The Common Good

This is what we're voting for tomorrow

For a course in Catholic Moral Theology I'm teaching this term, I've been re-reading Gaudium et Spes (Joys and Hopes: The Church in the Modern World), the last and longest of the documents issued by the great Vatican II Council. It's a magnificent declaration of the humanistic impulse that underlies the Catholic moral theology tradition. Section 26 offers a word about the common good that we sorely need to hear on this election day eve:

“The social order requires constant improvement. It must be founded on truth, built on justice and animated by love; in freedom it should grow every day toward a more humane balance. An improvement in attitudes and abundant changes in society will have to take place if these objectives are to be gained.”

A few years ago I posted on my YouTube channel, Holy Spirit Moments, a series of video essays on Vatican II. Here’s the one that offers an introduction to the Christian humanism defended in Gaudium et Spes.