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Book Review: Anna Rowlands: Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times

orders—on virtue formation. Positing moral luck seems to serve rhetorical value in prompting the response that luck should have no impact on virtue. Thus, it is not clear what labelling wealth and poverty “moral luck” contributes to Ward’s analysis in the first and last chapters of how economic inequality is detrimental to the pursuit of virtue. After chapter 4’s simple yet wise definitions of wealth (“having more than we need”) and poverty (“lacking the goods necessary for a life worthy of human dignity”), Ward turns in chapter 5 to the ways that “wealth can function as moral luck” (164), focusing on how wealth grants an agent a “hyperagency” that easily deforms moral character, and leads one to regard wealth as an end in itself. (Again, while the possession of wealth may indeed constitute “luck,” it is not clear that the exercise of hyperagency or over-prioritization of wealth are rightly so labeled, or what such a designation adds, even if accurate.) Ward proceeds, in a manner categorized by her eight virtues, to give examples of and data on how wealth can be morally deforming. Chapter 6 similarly supplies studies and examples of the negative impact of poverty on moral formation in a manner categorized by these eight virtues. Following Tessman and liberation theologians, Ward is of course wary of contributing to the common trope that the poor deserve their lot because they are morally inferior. But in part relying on “their own accounts of their lives” (203), Ward thinks it crucial to recognize how “poverty can impede the pursuit of virtue through its impact on communities, practices, and self-regard” (202). The synthesizing chapter 7 details how economic inequality “exacerbates wealth’s threats to virtue,” and “heightens the impact” of poverty on the “virtue pursuit of poor persons” (209), thus completing her argument that economic inequality impedes the pursuit of virtue for those at both ends of the spectrum. The chapter concludes with proposed solutions to inequality, ranging from the governmental (e.g., Universal Basic Income), to the “theological” (e.g., encounter, conversion, satisfaction with contentment), to Christian communal practices (e.g., tithing and political action). In line with Ward’s earlier claim of continuity between Christian and non-Christian accounts of virtue, one might ask if these latter two are inherently Christian or simply constitutive of true communal flourishing. Despite the presence of the terms “virtue” and “moral luck” in the title, these topics function mainly as platforms to address the real strength and innovation of Ward’s book, namely, her argument about how economic inequality (rather than simply poverty) impedes the pursuit of virtue in the wealthy and poor alike.