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In summer 2021 the Latin American Bishops’ Council CELAM presented a survey and a sociological and theological reflection on the socioeconomic consequences of the COVID-19-pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean. Six months after this report, an update with new data and projections has now been published. The survey as well as its recent update were prepared by the Socio-Anthropological Pastoral Observatory (OSAP for its acronym in Spanish) of the Knowledge Management Center from CELAM. Its director, Dr Guillermo Sandoval, is a member of our Scientific Advisory Board.

Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine caught Germany and the other Western European states completely flat-footed. Hardly anyone wanted to listen to the increasingly urgent warnings of the Eastern European partners and also of the USA, especially not in Germany. Christian social ethics was also caught cold by the war of aggression. The Munich social ethicist Prof. Dr. Markus Vogt, Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of Ordo socialis, takes this as an impulse for a survey and self-critique with regard to the peace-ethical concepts of the last years and decades. He writes: Some ethical theories were characterized by the idea that war in Europe was merely a phenomenon of the dark past. A view that, from today’s perspective, must be considered naive and outdated. The experience of the last few weeks has revealed a gap in the ethical debate, which forces us to quickly make up for these theoretical deficits and to give peace and security ethics a much greater weight within theology as well. The peace-ethical consequences of being a Christian in a fragile world need to be explored anew.”

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In the Corona pandemic, there has also been much talk about freedom and its justified or unjustified restriction to protect vulnerable groups of people and the common good. Prof. Dierksmeier, member of the advisory board of Ordo socialis, advocates a value-based liberalism. In his concept of “qualitative freedom”, he strives for a theoretical re-foundation beyond the traditional dichotomy of negative and positive freedom. He is convinced that – on the common ground of a qualitative concept of freedom – both camps of liberal philosophers can be reunited in defending the model of the open society against its enemies.

Please find Claus Dierksmeiers book “Qualitative Freedom – Autonomy in Cosmopolitan Responsibility” here.

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