To commit to speaking of the common good is not enough; we must also commit to live it, not only in the actions and the parishes, but in the whole way we live out our common life as the church. In many places we are living it out – the Bishop of Knaresborough spoke of that. But the common good is not something, as Jim has shown us, that is merely talked about; it is something that is practised.
And yet we live in a society where the concept of the general interest seems to have the greatest force. In economic terms, that basically says that the only people who are worth paying attention to are the ones who are economically active; and you calculate, you measure, so that a gain of £100 by a person with £10 million is exactly the same, economically, as a loss of £100 by a person with £120 when they started. That is the general interest.
The common good is different, because it is more than what happens when you add my good and your good together.
This is exactly why I gave up on Anglo-catholicism and embraced real Catholicism. Anglo-catholicism really is a chimera; it has not definitive way of defining what exactly is Anglo-catholic tradition or teaching and what is not. Having nice sacramentals and incense in your liturgy does not make you Catholic.
Archer, are you sure you’re responding to this speech by +Welby? I would not dream of disputing your choice, but I have seen plenty of what seem to me very ill-informed although well-intentioned statements on economics, much like this, from Catholic bishops as well as Anglican.
Well, how did this comment get on this thread. I haven’t even read this article. Weird…let me copy and paste this were it was supposed to go.