My object today is to explain the centrality and transcendence of the common good, as this provides a foundation for thinking of the relation between politics and divine truth.

To correctly address the nature of the common good, one must first understand that before and as a condition of being a political or social principle, common good is an intrinsic

constitutive principle of the moral, metaphysical, and theological orders, and it is an

essentially teleological principle, an end. My aim is to focus on the work of Thomas Aquinas,

which articulates a teaching essential to the natural law

found throughout the Catholic tradition a normative for it.

First, I refer to the common reading of the account of the common good in Gaudi Mitzphez from Vatican 2,

and immediately thereafter attempt to clarify the strategic difference between this common reading

and the stronger understanding to be found in the Catholic tradition.

Second, I offer an initial account of the transcendence of the common good as a central

analogical principle within Catholic thought. Third, I will offer a few words

about the common good of political society and the virtue of legal justice. Fourth, I will

address the essentially teleological and theonomic character of the common good, and its defining

role both for natural and divine law.

And fifth and finally, I offer a brief conclusion regarding God,

the order of goods, and the political common good.

Gaudi Mitzphez, number 26,

articulates the nature of the common good in this way. Quote, every day human interdependence grows more tightly drawn

and spreads by degrees over the whole world.

As a result, the common good, that is, the sum of those conditions of social life,

which allows social groups and their individual members

relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment.

...