Father William J. Byron, S.J. is university professor of business and society at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. He is past president of the Catholic University of America and an internationally acclaimed expert on social justice issues.
Understanding the Common Good
The "Common Good" is a catch-all phrase that describes an environment that is supportive of the development of human potential while safeguarding the community against individual excesses. It looks to the general good, to the good of the many over against the interests of the one or very few.
Everyone knows you can't tell a book by its cover. But I have to admit that the title on the cover of a small paperback prompted me to purchase "The Collapse of the Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our Freedom." The author is Philip K. Howard, who gave this book an earlier outing under the title "The Lost Art of Drawing the Line." The title of another of his books, "The Death of Common Sense," suggests he is preoccupied with the possibility that America is losing its grip on something important. This prompts me to ask in the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ah! When will all men's good/ Be each man's rule, and universal Peace/ Lie like a shaft of light across the land?"
Don't look for that to happen soon, Philip Howard would reply. In his view, "any notion of a common purpose is pushed aside by obsession with personal entitlement."
We are losing a sense of working together to achieve common goals and protect the common good. Behind that loss is a reluctance to identify and articulate deeply-held values. If, for example, the principle of human dignity is understood, accepted as a value, internalized and permitted to function as a prompter of personal choice, the person thus prompted will defend human life and dignity wherever and whenever it is under assault. Look around the workplace and the larger community for assaults on human dignity. Try to get behind the unemployment statistics. Look at urban decay. Examine the drug culture and its economic underpinnings. Consider the neglected elderly. Ask about the physical settings within which low-income children seek both education and recreation. How about those who have no health insurance? How do any or all of these social conditions relate to the common good?
In its document on the "Church in the Modern World," the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) described 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."
Another way—less abstract and far less lofty--of picturing the common good is to imagine it as an automobile tire. If the tire viewed as a whole looks strong, but has a cut, leak or other point of vulnerability at just one small point, the whole thing will soon collapse. Think of this as the "collapse of the common good!" One, small, unattended point of weakness or vulnerability can lead to the collapse of the whole.
In societal terms, it is in the interest of the rich and powerful to assist the poor and powerless; they're all part of the same tire.
We Catholics have to do a better job of understanding the “tire” that is the common good and then convince ourselves and our elected representatives to do all that must be done to keep the only tire we have in good repair. That’s what Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good is trying to do. The subsequent contributions to the Common Good Forum will indicate that CACG examines “the sum total of social conditions” in the U.S. today and how they are encouraging our elected officials to do what they can to help all Americans “reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”
This much is sure: A better understanding of the common good will lead to improved social conditions in the U.S. and thus to fuller development of human potential.
