In the opening minutes of the 1990 Cold War thriller The Hunt for Red October, Soviet submarine captain Ramius (played by Sean Connery) enters his private quarters to discover his ship’s political officer (the bizarre Communist hybrid of a Marxist chaplain and professional snitch) poking through his belongings. Ramius asks why his privacy is being invaded, and the political officer responds, “There is no such thing as privacy in the Soviet Union, Comrade. It’s antithetical to the collective good.”
“Collective good” or “greater good” sometimes get thrown around as justification for making sacrifices (or, more often, forcing others to make sacrifices)for the “benefit” of society. This is often conflated with the Catholic idea of the common good, and that is unfortunate.
The common good is a key part of the Catechism’s “mission statement” for governments: “It is the role of the state to defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and intermediate bodies” (1910).
Christ made a clear distinction between political and religious authority when he commanded us to “render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar.” In some ways, paragraph 1910 from Catechism is the inverse, stating what Caesar must render unto us. Therefore, unpacking the term “common good” is crucial for understanding what the Church teaches is the proper role of government. This is not just an academic exercise; it is important for evangelization.
Many people get spooked by terms like common good and social justice because they have been hijacked by those pushing totalitarian or Marxist ideologies that undermine justice and human dignity under the guise of religion or compassion. The terms might be a barrier to spreading the gospel if people dismiss Catholicism out of hand because they erroneously believe that it stands for something that it actually opposes.
Fortunately, the Church fleshes out three guiding principles that direct our thought and discussion and help us understand and share with others what the common good actually means.
Three Features of the Common Good
The Catechism, in paragraph 1906, defines the common good as “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”
The Church then elaborates on three key features of the common good, starting with the assertion that it “presupposes respect for the person as such” and that “public authorities are bound to respect the fundamental and inalienable rights of the human person. Society should permit each of its members to fulfill his vocation” (1907).
The good of the individual is bound up with the good of the community, and not in opposition to it. Although we are made to be in communion with one another, our value, dignity, and worth do not come from being a part of a group or a collective, but rather from being made in God’s image and likeness. As Pope Leo XIII put it in Rerum Novarum, “the State has for its office to protect natural rights, not to destroy them.” The practical upshot is that the State exists to serve, not be served, and that it must defend things such as “the right to act according to a sound norm of conscience and to safeguard . . . privacy, and rightful freedom also in matters of religion” (CCC 1907).
Secondly, the Church teaches that “the common good requires the social well-being and development of the group itself” and that those in authority must “make accessible to each what is needed to lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health, work, education and culture, suitable information, the right to establish a family, and so on” (1908)
The Church does not command that those in government directly take on these tasks, but rather that they make the conditions for their achievement possible. For example, Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum does not rule out the possibility of direct government aid in extreme circumstances, but he clearly warns against the State trying to solve all problems, and he views children’s parents (and particularly their fathers) as the ones responsible for providing for their needs:
It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten; and, similarly, it is natural that he should wish that his children . . . should be by him provided with all that is needful to enable them to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this mortal life (10).
“The social well-being and development of the group itself” supports and is then fed from the respect for individual rights, and allows for the fulfillment of those rights. It’s been said by many that human rights are individual rights that can be realized only in community with one another. The better protected and realized individual rights are, the more developed the community becomes, and the more it flourishes.
There is then a similar symbiotic relationship between the second pillar of the common good and the third, which is the requirement for “peace, that is, the stability and security of a just order. It presupposes that authority should ensure by morally acceptable means the security of society and its members. It is the basis of the right to legitimate personal and collective defense” (CCC 1909).
In our fallen world, good things can be maintained only with effort. This often entails fighting against forces and people who would destroy them. This is why Catholics are not reflexively pacifists. Parents must be ready to protect their children from physical and spiritual dangers. Local communities protect their residents from those who would steal or destroy the fruits of their labor. Nations defend their sovereignty from aggressive powers. In the same way that the rights of individuals are simultaneously the aim of and are fully realized by the development of the community as a whole, so too the development of the community is the goal of and fosters a maintaining of the peace. It is not just, fair, or compassionate to sit idly by and not oppose those who would harm the innocent. The order of peace makes possible the other elements of the common good.
The Rubber Hits the Road
So what are some things that the State is intended to do to maintain the common good? The Church says that to maintain the common good, those in government must work to
- provide for the common defense (CCC 2308-2310, 2265);
- foster economic initiative through stable currencies, implementing just and moderate taxation, and defending private property (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 351-357, CCC 2402-2406, Centessimus Annus 48);
- defend the rights of all, but especially keeping an eye to the poor and those on the margins (CCC 2237; Compendium 182-184, 355);
- defend the rights of conscience and religious freedom (CCC 1907, 2106-2109, Compendium 421-423); and
- respect the appropriate authority that the family, civic institutions, and ultimately the Church have in society (CCC 2207-2213, 2209, 2211; Compendium 209-214).
How this is to be done in each case and in different times, places, and contexts, especially in a world where tradeoffs and unintended consequences must be weighed in serious decision-making, is beyond the scope of this article and probably beyond the scope of a book. The Church says the lay faithful have the responsibility of working out the answers in a moral way in their own communities (Gaudium et Spes 43).
What we can say about what Caesar ought to render to us, at all times and in all places, is that the State has a clear mission: to promote the common good. This entails maintaining peace and justice, as well as the development and healthy growth of society as a whole. Both of these aims are connected to and not in opposition with the dignity and vocation of each individual. The common good is common to all, not an abstract “collective good” divorced from the dignity of individual human persons.
It is a tragedy when people recoil from talk about the common good because they associate it with manipulation and totalitarianism. We must help them see what the Church actually teaches. We can start by separating it from terms like collective good or greater good that
can mask either an intentional or inadvertent subordination of an individual’s dignity to the power of those who control the State. We can show how the Catechism’s emphasis on individual dignity and rights that flow from being made in God’s image bear very different fruits compared to the “collective good” of Soviet commissars. Hopefully we can better clarify this in our discussions and political actions to make our communities and nations stronger and be a witness to the Truth, and by so doing invite others to him.
Image credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.