This summer, Salesian Jesús Rojano wrote a very up-to-date article on the Salesianos.info website on the figure of Mamma Margaret, which we report here today in ANS.
In 1980, the so-called ‘ethics of care’ began to be discussed thanks to a book by the American psychologist and philosopher Carol Gilligan. According to her, women privilege bonds with others, caring responsibilities over the abstract fulfilment of duties and the exercise of rights, which would be the main characteristic of the masculine approach to moral and ethical norms (‘Ethics of justice’).
A classic example is the so-called ‘Heinz Dilemma’, conceived by the educational psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg: Can you steal medicine to save a person's life?
‘Heinz's wife was about to die and her only hope was a medicine discovered by a pharmacist, who was selling it at an exorbitant price. The medicine cost $200 to make, and the pharmacist was selling it for $2000. Heinz could only scrape together 1000. He offered this amount to the pharmacist, and when the pharmacist refused his offer, Heinz said he would pay the rest later. Still the pharmacist refused. In desperation, Heinz considered stealing the medicine. Would it be wrong to do so?’
The dilemma was presented to 11-year-old boys and girls. The boys applied general principles of justice and concluded that you can never steal it (the view of some) and that it would be right to steal it because the value of a person's life is greater than $1000 (the view of others). The girls’ opinions were based on more affective reasons and were concerned about each person's situation. One said: ‘It's better if they talk and work it out, because if he steals it he can go to jail and no one would take care of his wife afterwards’. According to Virginia Held, ‘caring, empathy, feeling with others, being sensitive to the feelings of others may be better guides to what morality demands in real contexts than the abstract rules of reason or rational calculation can be, or at least they may be necessary components of an adequate morality’.
Don Bosco had not heard of the ‘ethics of care ’ (it was a century before that expression was invented), but he knew how to CARE for his young people and for the first Salesians. In my opinion, in this he learned a lot from his mother. Probably Mamma Margaret, as well as CARING for her children, and later for those of the Oratory in Turin, applied this mediating ‘caring ’ mentality to the conflict between her son John and his half-brother Anthony, seeking to avoid harming either of them.
Pope Francis had the same intuition in his address to the Salesians at the General Chapter in 2020: ‘What would Valdocco be without the presence of Mamma Margaret? Would your houses have been possible without this woman of faith? [...]. Without a real, effective and affective presence of the woman your works would lack the courage and the courage capable of conceiving presence as hospitality, as home.’
Source: Salesianos.info
