Kate Jackson-Meyer’s Tragic Dilemmas in Christian Ethics and the use of cases and portraiture invites me to reconsider a return to dilemmas, but in a new frame, in teaching moral theology and ethics, particularly as these dilemmas surface in medical and healthcare contexts. When I teach courses in ethics, I tend to focus on the contributions of virtue ethics and themes in Catholic social teaching (human dignity, participation in the common good, and solidarity with the poor and vulnerable), which allows me to do the important work of broadening the scope of ethical analysis and reflection beyond the dilemma-based approaches. Jackson-Meyer asks me to revisit this pedagogical choice and reconsider the importance of recognizing and responding to tragic dilemmas.

According to Jackson-Meyer, “A moral dilemma is an ethical situation that cannot be fully resolved because an agent is unable to fulfill all her moral obligations. A tragic dilemma is a special kind of dilemma that involves great harm.” (17) Great harm arises when we choose between multiple nonnegotiable commitments to life and care for the vulnerable. She argues further that, “for Christians, nonnegotiable moral requirements are rooted in others’ sacred humanity and vulnerabilities and recognized by Augustinian lament. These situations are inherently wrong and tragic, so what constitutes moral dilemmas in the Christian view are by definition tragic dilemmas. I argue that culpability is often twofold, including both personal moral responsibility and social moral responsibility whenever tragic dilemmas arise from unjust social structures.” (109) Agents in tragic dilemmas often suffer moral injury (124) when they act to advance one nonnegotiable commitment and sacrifice another, experiencing a lasting “repugnance of the will” from the Thomistic frame. (114)

Tragic Dilemmas employs several medical and healthcare related cases in which the common denominator is the rationing of limited and expensive medical treatments—for example, decisions made about who would be eligible for a ventilator or even a hospital stay. During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals had to make what felt like unprecedented choices for well-equipped U.S. hospitals and experienced patient death on a scale they had not imagined. For healthcare workers in many under-served and under-resourced parts of the world, these dilemmas were nothing new.

Consider the context described by Tracy Kidder in Mountains beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (a perennial favorite in my theological ethics courses and in the courses of my colleagues who teach biology, sociology, anthropology, and political science). Mountains beyond Mountains chronicles the work of Paul Farmer and the organization he founded to bring quality healthcare to the people in the central plateau of Haiti, Partners in Health (PIH). Farmer and his fellow PIHers made difficult, even tragic, choices each day, in the midst of impoverished conditions. Kidder’s description of the experience is powerful and illustrative of the kinds of harm wrought by tragic dilemmas. It is worth quoting here at length:

In modern medical usage, triage has two different meanings, nearly opposite. In situations where doctors and nurses and tools are limited . . . one performs triage by attending first to the severely wounded who have the best chance of survival. The aim is to save as many as possible; the others may have to die unattended. . . . in well-staffed and well-stocked American emergency rooms . . . triage isn’t supposed to imply withholding care from anyone; rather, it’s identifying the patients in the gravest danger and giving them priority.

(Farmer) has constructed his life around this second kind of triage. What else is a “preferential option for the poor” in medicine? Walking behind him, I say there must always be situations (in the central plateau of Haiti) where the choice to do one necessary thing also means the choice not to do another—not just to defer the other but not to do it.

“All the time,” (Farmer) says.

“Throughout your whole career you’ve had to face this, right?”
“Yes. I do it every day. Do this instead of that. Every day all day long, that’s all I do. Is not do things.”1

In the context of structural violence wrought by poverty, political insecurity, racism, sexism, colonialism, and capitalism, the work of providing healthcare to people in poverty is one relentless tragic dilemma. It is not a dilemma brought on by a sudden extraordinary circumstance, like COVID-19, but rather a day-in and day-out, constant crisis of scarcity that is imposed by the choices of people with power and privilege, choices that no doubt benefit me and many of my students at some level.

On the face of it, it seems ridiculous to talk about the moral culpability of people like Paul Farmer and PIHers when they make tragic choices about how their limited resources will be deployed. These healthcare professionals are doing far, far more than most to mitigate the harms over which they have little or no control. They have acted mercifully and “entered the chaos” of poverty, illness, sexism, and political instability with their very lives.2 What benefit do we get from assigning culpability for choices to treat one patient over another, or to provide treatment for many and live with the loss of one patient whose treatment might be too costly? Or to go to great expense for one patient and deplete resources that could be used by many?

Farmer locates the culpability squarely with the powerful, with a system infected by greed. He fights “the long defeat” of those who take the side of the poorest patients in the world. That PIHers might be battle-weary is understandable. Would assigning culpability or blame not add insult to injury?

The category of tragic dilemmas proposed by Jackson-Meyer does not have its eye on blame, but rather on agency, accountability, vulnerability, suffering, and the moral injury caused by these constrained decisions. Healthcare professionals practicing with few resources in conditions of poverty and the diseases that have their own preferential option for the poor are exercising moral agency that must be acknowledged and indeed honored with practices of repair. To deny their agency is to deny their experiences of both tragedy and mercy. Jackson-Meyer argues, “an agent is responsible for an action she carries out but was not complicit in creating. This is because the agent chooses the action and because agency is broad and relational.” (115) If a case is simply resolved, as if it were a mere academic exercise, “there is little reason to identify the faulty social context of the situation” and so “[d]enying the reality of tragic dilemmas is a cultural idea that supports structures of injustice by ignoring and obscuring a facet of harm that structural injustices cause.” (122) If Christians care about the structural violence that forces these choices, then they must also be present to those who make them.

If we ought not tie these tragic cases up in neat bows, what is the ethical response? Jackson-Meyer turns to Augustine for lament “as both guide and response to tragic dilemmas in the Christian view” because it offers a “profound realization of the tragedy of an event” in which moral agents are unable to fulfill moral obligations. (113) We hear lament, a plea for justice and liberation, in the voice of Paul Farmer as he tells the story of Partners in Health in Haiti and around the globe. Lament is not mere regret, or a vague (or even powerful) wishing that things were not so. In teaching medical and healthcare ethics today, I am less compelled by Jackson-Meyer’s example of the judge involved in torture. To introduce and advance Jackson-Meyer’s claims about Augustinian lament in my classes, I would turn toward a view of lament that is embodied and oriented toward liberation through personal and social practices, particularly within Black communities.

In “Just Awailing and Aweeping: Grief, Lament, and Hope as We Face the End of Life,” Christian ethicist Emilie Townes offers a stunning vision of lament as she shares her experience of her mother’s death. Though not an example of Jackson-Meyer’s concept of tragic dilemma, Townes speaks of “bone-deep sorrow and hard decisions” and consciously reentering “the grieving process in ways that are far from intellectual but are as present for me as my breathing in and out and the pounding of my still-broken heart.”3 Drawing on prophetic figures in the Hebrew Bible, Townes draws us deeper into lament as “the beginning of the healing process” for which we require divine aid. She writes, “If we learn anything from prophets like Ezekiel, it is to know that the healing of brokenness and injustice, of social sin and degradation, of fractured relationships, of spiritual doubts and fears, and of the body begins with an unrestrained lament—that starts from our toenails and is a shout by the time it gets to the ends of the strands of our hair.”4

Reading about Partners in Health in Mountains beyond Mountains gives us a glimpse of lament. In Paul Farmer’s own writing his lament screams off the page.5 In tragic dilemmas we are in “some mess” as Townes calls it and “[l]ament helps us put words to our suffering, and when we can name it, we begin to see the contours of allowing our faith to help us into the loss—whatever its extent—to help us bear it.”6 For Townes, as for Jackson-Meyer, lament “kept the question of justice visible and legitimate” in the context of good healthcare for Black lives.

Another Black theologian whose work draws my students further into this conversation about tragedy, justice, liberation, and lament is Cole Arthur Riley. In This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us and Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human, Riley orients lament for communities of faith. For Riley, lament is deeply rooted in a commitment to the world’s goodness. Laments are not primarily about educating others about injustice but rather summoning us to envision and work toward a world characterized by justice and liberation. What then does lament look like in our day on the personal and social level? According to Riley, “When you practice lament with intentionality, you claim agency in your own emotional life. It’s not sinking, it’s steadying . . . You cry and don’t apologize for it. You tell stories. You name exactly what has been stolen . . . With every wail, you become more human. Every ache, an admission that something mattered.”7

Looking at tragic dilemmas through Jackson-Meyer’s lens, with attention to lament and repair, is not a mere return to quandary-based ethics or an abstract analysis of the “hard cases.” Her use of lament brings us deeper into the tragedy experienced by individual moral agents, the structures of violence that force these choices, and our complicity in perpetuating those structures. (129) We see ourselves as agents in the dilemma: “Recognizing mitigated personal responsibility for tragic dilemmas reveals the extent of harm of unjust structures. The category of tragic dilemmas demands that we identify personal and social guilt, and this, in turn, is a way to identify social problems that we must overcome.” (123) The ethics of lament we encounter in the work of Black scholars like Emilie Townes resonates with this view and exposes what is at stake for Christian ethics today: “any religion that suppresses lament . . . is most likely a pitiful wasteland that consecrates blindness as faithfulness, timidity as love, and arrogance as hope.”8

Moral languages are meant to do many things. Highlight and order goods. Motivate agents. Prescribe right actions and condemn wrong. Provide ideals beyond what is possible. And allow us to live amid what is possible. This is, of course, too much for any one language to do. As often happens, our words do not measure up to the fullness of the beautiful, the true, and the good.

Perhaps nowhere is moral language more strained than when approaching tragic dilemmas. These are situations in which goods resistant to comparison or hierarchical ordering come into conflict, one is obligated to undertake incompatible actions, ideals are broken, and even the stability of the self is threatened by the limits of what is possible.

Unsurprisingly, such situations have been the site of significant arguments amongst moralists. Those who see the primary function of moral language as offering clear action guidance have tended to deny the existence of such dilemmas. If morality is about providing, and having confidence in determinations of what to do at the moment, then it will do no good to dither, focusing on that which cannot be done. Tragic thinking serves to sap moral motivation, cloud practical rationality, and immobilize moral agents who could be achieving something. For the consequentialist who denies tragic dilemmas, such moping might lead to a betrayal of the greater good. For the deontologist, thinking that one must violate one or another absolute principle in some cases threatens to collapse the whole system of morality into relative judgments about the greater good. Both, for their divergent reasons, make common cause in defending the premise that “ought” implies “can.”

Moralists who focus more on ideals, character, and structural justice tend in the opposite direction. Our actions often fall short of realizing all true goods. Acknowledging the reality of tragic dilemmas forces us to accept that the self is fragile, intimately tied to and in part constituted by goods and relationships over which the self does not have control. Taking tragedy seriously allows us to acknowledge the spiritual and mental cost of our choices, many of which even those who deny the reality of dilemmas must acknowledge. Recognizing the costs of tragic decisions may also lead us to look more carefully at the conditions that led to the dilemmas we face. In this way, recognizing tragedy will allow us to revise flawed institutions that lead to such dilemmas. And, far from debilitating practical reasoning, the kind of sensitivity cultivated by attending to the tragic shape of some dilemmas will stop us from erasing the reality of some goods in our effort to keep our hands appearing clean.

The Christian tradition complicates the situation further. On the one hand, at the center of the Christian narrative sits a tragedy: the crucifixion. God sacrifices of God’s self to save a sinful world. As Kate Jackson-Meyer highlights in her treatment of Augustinian thought, this provides the resources for understanding how something like tragedies could exist given the morally broken nature of the world within Christianity.

At the same time, Christians have tended to avoid embracing the existence of tragic dilemmas. Reluctance emerges primarily from the wish to preserve a combination of claims about God’s goodness and God’s providence. If God curates the world, surely God would not leave people in situations where every choice was wrong in some strong sense.

In a contemporary world, however, with mounting psychological evidence of the reality of moral injury, the power of arguments from the problem of evil, and doubts about the effectiveness of God’s particular providence, the question of tragic dilemmas must be faced squarely and honestly. This is the task that Kate Jackson-Meyer has set for herself. Jackson-Meyer has done us the service of bringing these issues around tragic dilemmas, and treatments of these issues across Christian (and recent, secular) history together.

She is quite aware of the arguments of both pro- and anti-tragic thinkers. In providing her own account of these dilemmas, she attempts to steer a course between them. She acknowledges the reality of tragic dilemmas, but circumscribes their possibility within Christian thought. All truly tragic dilemmas are dilemmas where specific obligations come into conflict: dilemmas about one’s obligation to protect another life or render service to the vulnerable. Tragic dilemmas occur where one: (1) can deliberate about what action to take, (2) knows that all available actions will violate one of the above obligations, and (3) some action must be chosen.

The virtuous participant in the tragic dilemma will experience “repugnance of the will” at having to undertake the selected action, as there is a sense in which she does not want to do what she must do under the circumstances. She further takes responsibility for the act in a way that leads to mitigated culpability. In the tragic dilemma, the “sliver of autonomy” exhibited by the moral agent leads to a “sliver of moral responsibility.” (117) This responsibility is, however, mitigated by the situation, and often shared with others. This is because many of the conditions for tragic dilemmas are caused by social sin.

In support of her understanding of tragic dilemmas, Jackson-Meyer notes that many participants in war, where such dilemmas are common, experience moral injury. This is, on Jackson-Meyer’s account, a kind of conflict within the self, when the self is unable to integrate its actions into the narrative of its life. One of the benefits of Jackson-Meyer’s understanding of tragic dilemmas is that it allows the acknowledgment of feelings of guilt. To address the guilt of participation in tragic dilemmas, and to heal the moral injury of those who take part in them, Jackson-Meyer advocates communal rituals of lament and penance, in which individuals could find wholeness in the context of the broader narrative of God who enters into and suffers with the world.

Inevitably, attempting to thread the needle between the pro- and anti-tragedy camps opens Jackson-Meyer’s project up to challenges from multiple directions. For instance, to limit the effects of tragic thinking, Jackson-Meyer proposes a “very narrow scope” for these kinds of dilemmas. (113) Those who favor tragic views of the world may wonder why the scope of tragic dilemmas has been so narrowed. Jackson-Meyer has followed Lisa Tessman in saying that tragic dilemmas concern conflicts over non-negotiable goods, that is goods that are not immediately comparable, or exchangeable. But Jackson-Meyer then goes further to limit tragic dilemmas to conflicts among obligations to protect life or render service to the vulnerable.

It’s not clear exactly what is included under the obligation to the vulnerable. Presumably, these include something like obligations to provide goods necessary to some basic standard of living. If this is right, then both sets of obligations here are fundamentally about protecting life broadly defined. Jackson-Meyer argues convincingly that Christians are obligated to such duties. But why should Christians think that these are the only duties that could give rise to tragic dilemmas of the kind in which Jackson-Meyer is interested?

Imagine a scenario in which a person is in a plane crash and must either eat the body of a friend who has died or die oneself. Suppose further that the crash was the product of airlines trying to maximize profits by skimping on safety reviews. All of the arguments that Jackson-Meyer has made in favor of accepting tragic dilemmas seem to apply equally to such a case. If the person chooses to participate in cannibalism, the person is likely to be marred from the experience and feel guilty. The person might properly feel a secondary (remnant) obligation to do something for their dead friend’s family in the light of their action. It is right to see the dilemma as arising from social sin, which should now be addressed to reduce the chances of the dilemma recurring. And a ritual of reconciliation or forgiveness seems to be appropriate. But this does not appear to qualify as a tragic dilemma on Jackson-Meyer’s criteria. Why not?

Of course, on the opposite side, the deontologically inclined anti-tragedy theorist will be concerned about the possibility of expanding the category, and about the weakening of action-guiding rules that emerges from tragic thinking. On Jackson-Meyer’s account, obligations to life and the vulnerable are indissoluble and nonnegotiable, or fundamental oughts. (111–13) But despite such descriptions, these oughts are also not absolute action-guiding rules. If we are to call such fundamental moral standards breakable, will we have any moral language left to invoke when we come to actions that truly should never be done?

Jackson-Meyer is aware of the problem. She notes that Thomas Aquinas held that there are some “actions of extraordinary evil that can never be justified.” She suggests that this “grade” of actions was “apparently fairly obvious and not justifiable in any view.” (101) But surely the anti-tragedy deontologist will wonder what kinds of actions fall into this category today. Given debates between consequentialists and deontologists, are there any actions that can really not be justified in any view?

Take an example in which the deontologist will likely pine for a set of distinctions that seem to be lost in Jackson-Meyer’s account. Part of the usefulness of the traditional statement of the doctrine of double effect was that it highlighted the difference between (1) the intentional killing of a military combatant, (2) the unintentional killing of innocent bystanders, and (3) the intentional targeting of innocents as a means to achieve a military or political aim. These three kinds of acts could be distinguished in terms of moral grade, with the first two being permittable with different levels of regret, while the third was forbidden. Jackson-Meyer’s scheme eliminates the distinction between intended and unintended in the above scheme (all foreseen outcomes are intended) and doesn’t place any clear criteria for forbidding the latter. While Jackson-Meyer has “narrowed” the scope of tragic dilemmas in one sense, in this scenario she appears to have expanded the category in a way that locates each of these actions simply as tragic dilemmas. Is there not something lost in this transition? Are we left with any way to designate those apparently tragic options which should never be done?

Finally, those who are focused on the use of moral language as therapy might question the scheme of mitigated responsibility that Jackson-Meyer suggests is always present in tragic dilemmas. Jackson-Meyer is surely right that when it comes to a person who has processed their experience of a tragic dilemma in terms of guilt, it makes sense not to reject that experience, but rather to contextualize it in some ritual of reconciliation. But what about cases where a person has endured a tragic dilemma, but has not processed their experience in terms of guilt? It is one thing to offer Sophie (of Sophie’s Choice) a service of reconciliation if she feels guilty. It is quite another to try to convince her that she bears some guilt if she has come to terms with her experience in terms of regret without culpability.

The point seems important as there is the possibility of creating more, or aggravating, cases of moral injury. There certainly are soldiers who kill enemy combatants and experience moral injury and feelings of guilt. But there are also many who have come to peace with what they do as a regrettable necessity. Should the Church tell the latter group that they should be experiencing guilt? Should they take their lack of such feelings as a moral failing on their part? It’s not clear what Jackson-Meyer would advise in such cases. But were the church to take up her understanding of tragic dilemmas, these are potential implications.

In the end, I am not convinced that these challenges to Jackson-Meyer’s position are so much problems with her account of tragic dilemmas as they are indicators that when we come to such fraught areas there exists no one adequate framework for moral thought. Jackson-Meyer presents a compelling case that the Christian tradition has avoided talk of tragic dilemmas too long. She does an excellent job of articulating the benefits of tragic thinking, including promoting attention to the reality of goods that sometimes must be sacrificed, making sense of experiences of moral injury, and prompting moral criticism of the structural injustices that lead to tragic dilemmas. But while we need moral languages capable of highlighting these realities, we also need more casuistic languages to suss out moral differences among different kinds of acts, and schemes for addressing agents who process their experiences in different ways.

The ancient philosopher Plotinus once lamented that while God might simultaneously hold all knowledge in God’s mind, the human soul is condemned to consider one idea at a time. It seems to me that, especially as we reach the edges of our abilities to cope with life, we face these limitations. We find ourselves unable to articulate all that should be said about the complexity of the world in any one frame of thought. In such cases, it seems that what we need is not one definitive account of reality, but many different accounts which bump against one another, each emphasizing different facets of the reality at hand. In that context, Kate Jackson-Meyer has done a great service in arguing for a Christian moral language that acknowledges tragic dilemmas. It may not be the only one we need. But it is a needed one.

I. Introduction

In Tragic Dilemmas in Christian Ethics, Kate Jackson-Meyer compellingly argues for the existence of a “tragic dilemma,” an ethical situation where an agent faces significant harm and cannot fulfill all her moral obligations. (17) This persuasive theory uncovers the missing links between tragic experiences, grief, and healing, fostering a deeper appreciation of the suffering caused by various tragic situations involving injustice. Indeed, this theory is highly relevant to my ongoing inquiry into the daunting effects of colonization and militarization in the Marshall Islands, an island nation in the North Pacific. In this essay, I discuss examples of tragic dilemmas experienced in the Marshall Islands and pose some questions about the “tragic dilemma” that have emerged through my ongoing inquiry.

The Marshall Islands is a predominantly Christian society where Christian and traditional moral values coexist. Over the past century, the Marshallese people have endured distressing experiences resulting from a continuum of colonization, the Pacific War, and nuclear testing. While their transgenerational suffering may be characterized as grief, trauma, and moral injuries, certain connections remain unexplored. The theory of tragic dilemma addresses these gaps by facilitating a deeper inquiry into the relationship between tragic experiences, grief, and healing.

The theory permits (i) the articulation of the moral value that remains unfulfilled, thereby revealing the deeper causes of the moral agent’s grief and suffering; (ii) the attribution of the ultimate cause of moral violation to structural sins, thus enabling discussions of unfulfilled moral responsibilities without assigning blame to the moral agents; and (iii) approaches to the “practice of healing” grounded in the recognition of unfulfilled obligations, within a caring framework of the Christian narrative and church communities, akin to the concept of restorative justice.

In examining the historical context of tragic dilemmas within the modern history of the Marshall Islands, two pertinent questions arise. The first question concerns whether the concept is applicable exclusively to perpetrators, or if it can also extend to victims who bear no culpability. The second question addresses whether the framework of moral values should be restricted to Christian moral values, or if it can encompass other foundational values, such as traditional values, that define moral values within that specific Christian society. With these questions in mind, I will first present a concise overview of the Marshall Islands (Sections II and III), followed by an examination of militarization and the consequent tragic dilemmas in the Marshall Islands (Section IV), culminating in a discussion of my questions (Section V).

II. Christianization of the Marshall Islands

The Christian faith and its associated institutions are deeply ingrained in the social fabric of the Marshall Islands. The introduction of Christianity to the Marshall Islands occurred in 1857, facilitated by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). During the initial phase of their missionary endeavors, several missionaries experienced severe illness due to the challenging living conditions on the atolls. Consequently, the ABCFM delegated the mission work to Hawaiian missionaries and promoted the early development of local pastors and the self-governance of the church. The endorsement and support of evangelization by the traditional chiefs of the Marshall Islands facilitated the steady spread of Christianity, leading to the establishment of churches across major atolls and islands. By the time Germany colonized the Marshall Islands in 1887, Christianity and its churches had become integral social and cultural institutions within the island communities.1

III. Colonization and Militarization of the Marshall Islands

Prior to achieving independence as the Republic of the Marshall Islands in 1986, the 33 atolls and islands were successively governed by Germany (1887–1914), Japan (1914–1944), and the United States (1944–1986). This century-long period of colonization also entailed significant militarization, which contributed to the context of structural injustices that led to a series of tragic dilemmas among the Marshallese people, as will be elaborated below.

In 1914, the Japanese military seized control of the Marshall Islands from colonial Germany, which was embroiled in World War I. Subsequently, the Treaty of Versailles (1919) placed the Marshall Islands, along with other former German colonies in Micronesia, under the League of Nations as its mandated territory, with Japan appointed as the administrator.2 In the late 1930s, the Japanese military commenced the construction of various naval bases across the Marshall Islands. The outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941 resulted in catastrophic destruction of several islands and the loss of an indeterminate number of Marshallese lives.3

In 1944, the United States Navy took control of the Marshall Islands and subsequently decided to conduct nuclear weapon tests on the Bikini and Enewetak atolls. Between 1946 and 1958, a total of 67 nuclear weapons were detonated, resulting in the destruction of several islands and serious contamination of various atolls within the Marshall Islands. Scientists have estimated that the radioactive substances released by these 67 nuclear tests were equivalent to the detonation of 7,200 Hiroshima atomic bombs.4

IV. Tragic Dilemmas in the Marshall Islands

These military operations imposed a series of traumatic experiences on the Marshallese people. At first glance, one might view these affected Marshallese people as “passive” victims of militarization. However, the lens of tragic dilemmas reveals otherwise. While “victims” were involuntarily exposed to numerous highly constrained situations, victims in those situations also had to take a stream of difficult decisions and actions as “active” moral agents. These decisions and actions entailed an array of tragic dilemmas that further produced subsequent tragic dilemmas. Indeed, as I discuss below, the transgenerational tragic dilemmas of a highly collective and communal nature have prevailed for several decades.

As previously mentioned, the Japanese military, in the late 1930s, constructed several naval bases across the Marshall Islands. However, the Marshallese tradition attaches sacred values to their islands; they are sacred ancestral lands that bond past, current, and future generations. For them, islands represent their lives, livelihoods, and identity. For centuries, islanders have sustained their islands intact, honored their ancestors, and protected sources of livelihood and culture for future generations.56

Having to forego this moral obligation by scraping the vegetation to clear the land for constructing military facilities, and joining the construction work, would have constituted highly distressing “tragic dilemmas.” To survive (i.e., protect the lives of community members) under the brutal military regime, they had no choice but to obey orders. Yet, this meant foregoing their equally non-negotiable sacred obligation to protect their islands. I realize that this interpretation may be stepping out of the parameters of Christian moral obligation. I will come back to this point in Section V.

Next, the Pacific War brought starvation to several atolls as the massive deployment of soldiers suddenly surged the population of otherwise tranquil and sparsely populated atolls. Islanders were forced to feed starving soldiers, foregoing their responsibility to feed their own families and community members. In addition, there were incidents in which islanders were beheaded, shot, or hit by bombs and grenades. Such incidents caused moral and tragic dilemmas in survivors, having been unable to protect and save the lives of family and friends.7 This distress would have exacerbated and prolonged the agonizing griefs and sorrows of their losses.

In my assessment, these survivors were both victims of war and “active” moral agents. They faced tragic dilemmas, necessitating difficult decisions and actions that involved relinquishing certain non-negotiable moral obligations to safeguard their own lives and those of others. They were compelled to act (or refrain from acting) against their own desires. Consequently, although they were not culpable, they nonetheless endured moral injuries due to their unfulfilled will to save lost lives, which likely exacerbated their grief. Furthermore, the Pacific War disasters were succeeded by 67 nuclear weapon tests, resulting in multidimensional and transgenerational effects on the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands. I will discuss below several examples of transgenerational dilemmas encountered by the people of Bikini, Eniwetok, and Rongelap atolls.

As previously stated, islands serve as sources of livelihood and identity for Marshallese people. In other words, islands and people’s lives are valued equally. In 1946 and 1947, the residents of Bikini and Enewetak were compelled to vacate their ancestral islands to facilitate the construction of nuclear weapon test facilities. They were informed by the U.S. military that the facility was intended for world peace and the betterment of humanity.

The residents consented to relocate because, as Christians, they recognized the significance of “peace”; they were also deeply affected by the war and the power of the U.S. military.89 However, since their relocation, spanning nearly 80 years, they have been unable to care for their islands, having been displaced across “temporary” settlements within and outside the Marshall Islands. They have been unable to return to their home islands, as northern Eniwetok never became habitable, and Bikini was declared uninhabitable in 1978 due to excessive radioactive contamination rendering it unsafe for humans.10 This situation has resulted in people from these areas losing their ability to fulfill obligations to protect their ancestral islands. Although they did not cause this loss, accepting the quasi-permanent loss of their home island also entails relinquishing their non-negotiable moral obligation. Hence, a sense of tragic dilemma persists.

The Rongelap community presents another instance of a transgenerational tragic dilemma. Although Rongelap was not a designated nuclear weapon test site, its inhabitants endured significant physical, psychological, cultural, and environmental repercussions due to radioactive fallout from nuclear tests, which severely contaminated their islands. Notably, in 1954, the detonation of the Bravo hydrogen bomb, the most powerful ever tested on Earth and 1,000 times more potent than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, occurred on Bikini. This event released substantial radioactive fallout over Rongelap and other areas of the Marshall Islands, resulting in severe illnesses and premature deaths among Rongelap residents, including typhoid, cancer, and leukemia. Over the decades, women have experienced numerous miscarriages and stillbirths, and some have given birth to infants with severe deformities. Even children born decades after the Bravo test suffered from growth disorders and other physical impairments.11

The Rongelap community had engaged in prolonged deliberations regarding the life-threatening consequences of radioactive contamination. In 1985, 30 years after the Bravo test, the community made the difficult collective decision to relocate to the uninhabited island of Mejatto in Kwajalein Atoll, which is approximately 95 miles from Rongelap. This relocation, although challenging, was undertaken to safeguard the lives and future of their children. The community’s deliberations reflect collective tragic dilemmas, characterized by a constant tension between the nonnegotiable obligations to protect their lives and sustain their ancestral lands.

Since relocation, the community has faced formidable challenges in daily survival on Mejatto, a previously uninhabited island. Their tragic dilemmas persist, as they remain caught between the unfulfilled obligation to sustain their ancestral home islands and the necessity of temporarily living elsewhere to protect lives and the vulnerable. These transgenerational dilemmas have persisted for 70 years.

V. Questions

Thus far, I have examined the tragic dilemmas faced by the Marshallese people precipitated by colonization, the Pacific War, and nuclear testing. Nonetheless, two pertinent questions remain: (i) whether the concept is applicable to victims who bear no culpability and (ii) whether the scope of moral values can be expanded to encompass non-Christian traditional moral values within a predominantly Christian society.

I propose affirming both for the following reasons: First, as elaborated in Section IV, the concept of tragic dilemmas facilitates a deeper exploration of the causes of suffering and grief experienced by surviving victims. Although these individuals did not instigate these offenses (and are thus not culpable), they endured suffering as moral agents, as they were unable to protect the lives sacrificed due to these offenses. Second, the case of the Marshall Islands illustrates a Christian society, in which Christian and traditional moral values coexist. In the context of the Marshall Islands, protecting lives and the vulnerable entails sustaining their islands, which provides not only sustenance but also cultural and social foundations that bind their communities, serving as a safety net.

The three communities of Bikini, Eniwetok, and Rongelap all encountered tragic dilemmas, having to choose between non-negotiable obligations—protecting lives and the vulnerable versus honoring and sustaining ancestral islands, which are sources of their lives, livelihoods, and identities. These communities opted to protect their lives and future of children by adhering to non-negotiable Christian values. However, the islands they relinquished remain equally significant. Consequently, their unfulfilled obligation to sustain their lost home islands persists, generating a complex amalgamation of painful regrets and profound grief.

Moral injury has, like trauma discourse before it, taken off as a concept, first in the midst of the longest series of wars waged by the United States, and then again, in a domestic context, to describe the suffering of those who work in medical contexts. One reason for this is our lack of concepts or vocabulary to describe harms that hit us in places we refer to poetically or theologically as the “soul,” or one’s deepest, truest self. Who, indeed, is raised with a language of devastation, when having such a language already available implies one’s community has experienced far more than it should of devastation? And if, as philosophers like Miranda Fricker have argued, a lack of vocabulary can be a form of injustice—epistemic injustice—which is the denial of expression and recognition of profound harms, a denial that heaps harm atop harm, then such a lack is an indictment not only against one’s culture but also the intellectual labors that have suppressed both through omission and commission more epistemically just structures and language.1

Kate Jackson-Meyer’s work, I believe, has as one of its chief virtues, in a work largely about virtue, the insight that our philosophies or theologies too often do not match human experience. Her exploration of Augustinian and Thomistic traditions illustrates that such figures have been reluctant to admit what most people take as a truism, that life can leave one with poor choices, even tragic ones, that can make the labor required for crafting a meaningful moral life seem impossible and not worth the effort. I especially admire Jackson-Meyer’s reach toward tragic dilemmas, which affirms a category that can allow us to better explore, and more compassionately describe, contexts where choice is impossible yet must nevertheless be made. It is impossible because, to paraphrase Jonathan Shay, the stakes are so high, but also, because no matter what one chooses, one will harm or fail someone or something that should not be so harmed.2 It is a sign not only of a careful but a caring scholar, when they challenge received knowledge to better reflect what human beings actually experience. The curation of concepts and the expansion of language is an expansion of the possibilities of the human itself.

It has always puzzled me why anyone would deny the existence of dilemmas, as they seem so obviously a part of life. Saying that dilemmas are not true based on logical dicta seems not only wrong but cruel. What is at stake in the denial of dilemmas is the denial of both human experience and those contexts that can result in despair. Saying that one is not actually at fault in a dilemma—that circumstances can exceed our agency, and seemingly easily, at that—can, of course, be therapeutic and part of a process that can help one see that sometimes context exceeds agency, even dreadfully so. Jackson-Meyer’s insistence on the concept of a tragic moral dilemma, and not just moral dilemmas, recognizes this reality—an area of experience in this age of genocide and now global warming that is not rare and will become even more so with each passing decade. Jackson-Meyer, then, is not just making a case for moral dilemmas. She is making a case that moral dilemmas open the human person to devastation. And well it should be made, as what philosophy or theology could make sense of our world without such recognition of the difficulties that line the road through a good life? In formal, academic prose, denial of dilemmas can seem like nothing less than the denial of one’s humanity grounded in unasked-for experience.

It gives me heart to see Jackson-Meyer making the case that theology and Christian ethics need to reflect such experience. If we quote the playwright Terence, “I am human, I consider nothing human alien to me,” we can see that Jackson-Meyer translates that aim into a prescription for scholars, and in particular, ethicists, that we would all do well to heed.3

This book raises a number of questions, as well it should, as I see it as a book of beginnings, opening up to further discussions and possibilities. One issue that kept coming up for me as I read is the specter of theodicy that seems to haunt the book. For some theologies, at least, recognizing that there are dilemmas so dire that they can “mar” one, as Rosalind Hursthouse describes it, or undo one’s character, according to Shay, raises the question: how can such things happen in a divinely created world? One can always gesture in answer to the fallenness of the world and the existence of sin. Such an answer, however, has for some time now felt old and worn, a diversion from the stark cruelty of living that does not so much reveal aspects of life but instead forecloses further scrutiny from the start. And, it is a move too well suited for letting one’s concept of God off the hook, for squaring holes that perhaps should remain round. One reason for this scholarly propensity is what Jackson-Meyer has argued is a long-term denial of dilemmas in Christian ethics. It is reluctance by giants in the Christian ethical tradition that the possibility of one’s character being marred, of a “soul injury,” seems to undermine claims of a good creation overseen by a loving deity. In other words, moral dilemmas, and especially tragic dilemmas, create a theological, and in particular, a theodical problem.

I do not want this to come across as an unfair question to place before the author. Jackson-Meyer did not sign up to write a systematic theology nor a theory of God. Hers is an intervention in ethics and that should be held foremost in the mind. Nevertheless, theodicy does seem to be one of the elephants in the room. This is one of the issues I have thought about when thinking of what Jackson-Meyer refers to as “tragic moral dilemmas”—its relation to theology. Can we still call creation good if it holds out experience that deadens one’s character, one’s interiority, and one’s ability to find meaning in everyday life? If such dilemmas are inescapable in this life, even if only for a minority, is it not proper or even morally necessary to call such existence cruel, even if the majority flourish? This is one of the reasons that Lisa Tessman has argued one cannot consider one’s life good if it is a life that allows the debasement of others.4

This is not the focus of Jackson-Meyer’s book, and so is not a criticism of the text. Instead, I am noting that any such discussion will necessarily create a theological aporia, or at least a tension I am not confident can be bridged, between the experience of such moral conflict and more maximal Christian claims of God’s love and goodness. We tend to focus on healing and aftermath when thinking of these issues pastorally, or even ethically, but it seems insufficient for God to enter only after the fact of harm to pick up the pieces, especially when so many people will be left devastated, in one form or another, for the rest of their lives, at least to a degree. Such questions are, however, central to what I wrestle with as a scholar and a human, and I feel I would be less than forthcoming if I did not share this reaction. How is God not reduced when one’s soul or character is the price of one’s continued life?

At this point, I want to turn toward more ethical ground. Moral responsibility is, of course, a central concept in discussions of dilemmas. So much of dilemmic discourse rises and falls on issues of agency, the consequences of constraint on that agency, and moral evaluations of the constrained agent. One of Jackson-Meyer’s central claims is summed up in the line, “Moral responsibility, however, is diminished when acting with repugnance of the will.” (128) Responsibility has different definitions in different contexts, and I take Jackson-Meyer to mean one is morally liable or culpable for the action. “Repugnance of the will” is a concept the author takes from Aquinas, and an attitude of repugnance toward the action one feels they must take mitigates one’s culpability as an agent. This repugnance, if I understand the argument, is important particularly in tragic dilemmas, where what is chosen is not interchangeable nor more worthy than what was not, and in particular, from dilemmas involving the sanctity of life and human vulnerability.

Jackson-Meyer argues, then, that such an attitude, if that is the right way to describe “repugnance of the will,” limits one’s moral responsibility when one has to choose something that would seem to violate an important value, commitment, or relationship. One is less culpable when one looks at their necessary choice with such repugnance. This for me gets into the question of grammatical persons. From a third-person perspective, one may be able to say, with a degree of objectivity perhaps, that one cannot be considered fully responsible for a tragically dilemmic choice. Even if it is their choice, they did not choose to be in such an impossible situation. If we turn toward the first-person perspective and ask the agent how they feel, however, they may reply differently than the third-person might expect. The agent might push back and say, I feel completely responsible. I didn’t want the choice, but it was my hand that held the weapon and pulled the trigger—or it is my lungs, my breath, that said the terrible, irretractable thing.

We can see this dynamic in an example that both Shay discusses and Jackson-Meyer references. (126) This is a case of whether or not in battle to shoot a combatant who had strapped a young child to his body, presumably as a living shield. One could argue that a soldier chose to be in that situation, since the United States, at least, has an all-volunteer military. This is what the soldier wanted; this is what they chose. It is not truly fair, however, to say one chose such a situation, even if one volunteered for the military. Given the class and racial inequities in the enlisted military population, which muddy questions of choice, people enter into such professions and institutions for various reasons, including a lack of alternative opportunities or because of narratives they internalized that obscure the reality of war and military life and make sweet that which can embitter. For Jackson-Meyer, having the stance of repugnance for what one must do, or what one must choose—and which seems a fair description of the marine’s outlook—will limit the soldier’s culpability. What happens, however, when this third-person claim clashes with first-person experience? Someone like the soldier in that position could insist that they are more responsible than a neutral, third-party might agree with. Theirs is the finger on the trigger, the soldier might say, as soldiers have. Their body was part of the weapon that killed the child. It may even feel morally necessary for them to accept all or most of the blame, unless one lets themselves off the hook.

Indeed, Nancy Sherman has argued that in such situations, the problem is that morally injured persons tend to believe they have more agency than they should.5 Tragic moral dilemmas that mar in a way similar to moral injury—which is a central interpretive and constructive move in Jackson-Meyer’s book—can, in at least some situations, make one feel largely responsible, a feeling that they are not less but more culpable. This will not be true of all cases, but in the one Shay mentions, it seems clear that one could reasonably assume such repugnance in the soldier, who did not desire to shoot. We can find that repugnance, or at least reluctance, from another example, as well, one of a soldier who killed a young boy in Afghanistan, who said, “You know it’s wrong. But . . . you have no choice.” (126) Such repugnance is present, but at least from the first-person point of view, it seems not so much to lessen culpability as it does, possibly, to overwhelm one with recognition of what happened and, in their eyes, weigh them down with the dull lead of moral responsibility. The statement—“you have no choice”—may reflect repugnance but it also may reflect despair at the impossible, grim situation they find themselves trapped in. Such despair does not aid in limiting culpability but instead can make one feel profoundly culpable, even monstrous. How does the attitude of repugnance work in the presence of other, overwhelming attitudes? How does one make sure that repugnance of the will is not just a formal, ethical principle but can engage the difficult attitudes that arise with tragic moral dilemmas?

It may be that part of being a responsible person is a vulnerability to taking on responsibility that is not an accurate or even fair representation of one’s agency, and in doing so, tear something in one’s character, one’s soul. There is a possible tension, then, between the third-person, scholarly evaluation and the first-person, phenomenological experience of dilemma.

Tragic Dilemmas in Christian Ethics has given me much food for thought. It has pushed me out of my comfort zone and opened up different ways of thinking and debating with regard to complex moral issues, as the author herself grapples with demanding questions of responsibility, vulnerability, and morality. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share some of my questions and insights here, and I hope the book has the wide and attentive readership that it deserves.

Rather than attempting a comprehensive survey of an intricately detailed study, I’ll focus on two aspects of this richly textured and multi-dimensional work: (a) the challenge of “tragic dilemmas” in the context of everyday life, and some of the questions I’d pose from a feminist perspective; and (b) the role of the contextualized Christian community in offering healing to those traumatized and suffering moral injury from being caught up in tragic dilemmas. I offer a summary of the arguments that most pertain to my questions.

Like Jackson-Meyer, my positioning is that of “a Roman Catholic, . . . white, upper-middle-class, and educated woman.” (6) Unlike her, I am not American, and one of my reservations is to do with the lack of any acknowledgement that this demanding vision of Christian ethics rooted in communal practices of support and solidarity emerges from within a culture that is deeply conflicted along political and ethical lines. How do Catholic ethicists deal with hostile confrontations in a bitterly divided Church? How might Christian communities at either end of the socio-political spectrum adopt Jackson-Meyer’s proposals for healing? What difference does context make in terms of communities in different cultural, geographical, and socio-economic environments? Maybe these questions can form part of our ongoing discussion.

Tragic Dilemmas

Jackson-Meyer sets out to fill what she sees as a lacuna in theories concerning moral and tragic dilemmas by asking how these might relate to Christian ethics, and how a theory of Christian healing might be relevant for those experiencing the trauma of tragic dilemmas.

She differentiates between moral dilemmas and tragic dilemmas, limiting her definition of tragic dilemmas not to feelings of guilt or moral damage, but to a Christian ethical account of non-negotiable obligations which requires the protection of human life and the vulnerable, even in situations in which these demands cannot be met:

Protecting life and protecting the vulnerable are pillars of Christian ethics. Duties for the disciples of Christ always involve these commitments, so the obligations these produce cannot be eliminated even when Christians are unable to fulfill them. . . . Tragedy occurs when one is unable to fulfill these fundamental oughts, for at stake are lives and basic needs. (112–13)

The Christian response Jackson-Meyer offers to the seemingly impossible demands posed by these non-negotiable obligations can be found in Augustine’s concept of lament, and in Aquinas’s concept of repugnance of the will. Lament refers to Augustine’s understanding of the misery associated even with justifiable war, and with the dilemma of the wise judge in City of God who accepts the necessity of torturing an accused for information but endures misery as a result. Repugnance of the will arises from Aquinas’s acknowledgement that some actions are a mix of voluntary and involuntary. Though voluntary, they are precipitated by circumstances that one would not have chosen, which leads to a sense of repugnance in performing them.

This passage summarizes Jackson-Meyer’s position:

[F]or Christians, non-negotiable moral requirements are rooted in others’ sacred humanity and vulnerabilities and recognized by Augustinian lament. These situations are inherently wrong and tragic, so what constitutes moral dilemmas in the Christian view are by definition tragic dilemmas. I argue that culpability is often twofold, including both personal moral responsibility and social moral responsibility whenever tragic dilemmas arise from unjust social structures. Moral agents are culpable even when the best decisions are made; however, culpability is mitigated when agents act with Thomistic repugnance of the will. (109)

Moral Failures and Sins of Omission

I’m left with some uncertainty as to when moral dilemmas that are not tragic become moral failures or, in more traditional parlance, sins of omission. If vulnerabilities produce non-negotiable moral demands, I see two possible interpretations and I’m not clear which is intended:

1. Tragic moral dilemmas are not only unavoidable but are commonplace, given the extent to which vulnerability is woven into the fabric of our daily lives in the impoverished and exploited multitudes who populate the fringes of our affluent western Christian cultures. If we do not add some degree of relative or absolute obligation in relation to vulnerable others, do we not trivialize rare but agonizing dilemmas that truly are tragic? Or:
2. Christians are called to a radically counter-cultural ethos of asceticism, self-sacrifice and, when necessary, civil disobedience and non-violent resistance to unjust structures and laws that perpetuate oppression, violence, and the sufferings of the vulnerable. Wouldn’t this require a Church of all saints and no sinners—a separatist community of the voluntarily impoverished righteous distancing themselves from the muddle and mess of modern middle-class life which is the reality for many western Christians?

Many of the cases Jackson-Meyer discusses do indeed suggest that some inescapable moral dilemmas offer only tragic outcomes. She cites the predicament facing healthcare workers during the coronavirus pandemic when they had to make decisions about the allocation of scarce lifesaving resources. These and other stories confront us with the tormenting reality of situations that no one would ever choose to be in and that we might do anything to avoid. The anguished question, “what would I do?” haunts all such accounts.

But there are multiple everyday situations which would, by Jackson-Meyer’s definition, be tragic moral dilemmas or, more likely, serious moral failures. For example, I enjoy eating in restaurants with family and friends, but the injustices of modern urban life mean that every time we walk to a restaurant, we pass hungry and homeless people sleeping in doorways or begging for help. The decision to walk past these vulnerable people is not a moral dilemma, far less a tragic one, for by Jackson-Meyer’s criteria my responsibility seems clear, even if she doesn’t spell it out—I should forego meals in restaurants and give the money to housing and feeding the homeless. Her book does more than prick my conscience for this reason, for like the vast majority of Christians in the western world I do not live by such high ideals.

Feminism, Responsibility, and Vulnerability

I’m also confused about how Jackson-Meyer links vulnerability with special responsibility toward those with whom one is in close relationship. She invokes the feminist concept of “relational agency,” (115) describing Sidney Callahan’s argument that “our relationships produce moral obligations that we do not necessarily explicitly agree to, but they are obligations nonetheless.” (116)

Two questions arise when I bring a feminist perspective to bear on these arguments. First, does vulnerability produce the obligation, or does relationality produce the obligation? Imagine I have a limited amount of money to spare every month. My musically gifted daughter wants to take violin lessons, and a stranger in my town is raising funds for life-saving surgery for her daughter. Which cause should I give money to, given that I can’t afford both? If relationality is the criterion, then I should pay for violin lessons because my daughter might suffer lifelong frustration and disappointment by being unable to nurture her gift. If vulnerability is the criterion, then clearly the stranger’s daughter makes a more immediate demand on me because her vulnerability is so much greater. The parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates my question. In that case, relationality and therefore responsibility are constituted by vulnerability: the person in need is my neighbour.1 This brings me to my second question.

If we take into account extensive research that suggests women are culturally and theologically conditioned to see themselves primarily as caregivers, to such an extent that their own personal development and needs are often neglected, does Jackson-Meyer’s expansive account of tragic dilemmas based on relational responsibilities trap women in situations of impossible demands, bearing heavy burdens of guilt, shame, and failure associated with what Stephen De Wijze labels as “tragic-remorse”? (115)

Consider a woman academic juggling the demands of small children, ageing parents, and responsibilities to her students and colleagues. Jackson-Meyer cites such a case with regard to Martha Nussbaum’s dilemma over whether to attend an evening philosophy seminar or take care of her child. (120) There will be situations when a woman cannot meet all the demands that arise. Should she cancel lectures when her children are sick, thus letting her students down? Should she cancel an important public lecture because her elderly mother has been taken into hospital and she needs to be by her side, despite the organizers having spent a great deal of time and money in organizing and promoting the event? I’ve been in both these situations, as I suspect have many women reading this!

If it is true that her moral obligations are dictated by the closeness of her relationships, rather than by her professional responsibilities, and if she has a non-negotiable duty to care for the vulnerable, then this woman’s decision to pursue an academic career will trap her in many tragic moral dilemmas, given the scope of Jackson-Meyer’s definition. So, are we not pushed back into a world in which women with family obligations cannot pursue demanding professions outside the home, because there will be an inevitable conflict amounting to repeated moral failures, playing upon the cultural conditioning that shapes women’s consciences and responsibilities from birth? This is the solution advocated by many conservative Christians whose values are predicated upon the differentiated roles and responsibilities of men and women. I’d have liked to see Jackson-Meyer consider these dilemmas more closely through a feminist lens, with regard to her emphasis on vulnerability and responsibility. Surely, despite the non-negotiable obligation to the vulnerable, many of these situations are moral dilemmas but not moral tragedies? They involve an uneasy conscience whatever one decides, but this falls far short of the traumatizing impact of genuine moral tragedies.

Jackson-Meyer goes some way to addressing this question by pointing to how unjust social structures impact upon our personal responsibilities and dilemmas. On the one hand, “an agent is responsible to those with whom she is in a special relationship,” which she interprets as “we are morally responsible for requirements grounded in the sacredness of human life and vulnerability.” (114) However, “constrained situations diminish culpability” and such situations “are often the result of unjust social structures, so the category of tragic dilemmas calls for an assessment of the social structures that may have contributed to the problem.” (114) But are we really talking about tragic dilemmas, or the moral dilemmas and compromises that are an inevitable part of the human condition in a world wounded by sin?

Counter-Cultural Ethics

This brings me to my second concern, which is to do with the counter-cultural dimension of Christian ethics, in the context of Jackson-Meyer’s proposal that healing from the trauma and moral injury of tragic dilemmas might be given through support offered by Christian communities. She gives two examples. The first concerns a poor mother of seven children from the Philippines. Her eldest son contributes to the family income until a car accident leaves him paralyzed and in lifelong need of life support. Unable to afford his medical bills and care for her other children, she asks for her son to be removed from the ventilator.

The other example is that of a Roman Catholic veteran of the Iraq War who is traumatized by having killed a man who was threatening the lives of soldiers and civilians around him: “Camilo knows his action is justified according to traditional rules of war, yet he feels, essentially, as if he violated a moral principle.” (134)

Jackson-Meyer proposes ten ways in which Christian communities might support those affected by the trauma that follows from tragic dilemmas, all based around sensitivity to the context and the needs of individuals. (163) But by focusing on these two very different cases, a complex socio-economic dilemma hovers into view, as well as questions about the influence of race, gender, etc. on what constitutes a Christian community’s capacity to practice the kind of healing she advocates.

The impoverished Christian community offering support to that mother in the Philippines occupies a different position in the global hierarchy than that of the “urban, North American, Christian community” (168) to which Jackson-Meyer refers. Moreover, the tragic moral dilemma faced by that mother is not of the same order as the dilemma facing a soldier who knowingly joins the military and then cannot cope with the reality of killing.

Jackson-Meyer discusses at some length various moral theories and arguments relating to war and its consequences, but I would still have welcomed a more contextualized analysis of this case study. The soldier’s tragic moral dilemma is surely the decision to join the military, if this is done through a genuine sense of duty to defend his country and not through some testosterone-charged lust for domination—what Augustine calls libido dominandi? (140) Once that decision is made, the killing not only of armed combatants but of innocent civilians is inevitable, given the ways in which modern states wage war. My question is what kind of healing does the Christian community offer—solidarity and support to empower veterans to keep fighting and the military to keep recruiting (so supportive of the status quo), or solidarity and support to empower veterans to tell of the horror of war to discourage any young person from considering it as an option (subversive of the status quo)? This is where I suspect different answers might emerge from either end of the Catholic political spectrum.

These questions are not trivial, for if we take Catholic social teaching seriously—as Jackson-Meyer does—then all Catholic citizens face painful questions about our responsibilities and obligations in the context of church-state relationships. This becomes even more complex if we “responsibly investigate and reflect on other people’s stories.” There is a saying that “terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.” Pacifism rooted in non-violent resistance allows Christians to refuse to support the recourse to violence in all situations, but the more nuanced position that Jackson-Meyer outlines suggests that Christians can in certain circumstances support going to war, even though there is collective responsibility and a need for reparation. But that raises questions about if and when Christians might accept armed resistance (including acts branded as terrorism or guerrilla warfare), as part of the struggle of oppressed minorities. Such questions are far from hypothetical, for they press upon our consciences in contexts such as Israel’s overwhelming military response to the Hamas atrocities of October 7th, and indeed America’s similarly overwhelming military response to the atrocities of 9/11.

These questions arise because I am an “outsider” to the context in which Jackson-Meyer situates herself, and because I want to push her to go further in asking how she would apply her theories to situations which really are tragic moral dilemmas in our modern world. Perhaps the answer is that each of us is responsible for what we decide and why, but that still leaves open the question of how Christian communities act collectively in practice with regard to the causes and consequences of tragic moral dilemmas. Catholic social teaching is of course an excellent guide for many of these issues, but it can be an uneasy resource for questions of gender, sexuality, and women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights.

There is more to say, but it’s a credit to the book that it has taken me weeks to write this, as I reflect and consider the ways in which I’ve been inspired and challenged. I look forward to developing this conversation with great interest.