Does the Common Good Require Integralism?

The Common Good is a vision for a flourishing society. Integralism is the idea that the Church should (to some extent) control secular society. If Christians are serious about wanting the Common Good, then it raises a question: Should Christians be Integralists, so that they can “make it happen”?

Addressing this question begins with clarifying the idea of the Common Good.

The Social Common Good

The 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the Common Good as ‘‘the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily” (CCC 1906).

This is a definition of a “social” common good because it focuses upon social conditions. It assumes that humans can better reach fulfillment as part of a society, rather than as individuals.

For example, a valley of subsistence farmers could prosper to some extent, with each farmer selfishly focused on his or her own interests. Each farmer would have enough food, so there would be a degree of human fulfillment.

But that would be a limited form of human fulfillment, as it makes no provision for services like medicine or education. If the farmers stopped being entirely individualistic and formed a society, then that would enable specializations like doctors and teachers. Having a (well-functioning) society is thus an important step towards achieving greater human fulfillment.

This point is sometimes illustrated with such examples as a choir. The sum is immeasurably greater than its parts. But to make a choir work, there must be rules about what counts as singing and organization about who sings, when.

This issue of “organization” is the central problem of the Social Common Good. What is the organization of ingredients and rules which will make a society work well enough, so that everyone can achieve human fulfillment? Does the Social Common Good require clean water for everyone? What about schools? What about opera houses? And what about temples sacrificing babies to jealous gods?

Beyond a few shared values (like the undesirability of sacrificing babies) it becomes increasingly hard for pluralistic societies to agree upon the specifics of what a Social Common Good would look like. This is because it requires a vision clarifying what human fulfillment should look like. That goes beyond what descriptive scientific, sociological, or economic models can deliver; as a descriptive “is” cannot lead to a proscriptive “ought.”

What Is Human Fulfillment?

Philosophers have argued about the nature of human fulfillment for millennia. In the modern world economists and psychologists have joined the debate. As a result, modern democracies typically have a diversity of political parties arguing for varying policies to bring about their differing visions of a Social Common Good.

Christians have their own vision of human fulfillment, which centers around the person of Jesus Christ. Christians do not believe that Jesus was “just” a teacher or social worker. They do not believe that the Incarnation was a vacation. They think that Jesus has done something essential and objectively significant, which humans need to engage with to achieve the deepest human fulfillment. This engagement includes a range of elements, including specifically religious ideas like baptism and Church membership (see “Is the Church Necessary for Salvation?”).

This means that the Common Good cannot be properly understood in just sociological or economic terms. There is an irreducible religious dimension which needs to be considered.

Transcendental Common Good

In 2004, the Vatican produced a “Compendium” of Social Teaching. It repeats the definition of the Social Common Good (Compendium, 164), but it goes further. It focuses upon the recognition of God as the goal of human life and insists that God is the transcendental source of human fulfillment. This means that the Social Common Good cannot be thought of as an end in itself. Its value derives from the Transcendental Common Good (Compendium, 170), which it is enabling and orientated upon.

This was clarified, still further, with the publication of In Search of a Universal Ethic: A New Look at the Natural Law (2009). That document notes that the two definitions of the Common Good are, in fact, two levels of the Common Good (paragraph 85).

This means that while it is important to think about the social organization and ingredients of a Common Good, Christians cannot do this without considering the higher level religious and spiritual issues of the “Transcendental Common Good.” If they fail to do this, Christians are at risk of literally missing the point of the purpose and meaning of the Common Good.

But what does this mean in practice? What are the transcendental goals which Christians should be working towards? Is it a matter of building more churches? Campaigning for Sunday observance legislation? Or is it a matter of punishing heretics, so that they cannot confuse Christians and distract them from their transcendental goals?

These types of questions raise the issue of Integralism.

Integralism

Catholic Integralism is a model of society in which secular states “integrate” Catholic doctrine in their laws, so that those laws direct people towards achieving the Transcendental Common Good. Precisely what this means in practice has been much argued about, and there are differing models of Integralism.

Extreme Integralism can verge upon theocracy. It sees the Church as controlling society, using secular laws and powers to promote itself and to suppress opposition. Examples might include St. Augustine (d. 430) asking the state to suppress Donatists. It might also include the Spanish Inquisition, which executed several thousand people for not being sufficiently Catholic.

Models of Extreme Integralism sometimes include the Pope being able to depose rulers of countries who are not sufficiently promoting Catholic policies. For example, Pope Pius V deposed Queen Elizabeth I as the ruler of England (see Regnans in Excelsis, 1570). In doing so he dissolved English Catholics from their obligation to obey her. Arguably, this worsened the persecution of Catholics in England.

Extreme Integralists may also suggest that all atheists should be punished by the state, and that their children should be taken into (Christian) care. They may even insist that the Church has a right to kidnap babies who have been accidentally baptized, and forcibly raise them as Christians (as happened in 1858 when 6-year-old Edgardo Mortara was forcibly removed from his Jewish parents).

Extreme Integralism has a very simple answer to the question of how the “Transcendental Common Good” should be achieved. It is a matter of organizing society into an Integralist state which promotes and protects the Catholic faith. This will inevitably involve various compulsions, suppressing heretics, schismatics and other religions. If this is not possible immediately, then Extreme Integralists will “tolerate” the situation until they are powerful enough to “deal with” them.

Liberalism

An opposite approach to Extreme Integralism is the separation of church and state. This is the view that the Church should not be favored by the state and that it should exercise no influence at all upon the operation of the secular state. As such, this is the separatist Liberalism which nineteenth-century popes like Pius IX (d. 1878) and Leo XIII (d. 1903) so frequently and vehemently condemned.

Liberalism has a simple answer to the problem of the Common Good. It rejects the idea of a Transcendental Common Good and focuses upon just the materialist and sociological issues of a Social Common Good. As such, it can be combined with Marxist or capitalist elements to give the typical array of perspectives which modern (secular) political parties display.

Reacting against the excesses of Extreme Integralism, and the religious conflicts which it can lead to, Liberalism found a ready ear among eighteenth and nineteenth century Enlightenment populations. It made sense to them on an emotional and reactionary level, but it has always struggled to make sense intellectually.

This is because it is impossible to articulate a complete separation between religion and politics. Each has views on common problems which overlap, such as ethical questions. Even in countries which insist that they have a formal separation of church and state, there will nevertheless be religious citizens arguing about how issues such as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment (etc.), should be enshrined in the laws of the country.

To suggest that citizens could, or should, deal with ethical issues in a kind of schizophrenically different way, varying what they say and do depending on whether they are in religious or political contexts, makes no sense. People cannot turn their beliefs on and off in different contexts. The kinds of people who do say radically different things in different contexts raise concerns of consistency and sincerity.

This means that Liberalism’s answer to the problem of the Common Good is not one that Christians can accept. They cannot ignore the existence of a Transcendental Common Good and its implications for the social sphere.

?-ism

There is, as yet, no generally agreed term to describe the position which sits between Integralism and Liberalism. This “?-ism” perspective rejects Liberalism’s ignoring of the Transcendental Good, but it also rejects Integralism’s view that force and compulsion should be used to achieve the Common Good. It is a return to the first-century Church’s vision of inspiring people into holiness, rather than trying to compel them into it.

This approach is at the forefront of Vatican II’s decree on Religious Freedom (1965). It has a vision of states where citizens are completely free to choose to be Christian, or not. This is similar to the biblical vision of Adam and Eve’s choice, where they were completely free to choose God, or not (Genesis 3).

This “freedom” approach is a change of Church policy, rather than doctrine (see “Religious Freedom: Did Vatican II Change Church Doctrine”). It believes that religious ideas of a Transcendental Common Good should influence society, but it thinks that it should be done in a completely different way to the policies which Extreme Integralism promotes.

What this means in practice is that Christians commit to the Transcendental Common Good as influencing what they campaign for and establish in their societies. But they also try to ensure that people have the maximum intellectual and sociological “room” to be able to freely choose that vision.

So, in the same way that God did not prevent Adam and Eve from sharing their “mistaken” views and tempting each other into sin, this means that the state should not punish heretics and try to railroad people into holiness. Yes, that means heretics can spread their views and potentially undermine Christians’ vision of the Transcendental Common Good. But that is a price worth paying for the greater good of a freely chosen Transcendental Common Good.

However, there must be limits to freedom in all societies which are not just dictatorships. This means that Christians may think that the Transcendental Common Good should be enshrined in some laws, especially where there are vulnerable individuals. This is why they may campaign for laws about abortion and euthanasia, while not campaigning for laws about Sunday observance.

Overall, a freedom-focused approach tries to avoid the extremes of Integralism and Liberalism. It eschews the deceptive simplicity of extremes, for complex value judgements which try to ensure that a vision of the Transcendental Common Good guides society, but in a way that leaves people with as much freedom as possible.

Conclusion

There are two definitions of the Common Good. Christians believe that the Social Common Good acquires its meaning and significance from the Transcendental Common Good. So, they insist that materialist sociological approaches can never provide an ultimately satisfactory vision for human fulfillment.

Extreme Integralists think that compulsion should be used to force societies to engage with the Transcendental Common Good. Liberalism thinks that the Transcendental Common Good should be ignored. Between these extremes is another position which accepts that the Transcendental Common Good should be the vision for every society, but it also insists upon trying to achieve that vision with as much personal freedom as possible.