What I'm Reading: "Profound Cognitive Impairment, the Virtues, and Life in Christ"
Dr. Miguel Romero of Salve Regina University wrote a piece for Church Life Journal in which he considered how people with profound cognitive impairment could grow in virtue and holiness. Here’s an excerpt:
Parallel to Aristotle’s view that “those who do not possess reason” cannot attain the virtues, hasty theological appropriations of Aristotle’s anthropological premises have made it difficult for some contemporary moralists to account for the happiness and holiness of Christians who have a profound, lifelong cognitive impairment. It should be admitted that the problem I am describing here is not immediately apparent (nor even noteworthy) when Christian virtue ethics is articulated in general terms, about average folks who find themselves navigating common, everyday circumstances. However, to paraphrase and update a broadly Thomistic judgment: we should take pains to avoid the pseudoscientific folly that warps one man’s “for the most part” into the “necessary and always” of metaphysically stipulative principles.