Reprinted from The Common Good, No 11, Lent 1999

www.catholicworker.org.nz

 

CATHOLIC WORKER SPIRITUALITY

The Common Good – an option for the poor

(In this third meditation on Catholic Worker spirituality, Jim Consedine reflects on another central component. Much of what he writes has been taken directly from the English and Welsh bishops’ 1996 pastoral letter on the Common Good).

The living of one’s spirituality always occurs in a concrete set of circumstances. What is happening around is of vital concern as to how one relates to God and life.

The Catholic Worker has a history of action dating back to 1933 based on the social documents and teachings of the Church. A foundation principle upon which Catholic social action is taught is the principle of what St Thomas Aquinas in the 12th century called, the Common Good. The Common Good is defined by the Church as ‘the need for conversion to one’s neighbour at the level of community as well as at the level of the individual.’ This conversion affects attitudes which determine each person’s relationship with neighbours, human communities and with nature itself.

All these elements are involved in the Common Good. That Common Good is the whole network of social conditions which enable human individuals and groups to flourish and live a fully genuinely human life, otherwise described as integral human development. All are responsible for all, collectively, at the level of society or nation, and not only as individuals at the local level..

The Common Good cannot exist without the presence of four other principles – subsidiarity, solidarity, human rights and the option for the poor. These ideas are the basic building blocks upon which the development and protection of Common Good stand or fall. Leave out any one of them and the balance is upset. The result is no longer recognisable.

The principle of subsidiarity includes the very nature of society itself. Those who regard the maximisation of state power or centralisation of the state will find no ally here. Subsidiarity supports a dispersal of authority as close to the grass roots as good government will allow, and it prefers local over centralised decision making. This enables human beings to grow and reach their potential, accepting responsibility at each level of life according to the talents God has given them.

While subsidiarity represents the ‘vertical perspective’ behind the organisation of societies, solidarity represents ‘the equivalent horizontal principle.’ Solidarity stresses the need for human beings of good will to stand together for the over-all good of society.

The relationship between the rights of the individual and the collective need to be understood. The Common Good is seen as a guarantor of individual rights and as the necessary public context in which conflicts of individual rights and interests can be adjudicated or reconciled.

The litmus test as to the rightness of any given situation can be best indicated by asking the question - does this action promote the rights of the poor? Or, does it leave them worse off? This is the crunch question. It is easy to argue for individual rights, and even have a sense of solidarity and subsidiarity with other interest groups. But the acid test is the question of the protection and enhancement of the poor and the vulnerable.

It is from these four platforms that the principle of the Common Good speaks to the limits of the ‘free market’ and the need to avoid perpetuating the ever widening gap between a rich elite and the majority. ‘The Catholic doctrine of the Common Good is incompatible with unlimited free market or laissez-faire capitalism, which insists that the distribution of wealth must occur entirely according to the dictates of market forces. This theory presupposes that the Common Good will take care of itself. Its central dogma is the belief that in an entirely free economy, each citizen, through seeking his or her own gain, would be led by ‘an invisible hand’ to promote an end which was not part of his intention, namely the prosperity of society.’

The Catholic Church in its social teaching explicitly rejects belief in the automatic beneficence of market forces. It insists that the end result of market forces must be scrutinised and if necessary corrected in the name of natural law, social justice, human rights and the overall Common Good. Left to themselves, market forces are just as likely to lead to evil results as to good ones. This is what we believe is happening all over the world. And it is the poor who are suffering - in their billions.