Agape-justice conflicts generally require collective action because many of them, especially the more intractable and complicated ones, are at the community level. This is fortuitous because the resulting requisite group action becomes the occasion for growth in collective virtues. Collective virtues are those qualities that people exemplify qua members of the group. These actions and predispositions are central to their collective self-identity, and by extension, to their individual, personal self-understanding. Collective virtues are the building blocks for the common good and are essential for heading off collective-action problems. Agape-justice conflicts paradoxically create opportunities for community building and mutual solicitude.

Agape-justice conflicts are epistemological in nature because they arise from limitations in human knowledge. However, they may in fact be also ontological in nature as occasions to give vent to love’s diffusiveness, to develop the moral faculties of reason and freedom, to acquire personal and collective virtue, and to grow in Christified agape (caritas). Even epistemological limitations may, by divine design, also be meant to serve these purposes. Agape-justice conflicts are instrumental for humans’ eventual union with God, their telos. They are occasions for grace to build on our human frailties and brokenness, grace building on nature.