Epikeia: Why Common Sense Trumps Legalism
Wiktionary erroneously defines epikeia as "the principle in ethics that a law can be broken to achieve a greater good." Of course, the notion that the end justifies the means can never be squared with Catholic moral theology. As soon as one believes that the end justifies the means, one approaches the moral theology heresies of consequentialism and proportionalism. I blogged against those errors here in a post called The Greater Good is Not a Catholic Moral System especially when applied to forcing people to take an experimental injection "for the greater good" a couple years ago. But St. Thomas Aquinas did hold epikeia to be an important virtue. St. Thomas essentially [...]
