Note: The following is adapted from remarks delivered at the third National Conservatism Conference in Miami, Florida, on September 13, 2022
I want to talk about the common good and the nation for a couple of reasons.
First, I’m sure many of you have noticed that the phrase “common good” has been popping up more frequently in conservative circles. Senator Marco Rubio most notably leaned into the language of the common good in his 2019 speech on “common good capitalism,” and we heard him continue to channel those themes in his speech at this conference just yesterday. And in the legal sphere, Adrian Vermeule has introduced an important debate with his work on “Common Good Constitutionalism”.
From a Catholic perspective, this is all very good. The common good is, of course, the proper object of political life, so to the extent that American politics is trending this way, it’s a boon for American Catholics in public life—especially considering our country’s, let’s say, checkered past with Catholics and Catholicism.
Secondly, I wanted to talk about the common good and the nation because I think it illustrates what any discussion on Catholicism and the nation must: Namely, this tension between the universal and the particular. There is a tension between universal, big-T Truth, and our lives and loves, which are inevitably particular: lived within specific places with particular families and relationships and cultures.
I billed my talk as “There Is No Global Common Good,” which I hope is a purposely provocative way of getting at this tension. For some, this title may seem to be a denial of the universality of the faith.
So I first want to start by reaffirming that Catholicism is, indeed, a uniquely universal faith. (Catholic quite literally means universal!) It’s a revealed religion, rather than a particular culture’s grasping towards the divine. This obviously sets it apart from the remaining modern pagan religions, like Hinduism and Shinto in Japan.
But unlike many other non-pagan global religions, Catholicism is also not tied to any particular culture, nation, or ethnicity. Indeed, the truth of the faith has enculturated itself in varied societies across the globe over the centuries. The churches, shrines, and even martyrs produced in countries that are not traditionally Christian are a powerful testament to this fact. Furthermore, it’s easy to forget that the Roman Rite is but one rite of the Catholic Church. There are also Eastern Catholic Churches, which still share our common faith and are fully united under the papacy.
This small-c catholicity even differentiates Catholicism from our fellow Christians from whom we’re sadly separated, whether since 1054 in the case of the various Orthodox churches, which are explicitly national, or since 1517 for Protestantism in all its ever-increasing forms. We saw an example of this just this week with the accession of the new King Charles, also now the head of the Church of England, continuing that Church’s esteemed history of divorceés in leadership.
Now, there’s a practical and political implication to this universality, as well. We’ve talked a lot this week about the need to re-embrace a public religious witness, and how that is consistent with American law and tradition. I’m certainly in agreement, and would like to see that happen. We had a piece in our latest issue of The American Conservative arguing that we should overturn Engel v. Vitale, which was the Supreme Court case that essentially killed prayer in public schools.
But I’m fortunate that America is a historically Christian—albeit Protestant—country. Because I do not think, for example, Qatar should recommit itself to embracing a more public Islam. Beer won’t be allowed at this year’s World Cup in that country! While forgoing beer at a sporting event is a trivial point, but I do think its illustrative. I like beer, to quote our good Catholic Supreme Court justice, and there’s nothing wrong with imbibing in moderation. I don’t want to live in a country with a false religion enshrined as normative. It matters which faith informs the public life of all nations. It should be the one that is true—in other words, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith.
This is why the Constantinian Conversion was so important. It allowed Christianity to explode throughout the Roman Empire. Who knows how sincere were the many conversions that occurred in the in the wake of the emperor’s own. But who cares? Ours is a sacramental faith. We still affirm that there is no salvation outside the Church. So I’d much rather build a society in which we sinful humans are working out our salvation within the Church, than without. A society that affirms the efficacy of the sacraments is always better than one that doesn’t.
Or perhaps for a more modern example: We’ve rightly talked a lot these past couple days about what to do about a rising China, a clear threat to this country’s national interest and our citizens’ ability to live flourishing lives. But aside from the discussion of reshoring and empowering regional allies—can you imagine if Xi Jinping converted to Catholicism? Not to the fake Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, but the actual Church. I imagine millions of souls would be saved.
***
To this point I’ve said a lot about the universality of the Church, and it may seem that I’ve argued against my thesis—that the universalism of Catholicism points away from particularity and towards some sort of global politics, one that could, perhaps, advance a common good globally.
I’m not here to argue for the ideal Catholic political form. The faith has adapted to many different political forms, from empires to republics, and both survived and thrived over two millennia. (I would argue that this is because Peter and his successors truly are the rock upon which Christ built His Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.)
But there are certainly some political forms which are more conducive to living a fully Catholic life than others, and it is the task of the Catholic statesman in every era to work within his existing political constraints to push political life further towards a form that is conducive to living the faith fully. What we’re seeing from the American Right right now, and what we’ve seen at this conference in its now three iterations, is an attempt to do just that—to move our politics away from the abstractions of globalism, the poison of secularism, and towards our concrete communities in which we can advance the good.
And this is where we see the limits of a global common good, and an attempt to reconcile the universal and particular. I don’t think it’s an accident that a movement like National Conservatism that seeks to return our political imagination to the level of the nation is also one that is pursuing policies that advance the common good.
While goods are certainly universal—things like peace, prosperity, family—that is not the same things as the singular, indivisible, communal, and limited common good that is the proper object of political life. The common good is not some aggregate of other goods. It is rather something that exists prior to us as individuals, something in which we can then flourish by participating in it.
The family, which I mentioned is a universal good, provides a clear analogy here, both to the nature of the common good and its limits. We can clearly see the good that is common to a well-formed family, and the immense benefit that it provides to those participating in it—children, of course, but also fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, fulfilling their familial duties. The plummeting marriage rate in this country is a crisis for our civilization’s future, but also its present: It creates a generation of young men and women living with no purpose outside themselves.
This recognition is why we as conservatives seek to support married, intact families, and ensure that every kid is raised by a mom and a dad. We can and should do more to support families from a policy level, which is part of reorienting our politics towards the common good.
So we see a dynamic at the family level that applies to the political common good, in which the good that is common to the polis ennobles those citizens who participate in it. In the family, we also see a clear illustration of this tension between the universal and particular, and perhaps a reconciliation of that tension.
Every man, everywhere, has a moral duty to honor his father and mother, and to love his wife as Christ loved the Church. But I don’t have the same moral duty to honor someone else’s father and mother. You could argue that our familial responsibilities do, in fact, extend beyond the nuclear family, and I do think multigenerational living is something that’s woefully lacking in America. It provides a vital link across the generations that allows us to transmit the best of our traditions. But it’s undeniable that there are limits to family, and the good that is common to it, just as there are limits to our political common good.
So perhaps I should reword my thesis: the concept of the common good is ill-suited to global realities. While the common good is the proper object of every just society across the globe, the necessarily limited nature of human community makes it difficult to discern a singular global common good. It must emerge instead from the concrete relationships and traditions lived out in particular places.
***
The task of a conference and movement like this, which seeks to push back on a secular globalism intent on disregarding any limits, is incredibly worthwhile from a Catholic perspective. But let me offer one wrinkle to the project of rooting a Catholic politics oriented towards the common good in an American nationalism. It’s basically this: This country is big.
The further we get away from concrete relationships lived out in specific, limited communities, the closer we get to the kind of abstractions and ideologies that seek to destroy lived traditions and distort the common good. We’ve rightly denounced these abstractions at the global level.
But I don’t think it’s an accident that while national bishops’ councils are a very modern phenomenon in the Catholic Church, geographically based dioceses and parishes are not. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops was only formally organized in 2001, merging two older organizations that were themselves products of the twentieth century. The parochial model, however, in which the pastor is directly responsible for the souls of those within his more local parish boundaries, has a much older history within the Church.
And if we look, too, at other countries seeking to reorient their politics towards the common good, we see a vast difference in scale. I know many of us are watching with great curiosity what’s going on in Hungary. Hungary’s population is around 9.7 million, just over a million more than my home state of Virginia—hardly the biggest state in our country.
So if we want to restore a politics oriented towards the common good in this country, as we should, and avoid absurd abstractions like “America is an idea,” we need to recognize that the common good, like everything worthwhile, has limits. It is ill-suited to global realities. Universal Truth needs to be lived out in our particular places. We need to advance the common good, the proper end of political life, through the relationships and traditions that are inevitably rooted in our local places. In other words, I am a Catholic first, seeking to live the True faith in my great country—mine, because I am a Virginian.
Thank you.
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Excellent piece.
All good political action i.e. that which is oriented to the common good is necessarily local. The expression of religious sentiment is also local; it is rooted in family and the immediate community.
Lumen Gentium affirms that, within the uniquely Catholic Church, the entire Church is present in each “particular” (not merely local) Church. And vice versa.
And, one participant in the council, Cardinal Danielou, cites Andre Gide to propose, equally transparently, that all genuine universality celebrates the genuinely particular: “There is nobody more English than Shakespeare and no one more universal; none more Italian than Dante and no one more universal; none more French than Racine and no one more universal” (Jean Cardinal Danielou, “Prayer as a Political Problem,” 1967).
Compared to such reality and ultimately the gifted and sacramental and Eucharistic Presence, what purpose the substituted (?) “synthesis” of some synodally “facilitated” “perceptions”?…
Dingbat Batzing proselytizes his alphabet-soup “end” game: “But I promise you: Something will change and even Cardinal Koch will not be able to stop that…”
After the tantrum, a particular diaper “change,” perhaps?
In your view, do the following verses have relevance today?
Revelation 22:18-19 I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.
Hebrews 1:1-14 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son”? …
2 Timothy 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
2 Thessalonians 2:10 And with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
2 Peter 3:16 As he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.
And relative to the above article and my comment, your relevant point is what?
To draw you out and see where you stand in fidelity to the word of the Lord! It appears that I have overestimated your capacity at this moment. Please forgive me.
Useful information is provided by CWR. The focus is godliness and cohesiveness in Christ. To strengthen the church is always appropriate. Yet, your reply to a simple question is dismissive. Not to me, I take no offence, rather, you treat the word of the Lord in an easy going fashion.
Of course, you are expressive and expansive, yet if someone asked you to explain the Good News of Jesus Christ, how would you respond?
Do you find my query confrontational? What then was Jesus if not confrontational! He cared deeply about the eternal soul of people and asked them to examine themselves.
When our children go astray, we lead them back to correctness. Does Jesus not do the same with us?
This is said in the spirt of friendship and spiritual wellbeing that Christ alone provides.
God bless you. God bless the Church and let us pray for the See of Rome.
(1) Mr. Emile Doak writes in this article: “my thesis: the concept of the common good is ill-suited to global realities.”
(2) Wow! Correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that that statement contradicts the solemn teaching of the Church in about a thousand ways, starting from the very words of Jesus right up to popes such as Benedict 16 (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger).
(3) Jesus was not a nationalist. Nothing like it.
(4) Obviously the Catholic Church can and does operate and flourish within cultures with a strong nationalist bent. But the saints of the Church will always oppose and seek to moderate or reform certain features of any strong nationalism. At least, that is my reading of Catholic history and theology.
I think there is a legitimate discussion to be had about your points, but I also think that Mr. Doak, while never using the term, is defending the Church’s teaching on subsidiarity. Yes, of course the Catholic Faith is universal (hence the name), but I take his key point to be that political, social, and cultural goods must be rooted in subsidiarity and a local approach to solving political, social, and cultural problems, yet rooted in Catholic teachings. Does that mean, as he asserts, that “the concept of the common good is ill-suited to global realities”? Part of the problem is that he doesn’t really define it.
(1) Mr. Emile Doak writes in this article: “my thesis: the concept of the common good is ill-suited to global realities.”
(2) Imagine if someone wrote any of these:
–“The concept of love thy neighbor as thyself is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“The concept of love your enemies is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“The concept of blessed are the merciful is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“The concept of the Good Samaritan is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“The concept of the universal destination of goods is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“The concept of solidarity is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“The concept of the right to life from conception to natural death is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“The concept of universal human dignity is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“The concept of blessed are those who hunger and thirst after justice is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“The concept of blessed are the peacemakers is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“The concept of traditional marriage (one man + one woman) is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“St. Paul’s concept of ‘now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity’ is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“Jesus’ concept of ‘My kingdom (nation) is not of this world’ is ill-suited to global realities.”
–“St. Paul’s concept of ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ is ill-suited to global realities.”
(1) It is well and rightly said above that Mr. Emile Doak seems to be drawing, in part at least, from the doctrine of Subsidiarity, which is one the traditional tenets of Catholic Social Doctrine.
(2) But there are many other tenets of Catholic Social Doctrine, and they must all be viewed, interpreted, obeyed, and applied as a unity, as a whole, as a symphony.
(3) When one tenet of Catholic Social Doctrine is singled out, emphasized, and isolated, and the other tenets are neglected, downplayed, or ignored, you get distortions such as leftist Liberation Theology and rightist Conservative Nationalism. That’s my opinion, at least.
(4) If this were just my opinion, who would care? I am the biggest nobody on the planet earth! The Internet is chock full of self-loving, narcissistic know-it-alls and bullies who are eager and desperate to force or urge their view on the whole world.
(5) But, and correct me if I’m wrong, the Catholic popes and saints who are universally recognized seem to have stated many times a condemnation of both leftist Marxist Socialism and rightist Realpolitik Nationalism. Haven’t they?
(6) Don’t the writing of Pope John Paul II say this over and over again? I am not a theologian, but doesn’t John Paul II’s encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” (1993) insist over and over again on the universality of the moral law?
(7) Could John Paul II ever approve of the idea that the moral law need be observed only within a local region or local community, among family, friends, and co-patriots, and that outsiders/foreigners can be treated any which way (savagely, cruelly, callously, indifferently, “devil may care,” “every man for himself”)?
(8) If the moral commandment contained in the Catholic phrase the “common good” has no global application, then doesn’t that vacuum the “common” right out of it, rendering the commandment null and void? Doesn’t the common good become an absurdity, an oxymoron, and a bit of Orwellian Newspeak?
(I appreciate the value that Catholic World Report brings to the Church and the world. Thank you.)
You make good points. The problem today, expanded from when “subsidiarity” was defined by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno (1931), is that everything now is “local.” So, how to render subsidiarity bi-focal, such that subsidiarity and solidarity are inseparable (as St. Pope John Paul II insisted)?
Suburban electronics gear and even fashionable cosmetics consume mica which is mined largely by child labor in India (even if marketed indirectly through China); and chocolate bars are made of cocoa, 60 percent of which comes from the child-labor fields of the Ivory Coast and Ghana and West Africa. And, Western hazardous wastes are often still dumped in Third World countries who welcome the royalties, probably as a way of handling foreign debts (understanding, too, the role of corrupt governments).
Are the short-sighted buffalo hunters still too much in charge? Instead, limits, far flung externalities, ecological feedback loops and tipping points—now a “local” problem. In what significant details is spaceship earth a closed system, not forever a cornucopia? God is infinite, but our “common home” is not.
How to render subsidiarity and solidarity, both, bi-focal?…
This is a central point of moral theology (and of well-informed prudential judgment), too-obscurely posed in the 43,000 words of Laudato Si, in my opinion. How to be local/global without defaulting to localism, or now sucking up to looming “globalism” as an ideological threat to the common good?
I appreciate what the honorable sir above wrote:
–“subsidiarity and solidarity are inseparable (as St. Pope John Paul II insisted).”
–“How to be local/global without defaulting to localism, or now sucking up to looming “globalism” as an ideological threat to the common good?”
(1) Life Site News reports this about Mr. Emile Doak: “Amid calls by Pope Francis for global government, a Catholic writer is rejecting such a political arrangement as absurd….In a Tuesday talk at NatCon 3, with the admittedly provocative title ‘There is no global common good,’ Emile Doak, executive director of The American Conservative, argued that a global political common good is ‘impossibl[e],’….his claim starkly repudiates Pope Francis’ calls for international “norms” to address what the Pontiff explicitly calls the “global common good” in Fratelli Tutti….’Until the world is truly ready to unite under the banner of the Kingship of Christ, we must vehemently resist all calls for global government, even from the Church hierarchy’.”
(2) So, for me, it sheds light on the matter to see that Mr. Doak, in making his claims that “There is no global common good,” is reacting against a whole phlanx of unprecedented and controversial proposals coming from the current bishop of Rome.
(3) I believe that Mr. Doak may feel that the Catholic Church is facing an extraordinary, unprecedented, emergency situation in which the normal theologies may not enable the Church to survive. It is commonly agreed that actions and principles that would be wrong in normal conditions may sometimes be permissible in life-or-death emergency conditions.