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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2025
This article clarifies two choices at two different levels of analysis—that theologians make (often implicitly) in employing social science to clarify how social structures affect moral agency. The first is the choice of a general causal account of how all social structures “work,” where this article endorses the view provided by critical realist sociology. The second is the choice of some particular causal account of the functioning of a specific kind of social structure. It proposes a new definition that applies to all, not simply the most egregious sinful social structures that accounts for both the oppression of the marginalized and the complicity of the privileged. To illustrate the analysis, we end by examining three features important in the transformation of sinful social structures that have received inadequate attention in the literature of theological ethics: nonmoral cognitive categories, bodily practices, and the penalties for noncompliance.
1 Patrick Kerans, Sinful Social Structures (New York: Paulist Press, 1974).
2 Mark O’Keefe, What Are They Saying About Social Sin? (New York: Paulist Press, 1990).
3 Kenneth R. Himes, “Social Sin and the Role of the Individual,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 6 (1986): 183–218.
4 Kristin E. Heyer, “Social Sin and Immigration: Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors,” Theological Studies 71, no. 2 (2010): 410–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/004056391007100207; Kristin E. Heyer, “‘Heart(s) of Flesh’: Structural Sin and Social Salvation,” Presidential Address, Catholic Theological Society of America, June 16, 2024.
5 Conor M. Kelly, “The Nature and Operation of Structural Sin: Additional Insights from Theology and Moral Psychology,” Theological Studies 80, no. 2 (2019): 293–327, https://doi.org/10.1177/0040563919836201.
6 Daniel Daly, The Structures of Virtue and Vice (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021).
7 Emma McDonald, “Moral Agency in the Reproductive Marketplace: Social Egg Freezing in the United States,” Journal of Religious Ethics 50, no. 4 (2022): 696–716, https://doi.org/10.1111/jore.12412.
8 Nick Lane, “The Unseen World: Reflections on Leeuwenhoek (1677) ‘Concerning Little Animals,’” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 370, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2014.0344.
9 For a more thorough introduction to what critical realist sociology can contribute to the theologian’s notion of moral agency, see Daniel K. Finn, ed., Moral Agency within Structures and Culture: A Primer on Critical Realism for Christian Ethics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2020).
10 Christina G. McRorie, “Moral Reasoning in ‘the World,’” Theological Studies 82, no. 2 (2021): 213–37, https://doi.org/10.1177/00405639211009939.
11 For this history, see O’Keefe, What Are They Saying About Social Justice?; Himes, “Social Sin and the Role of the Individual”; and Heyer, “Social Sin and Immigration.”
12 John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, (December 2, 1984), §16, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-paenitentia.html; John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, (December 30, 1987), §36, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-rei-socialis.html. The constraints of space prevent our treating the debates about the use of “social sin” in the work of Pope St. John Paul II.
13 For an example of this line of argument, which reduces “social sin” to the “social effects of sin,” see Maurizio Ragazzi, “The Concept of Social Sin in Its Thomistic Roots,” Journal of Markets and Morality 7 (2004): 363–408.
14 Margaret Pfeil notes that interventions at Vatican II explicitly called for avoiding the idea of social sin because it would undermine a sense of personal responsibility. See Margaret Pfeil, “Doctrinal Implications of Magisterial Use of the Language of Social Sin,” Louvain Studies 27 (2002): 132–52, at 134, https://doi.org/10.2143/LS.27.2.932.
15 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation,” (March 22, 1986), §74, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19860322_freedom-liberation_en.html.
16 Kerans, Sinful Social Structures, 79.
17 For example, in a very fine article exploring the dynamics of sinful structures in the lives of those with intellectual disabilities, Lorraine Cuddeback-Gedeon draws variously on practice theory, a notion of “transcripts” on which behavior draws, and a distinction from de Certeau between strategies and tactics. Her own rich narratives of persons with disabilities, as well as the organizations attempting to serve them amid variously structured demands of market and state, would be well served by employing a critical realist framework throughout to describe more precisely how the structures operate on agency. See Lorraine Cuddeback-Gedeon, “Sin, Sins, and Intellectual Disability: An Ethnographic Examination of Moral Agency and Structural Sin,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 41, no. 1 (2021): 55–71, https://doi.org/10.5840/jsce20216342.
18 Milton Friedman, “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 3–45.
19 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 71.
20 This is an unfortunate stumble in an otherwise helpful book. Miguel A. de la Torre, Burying White Privilege: Resurrecting a Badass Christianity, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2018), 54. That such innumeracy got past the copy editor at a highly respected religious publisher indicates something about epistemic silos in the world of publishing as well.
21 John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1983), 84.
22 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 49, a. 6 (hereafter, ST).
23 Aquinas, ST, II–II, q. 110.
24 Aquinas, ST, II–II, q. 77.
25 For illustrations of this in relation to usury, see David Cloutier and Robert Koerpel, “Beyond the Law-Conscience Binary in Catholic Moral Thought,” Journal of Moral Theology 10 (2021): 160–93, at 182–84, https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/api/v1/articles/25768-beyond-the-law-conscience-binary-in-catholic-moral-thought.pdf.
26 For a fuller account, see Douglas V. Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 19, no. 2 (1989): 195–212, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.1989.tb00144.x.
27 Auguste Comte, Systeme de politique positive, 181, cited in Margaret S. Archer, Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3.
28 Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 102.
29 George C. Homans, “What Do We Mean by Social ‘Structure’?” in Peter Blau, ed., Approaches to the Study of Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1975), 53–65; Randall Collins, “On the Microfoundations of Macrosociology,” American Journal of Sociology 86 (1981): 984–1014, https://doi.org/10.1086/227351; Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (Berkeley: University of California Press,1981).
30 John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1874) VI, VII, 1.608.
31 Michael Novak, “Defining Social Justice,” First Things 108 (2000): 11–13, at 13.
32 See, for example, Daniel K. Finn, Consumer Ethics in a Global Economy (Washington, DC: Georgetown, 2019), chaps. 4 and 5.
33 For a more complete argument, see Finn, Moral Agency within Structures and Culture.
34 Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure.”
35 Dave Elder-Vass, The Reality of Social Construction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 9.
36 Candice Millard, River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 202.
37 As critical realist philosopher Roy Bhaskar put it, “Society stands to individuals then as something that they never make, but that exists only in virtue of their activity.” Roy Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences (London: Routledge, 2015), 34.
38 Margaret S. Archer, Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 106; emphasis in original.
39 Samuel Gregg, Economic Thinking for the Theologically Minded (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002).
40 Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988).
41 Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail (New York: Random House, 2012).
42 Daly, The Structures of Virtue and Vice, 53.
43 Kelly, “The Nature and Operation of Structural Sin,” 301; emphasis in the original.
44 Kathryn Tanner, Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019).
45 Kelly, “The Nature and Operation of Structural Sin,” 308. Kelly seems to recognize, in his use of the definition of incentives from Ruth Grant, that “incentives” should not merely be understood as economic (306). We are unclear why his proposed definition seems to reinstate this division, instead of saying “social and economic incentives,” though he later claims that the use of “social idealization” allows for “adding greater precision to the social scientific insight.”
46 Christian Smith, What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 349–50.
47 Neil A. Lewis, “Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Reported After Abu Ghraib Disclosures,” New York Times, December 8, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/08/politics/iraqi-prisoner-abuse-reported-after-abu-ghraib-disclosures.html.
48 Paul Sonne and Mary Ilyushina, “Inside Russia’s Propaganda Bubble: Where a War Isn’t a War,” Washington Post, March 17, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/17/russia-information-firewall-ukraine-war/.
49 Smith, What Is a Person?, 370.
50 Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA, “SECAM: ‘Climate Change Holds Back Potential for Development,’ Cardinal Ambongo’s Address,” AMECEA Social Communications, October 21, 2022, http://communications.amecea.org/index.php/2022/10/21/secam-climate-change-holds-back-potential-for-development-cardinal-ambongos-address/.
51 Smith, What Is a Person?, 323–24.
52 Justin Nortey, “More Houses of Worship Are Returning to Normal Operations, but In-Person Attendance Is Unchanged Since Fall,” Pew Research Center, March 22, 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/22/more-houses-of-worship-are-returning-to-normal-operations-but-in-person-attendance-is-unchanged-since-fall/?utm_source=AdaptiveMailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=REL%20-%2022-03-22%20Worship%20attendance&org=982&lvl=100&ite=9703&lea=2048393&ctr=0&par=1&trk=a0D3j0000112O9dEAE.
53 Sarah Mervosh and Ashley Wu, “Math Scores Fell in Nearly Every State, and Reading Dipped on National Exam,” New York Times, October 24, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/24/us/math-reading-scores-pandemic.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20221024&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=cta®i_id=39542080&segment_id=110894&user_id=0b4fae88b753e7078bee78176ae81221.
54 Tony Keith, “Protesters over George Floyd’s Death Block I-25 in Denver, Closing the Highway,” KKTV, May 28, 2020, https://www.kktv.com/content/news/Protesters-over-George-Floyds-death-block-I-25-in-Denver-closing-the-highway–570852931.html.
55 Archer, Realist Social Theory, 201; italics in the original.
56 For example, the German diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart has allowed lay preaching since 1971. The Tablet, 277, 9495, March 25, 2023.
57 John Barnard, American Vanguard: The United Auto Workers During the Reuther Years, 1935–1970 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2004).