The Common Good is Our Common Ground
To the Editor:
In Linda Lehmann’s article “The Blame Game,” she enumerated the many ways that Americans have become more and more divided. No doubt our growing division is one thing we can all agree on. Where did we go wrong?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church [1903] tells us that authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it. If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse. It goes on to tell us that the common good concerns the life of all and requires the elements of respect for the person and social well-being and development. Maybe we are where we are today because we have grown accustomed to quietly sitting by as the moral compass of our country has increasingly veered off course.
Respect for the person is essential. Last Friday, Jan. 22, was the 48th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. If you don’t think that allowing the murder of over 60 million of our brethren has contributed to the morally corrupt state we find ourselves in, you are blind. We are worse than the Baal-worshiping pagans who sacrificed their children to false Gods. We, as a society, stand idly by as babies are aborted out of mere convenience. Where is the “respect for the person” when we have taken discipline out of schools and demasculinized men in our society (just watch any sitcom which portrays the father as the bumbling idiot and the mother as the one that wears the pants in the family)? Cities are defunding their police and pornography and sex trafficking are at an all time high. We may disagree on policies, but we should never forget that each one of us is created in the image of God and should be treated as such.
The second element, social well-being and development, has been confounded by the slowslide into socialism (although the pace is quickening). The best seasoning in any dish is hard work. If a man shall not work, he shall not eat. More and more, we stand by and wait for the government’s handout when things get tough. There were no stimulus checks during the Great Depression. Instead, there was the CCC and the WPA. Those programs were enacted because Franklin Roosevelt recognized that, “more important than the material gains will be the moral and spiritual value of such work.”
I have encountered many recently who are so dejected with the current state of things that their solution is to give up. All it takes for evil to win is for good people to do nothing. The world is run by those that show up. Now is not the time to sit back and let the left-wing radicals unravel the fabric of our country. We should no longer compromise our moral beliefs. The solution to the continuity of the American Dream that our astute Founding Fathers envisioned is a reversal of the things that have gotten us here. Respect each and every life, value hard work, educate yourselves and take a stand to root-out the unjust actions that destroy the common good and have contributed to our current situation.
Brianne Bernsen
Plum