Reflecting with Pope Benedict
Father, your truth is made known in your Word.
Guide us to seek the truth of the human person.
Teach us the way to love because you are Love.
Jesus, you embody God’s Love and Truth.
Help us to recognise your face in the poor.
Enable us to live out our vocation
To bring love and justice to all people.
Holy Spirit, you inspire us to transform our world.
Empower us to seek the common good for all people.
Give us a spirit of solidarity and make us one human family
One of the scribes asked Jesus ‘Which commandment is first of
all?’
Jesus replied:
‘Number One is ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord’ and
‘You shall love the Lord your God out of your whole heart and your
whole soul and your whole understanding and your whole
strength.’
This is the second ‘You will love your neighbour as yourself’
Greater than these there is no other commandment.’
Mark 12: 28-31
Reflecting with Pope Benedict
To love someone is to desire that
person’s good
and to take effective steps to secure it.
Besides the good of the individual,
there is the good that is linked to
living in society:
the common good
All of us It is the good that is sought
It is the good of ‘all of us’, not for its own sake,
made up of but for the people who
individuals, belong to the social
community and who can
families, only really and effectively
and intermediate groups pursue their good within
who together constitute it.
society
To desire the common good
and strive towards it
is a requirement of
justice and charity CIV 7
Economic activity
Economic activity cannot solve
all social problems through
the simple application of
commercial logic.
This needs to be directed
towards
the pursuit of the common
good,
for which the political
community in particular
must take responsibility
Imbalance
Therefore, it must be borne in mind
that grave imbalances are produced
when economic action,
conceived merely as an engine for
wealth creation ,
is detached from political action,
conceived as a means for pursuing
justice through redistribution
CIV 36
Finely attuned
Development is impossible
without upright men and
women financiers and
politicians
whose consciences are
finely attuned
to the requirements
of the common good
CIV 71
Reflecting together:
What words from Pope How can you better inform
Benedict stay with you? your conscience so as to be
sensitive to the good of all?
What is the “common good”?
Why is it a requirement of What do you think your role is
justice and charity? as a Catholic and a person
concerned about the well-
In what way/s is your being of others, in working
conscience attuned to the for the common good?
requirements of the
common good?