The Virtue of Equity and the Contemporary World

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that Pinckaers provides a natural law theory which justifies the claim that the discernment of an individual citizen according to the virtue of equity might, in specific situations, justifiably stand against the authority of civil law. To make this argument, I first provide a basic overview of Aquinas’s description of the virtue of equity. In the following section, I argue that a robust understanding of equity as informed by natural law is crucial for contemporary retrieval of the virtue. I also argue that Pinckaers’s theory of natural law provides both sufficient grounding for the expansive claims made of the virtue. Finally, as the positive part of this retrieval, I consider how equity would appear as an infused virtue by considering the implicit presentation of a form of infused equity in the pastoral letters of St. Oscar Romero.