The Earth is our common home, Pope Francis tells us in a recent message, as well as in his encyclical Laudato Si’. It is a part of what earlier popes referred to as the common good. I would like to pause and reflect on what this is.
The Church defines well terms she uses when she teaches. For a definition, I reached back to Compendium of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and the Catechism (CCC).
The principle of the common good … stems from the dignity, unity and equality of all people. … the common good indicates “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily” (CST 164).
In this we see we each have a dignity as rational beings created by God Himself; we are all one in Him; and we are all equal before Him.
The common good has three elements: respect for and promotion of the fundamental rights of the person; prosperity, or the development of the spiritual and temporal goods of society; the peace and security of the group and of its members (CCC 1924).
The common good is much more than the sum of particular “goods”; they are goods that belong to all and to each of us, benefiting one and all.
We are all responsible to strive to achieve the common good (CST 167). It is also the responsibility of the State to act on behalf of society to achieve the common good, especially since it is for this reason this political authority exists in the first place (CST 168).
A last thought, which was articulated well and which I feel the need to share: The common good of society is not an end in itself; it has value only in reference to attaining the ultimate ends of the person and the universal common good of the whole of creation (CST 170). Without this perspective we’d have a purely materialistic interpretation, with the common good being nothing more than socio-economic well-being.
In this season of discernment, let us strive for society’s common good in the here and now, yet keep our hearts and minds set on the eternal.