God is greater than any political or social institution that humans can establish to serve the concept of a common good, the dean of the Catholic University of America’s School of Philosophy said Saturday in Manhattan at an annual lecture hosted by the Magnificat Foundation.
“God is, therefore, the common good in an objective sense, and blessedness, from the side of the creature, is the common good in a subjective sense. But neither of these things can be achieved by the political community. Perfect happiness is supernatural and requires God’s grace,” Professor V. Bradley Lewis said, giving the 11th Edward Cardinal Egan Lecture on the topic, “The Common Good and the Modern State.” More than 200 clergy and lay people attended.
“The common good is treated in contemporary social documents of the Church as one of the four basic principles of Catholic social doctrine, along with human dignity, subsidiarity, and solidarity. It is characterized in the Compendium this way: ‘the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily,’” Professor Lewis said. He drew heavily on the political writings of Aristotle and the work of St. Thomas Aquinas to create a context and definition for the subject of his lecture.
“The law must needs regard principally the relationship to blessedness. Moreover, since every part is ordained to the whole, as imperfect to perfect; and since one man is a part of the perfect community, the law must needs regard properly the relationship to communal happiness,” he said.
“What can the political community do with respect to the happiness of its citizens? The political community can establish and maintain the conditions that allow individuals and groups to attain their perfection normally. The sum total of those conditions is therefore a perfectly Thomistic way to understand the political common good,” Professor Lewis said.
Begun in 2013, the lecture is intended to honor the commitment to Catholic scholarship of Cardinal Edward Egan, the former Archbishop of New York, who died in 2015. Suspended for two years during the Covid pandemic, the annual presentation has featured both clergy members and lay people, women and men. The lecture was held at the Union League Club in Manhattan, a private social club.
Headquartered in France, the Magnificat Foundation maintains a local office in Yonkers. It publishes Catholic materials in multiple languages and also displays reliquaries relating to various saints.
Read the full lecture text here.