| Ethicists find the question whether one ought to give to beggars awkward. This difficulty (and the related problems of the relationship of economics to Christian teaching; and altruism and gift) can be addressed indirectly, through the scandals of the practice of humility. Traditionally, Christianity has counted humility among its virtues, but the material specification of this virtue has changed dramatically from the era of the mendicant orders to the present. Beggarly humility---voluntary poverty to the point of material dependence---destabilizes social orders, places a moral shadow on the economy of rights, and opposes modern concern for benevolence. "Stewardly" humility, which appears in an era in which the English crown was confiscating Church properties, leaves the status quo unquestioned, reinforces property rights, and works to channel wealth efficiently toward benevolent ventures. Modern economic ethics, dependent upon the formative system-making of classical economists Adam Smith and T. R. Malthus, make impartiality morally normative and dependence morally problematic in a way that further isolates the practice of beggarly humility from rational economic practices. Christian ethics is therefore left with both an account of economics to which a key Christian virtue has become irreconcilable and an ecclesial ethic which serves the good of social stability rather than the "excessive" good of eschatological fulfillment. Accounts of economics in which charity is a functioning element point in a hopeful direction for future studies, but the recovery of moral comedians of economics will offer a center of gravity those accounts need. |
