The â??common goodâ?? is more than a political slogan. Itâ??s more than what most people think they want right now. Itâ??s not a matter of popular consensus or majority opinion. It canâ??t be reduced to economic justice or social equality or better laws or civil rights, although all these things are vitally important to a healthy society.
The common good is what best serves human happiness in the light of what is real and true. Thatâ??s the heart of the matter: What is real and true? If God exists, then the more man flees from God, the less true and real man becomes. If God exists, then a society that refuses to acknowledge or publicly talk about God is suffering from a peculiar kind of insanity.
What can the â??common goodâ?? mean in the context of Nietzscheâ??s superman or Marx or Freud or Darwin? These men became the architects of our age. But they were also just the latest expressions of a much deeper and more familiar temptation to human pride. We want to be gods, but weâ??re not. When we try to be, we diminish ourselves.
Thatâ??s our dilemma. Thatâ??s the punishment we create for ourselves. Thereâ??s a terrible humor in a man who claims that God is dead, then starts believing heâ??s Dionysius or Jesus Christ, and then ends up on a candy bar made by out-of-work philosophers for middle-class consumers who just want some â??chocolaty goodness.â??
Humility is the beginning of sanity. We canâ??t love anyone else until we can see past ourselves. And man canâ??t even be man without God. The humility to recognize who we are as creatures, who God is as our Father, what God asks from each of us, and the reality of Godâ??s love for other human persons as well as ourselvesâ??this is the necessary foundation that religion brings to every discussion of free will, justice, and truth, and to every conversation about â??the common good.â?? Sirach and the Psalms and the Gospel of Luke and the Letter of Jamesâ??these Scriptures move the human heart not because theyâ??re beautiful writings. Theyâ??re beautiful writings because they spring from what we know in our hearts to be true.
Bernanos once said that â??the world will be saved only by free men. We must make a world for free men.â?? He also said that prudenceâ??or rather, the kind of caution and fear that too often pose as prudenceâ??is the one piece of advice he never followed. â??When trouble is looking for you,â?? he said, â??itâ??s primarily a question of facing it, since it would be still more dangerous to turn your back on it. In that case, prudence is only the alibi of the cowardly.â??
We most truly serve the common good by having the courage to be disciples of Jesus Christ. God gave us a free will, but we need to use it. Discipleship has a cost. Jesus never said that we didnâ??t need a spine. The world doesnâ??t need affirmation. It needs conversion. It doesnâ??t need the approval of Christians. It needs their witness. And that work needs to begin with us. Bernanos said that the â??scandal of Creation [isnâ??t] suffering but freedom.â?? He said that â??moralists like to regard sanctity as a luxury; actually it is a necessity.â?? He also said that â??one may believe that this isnâ??t the era of the saints; that the era of the saints has passed. [But] it is always the era of the saints.â??
Charles J. Chaput Archbishop of Denver Religion and the Common Good at First Things – with some discussion of George Bernanos
