Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

96 BRUNO HIDBERBeyond this traditional three-part distinction, then, weshould add at least one other dimension that has assumed decisiveimportance in our times. In our day we are more and moreaware that, when evil appears in the intersubjective, social andpolitical sphere, human beings experience it as a more complex,disconcerting and even abysmal reality. What one societyaspires to for its own well-being, another regards as exploitation.One need look no further than the injustices that existbetween the northern and southern hemispheres: what onecountry exalts as the achievement of a better political, economic,social and cultural order, other countries reject as oppression.Therefore, this fourth dimension could be called: malumsociale et structurale. This notion refers to that evil, producedby our societies, which is expressed in structures and mechanismsthat have assumed a certain autonomy and seem to functionaccording to intrinsic laws, at whose mercy individuals findthemselves. 3The complexity of evil comes to light even more when weconsider not only the limits, the weaknesses or the malice provokedby evil, but also how even good intentions all too frequentlyend in evil. The very best of intentions and the very bestof actions cannot avoid, at times, collateral negative effects.They can stir up envy or false hopes. At times, those to whomthe good action was directed can end up feeling diminished,even humiliated. On the other side, bad things and evil eventscan produce, at least indirectly, good consequences. The evilevent of September eleventh resulted in a huge positive movementof solidarity and compassion. This kind of experience isreflected and exalted in traditional theology with the pronouncementthat God works good out of evil. 43See Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (VaticanCity, 1987), above all in chapter five. For example, the pope writes in paragraph36 of that chapter: “If the present situation can be attributed to difficultiesof various kinds, it is not out of place to speak of ‘structures of sin.’...(T)hey grow stronger, spread and become the source of other sins and soinfluence people’s behavior.”4The “highest” and most solemn expression of this conviction is found inthe “Exultet” of the liturgy of the Vigil of Easter with the famous “felix culpa.”