]). 2 Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice, Vocation of the Business Leader: A Reflection, retrieved June 23, 2015, http://Web.pcgp.it/dati/2012-05/04-999999/Vocation%20ENG2.pdf, nos. 11-12. 3 Vocation of the Business Leader: A Reflection, p. 2.

The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights. By Meghan J. Clark. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014. xiii + 166 pages. $39.00 (paper).

The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights. By Meghan J. Clark. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014. xiii + 166 pages. $39.00 (paper).

Book Review: John Paul II on the Vulnerable

Book Review: John Paul II on the Vulnerable

The vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human rights. By Meghan J.Clarke. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 166. $39.00.

The vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human rights. By Meghan J.Clarke. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 166. $39.00.

The vision of Catholic social thought: the virtue of solidarity and the praxis of human rights

The vision of Catholic social thought: the virtue of solidarity and the praxis of human rights

The Ethics of Branding in the Age of Ubiquitous Media: Insights from Catholic Social Teaching

Branding has long been seen as an effective means of marketing products. The use of brand-based marketing campaigns, however, has come under intense scrutiny over the past 10 years for its power to facilitate deception and emotional manipulation. As a way of proceeding through the many differing moral assessments, this paper turns for insight to the tradition of writing on social ethical issues within the Roman Catholic Church. The author suggests that Catholic Social Teaching offers a distinctive approach to advertising ethics that charts a middle course between the two poles of the debate on branding. This article introduces readers to the approach to advertising developed within Vatican documents on media, highlighting the basic values at stake and the particular moral norms for advertising that are articulated. The article then applies these values and norms to the case of brand-based advertising, ultimately suggesting that advertisers approach their work through the virtue of solidarity.

Venerable Catherine McAuley and The Dignity of the Human Person

Over a century before the principles of the “new evangelization” were proclaimed in 1965 in Gaudium et spes (The Pastoral Constitution on the Church and the Modem World) Catherine McAuley (1781-1841), vigorously promoted its two key principles: (1) the dignity of the human person and (2) the virtue of solidarity with the suffering poor, sick, and ignorant. From her First Conferences alter founding the Religious Sisters of Mercy in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland, Mother Catherine consistently taught her Sisters to put these principles into practice in their apostolic work in education and health care.Drawing upon Venerable Catherine McAuley’s original writings and biographies of her life and works, this article will demonstrate how she helped prepare the way for consecrated persons in the new evangelization of the Church in the modem world. The themes are divided as follows: Part I—The Dignity of the Human Person, Part II—Solidarity with the Poor, Sick, and Ignorant, and Part III—Urgent Problems for the Church in the Modem World.

Fried on Rights and Moral PersonalityRight and Wrong. Charles Fried

it is to everyone's advantage in a co-op for the co-op to work, that is, for all members to act on the cooperation principle. This is a welcome result for cooperators, becaue it is a common objection to the viability of co-ops that they are pie-in-the-sky undertakings which require an unrealistic idealism from their members. This objection, it appears, is simply mistaken. This is not to say that co-ops are always and everywhere the advantageous thing for utility maximizers. For a co-op to motivate an individual utility maximizer it must be the case that the agent can do better by cooperating than by going it alone. It seems fair to say that this will not always be the case. However, it also seems fair to say that, especially for individuals who are disadvantaged relative to the rest of society and whose labor has little market value, cooperatives may often offer mutually advantageous defensive undertakings which decrease their relative social disadvantage. In any case the picture of a society composed of many interlocking cooperative undertakings is intriguing in its own right. To argue that co-ops motivate individual utility maximizers to act cooperatively out of prudence is not to mount a justification of the cooperative principle. Like the utilitarian principle, it may be defensible in its own right, but I have ignored that question here. It is clear that agents directly motivated by the principle of cooperation will differ from agents motivated to adopt the principle out of prudence. True cooperators will share the virtue of solidarity, while prudentially motivated cooperators will not. The difference comes to this: True cooperators will cooperate even in the absence of procedures for detecting noncooperators, whereas prudential cooperators will not.

The Ethos Problem in the Present Pluralistic Society

they are to be inviolable, presuppose the communitarian virtues of solidarity and truthfulness. The pacta sunt servanda ? the basis of societal forms ? cannot infer from a prior contract that contracts must be kept; this would imply a regressus infinitus. Hence, if and when the basic community spirit and forms wither, the societal forms, too, will lose their vitality. Thirdly, human society exists in contingency; consequently it is sub? ject to change. Change may be gradual and slow; or it may be radical and continuous; hence the distinction between (relatively) static and dynamic periods. In dynamic eras the dominant ethics and ethos pat? terns enter a stage of flux. Rationalist intervals in the evolution of civilizations expose the traditional standards of ethics and ethos to