Getting this wrong costs lives, this is not hyperbole!

The common good is widely acknowledged as a fundamental principle of political life. Yet totalitarian regimes have committed countless atrocities in its name. To this day there is much misunderstanding of what the common good means. It is not, for example, a set of basic goods and services, such as health or education, to be doled out by the state for the benefit of all. Fr. Brad Elliot gives us Charles De Koninck’s perspective on the common good as clarified by St. Thomas Aquinas, which explains that is a metaphysical principle, a final cause, that guides each person in a society in their actions in such a way that the results are good for themselves and for society as a whole.

With Fr Brad Elliot are David Clayton, Charlie Deist, Michel Accad