The Common Good
Count me as a skeptic whenever administration allies begin claiming that the White House is guided by ideas derived from Catholic social thought, or indeed from any form of theological reflection. Via Kevin Sullivan and Laura Rozen comes this report from Religion News Service:
McDonough helped craft Obama’s landmark address to Muslims last June in Cairo, and the robust defense of American foreign policy—including the waging of “just wars”—during the president’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Norway [bold mine-DL].
A key component of Obama’s foreign policy is the Catholic concept of the common good, McDonough said. “It’s a general posture of seeking engagement to find mutual interests, but also realizes that there is real evil in the world that we must confront,” he said in an interview at his West Wing office. “The president also recognizes that we are strongest when we work together with our allies.”
The most obvious reason to be skeptical here is that the previous administration had any number of willing helpers who were happy to dress up whatever injustice or error it was committing as being either entirely consistent with Catholic teaching or an expression of Catholic moral theology. Whether it was George Weigel re-inventing just war theory to approve of preventive warfare or Michael Gerson declaring Bush’s immigration policy to be the embodiment of solidarity, we have been inundated with people appropriating Catholic teaching for very bad or questionable causes. Marc Thiessen is the most recent and perhaps most egregious example of this, but he is hardly alone. Those are admittedly extreme examples, but they serve as a warning whenever administration allies begin claiming theological guidance for their policies.
Obviously, McDonough wasn’t going to be able to dictate the content of Obama’s speech, but I do find it odd that the two speeches he did help to write are remarkable for their failure to say anything meaningful about the gross injustices that have occurred in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza. (He did at least manage to acknowledge that there was a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.) All that Obama did say about Iraq in Cairo was that it was a war of choice and it was now coming to an end, and all that he said about it in Oslo was that the war “was winding down.” He never even mentioned the name of the country we had invaded and occupied in a war that he had originally opposed. One of the reasons I found the Cairo speech underwhelming is that it specifically omitted any reference to Lebanon or Gaza. His Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech likewise never touched on either conflict.
Yes, we all know Obama was limited politically in what he could say. Besides, it would be difficult for someone who supported the Lebanon and Gaza campaigns to find fault with them, but he might have said something to acknowledge the human costs of these conflicts. A view informed by the idea of the common good, which is related to the principle of solidarity and inspired by a spirit of charity, would not pass over these things in silence. A defense of the common good may sometimes require the use of force, but what of the terrible damage to the common good when force is used illicitly, unjustly, excessively and disproportionately? On this the “Christian realist” Obama had nothing to say in the two speeches where it would have been most natural to address such questions. At the same time, he specifically endorsed the criminal war against Yugoslavia that had no justification in law or morality while speaking in Oslo.
Someone will object that this holds Obama to an unrealistic standard. After all, he is a head of state and a politician, not a theologian! That’s true, but when the administration or its advisors begin spreading the word that Obama’s foreign policy is informed by Catholic social thought it seems more than fair to judge policy and public statements accordingly. Just judging by the two speeches McDonough helped write, to say nothing of any actual policy decisions Obama has made in the last year, the “key component” has not been all that important to administration foreign policy.
If by “derived from Catholic social thought” means attempting to create an aura of legitimacy by applying a tortured interpretation of that term to whatever actions the administration intended to do anyway, then yes, it is clear that much of what has been done by the last two administrations is derived from Catholic social thought. While Thiessen’s tortured reasoning is particularly impressive, he’s merely an extreme manifestation of this impulse among our political class. What is disappointing is that few people with the theological knowledge to point out how flawed their application of the concept of common good is have done so. Thank you for making the effort.
Perhaps McDonagh got confused, and thought that “Catholic social thought” meant “totally supporting invasions in Gaza and Lebanon.” It’s happened before.
Common good or public interest?
This is a topic I’ve been struggling with for some time now, and I think that what McDonough mistakes to be the common good is actually the idea of the public interest. Interests, it seems, come from the subjective, from feelings that arise out of individual human persons. The good, on the other hand, is objective and the subjective interests may or may not conform to the objective good.
The public interest is a weighing of a number of interests to come to some qualitative result. Some interests will be weighed higher than others. Sorry to use an abortion example, but an excellent example of this thought is in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, where the interests of the state, the mother, and the unborn are all weighed, and sometimes the unborn’s good of life looses. Of course this is not so for the Catholic common good, which would not perform any such calculative weighing. Rather it would look to the good of all in the situation of the “unwanted” pregnancy, which means that the unborn shall live, while the mother will deliver the child, in some way. While the mother’s financial and career interests may be hindered, and the state’s interest in death is hindered, the good remains common all.
It may be in two parties mutual interest to murder, cheat, or steal so that they can gain some worldly advantage (treasure, power, etc). And in such cases, somebody’s good suffers to the interests of others. But while St. Isidore says that “laws are enacted for no private profit, but for the common benefit of the citizens,” this concept is really difficult for us Americans to apply with our subjectively based understanding. And as such, our jurisprudence and our general thought is really geared toward interests and not the good life for humans (think TARP, the Iraq-Afghan war, etc). Thus, with the nature of the government that we have, and the moral state that our people are generally in, we as a people are incapable of solving any of our growing problems and crises by measures that adhere to the common good.
There is so much more to say on this topic, but I think it is right to remain skeptical of appeals to Catholic common good talk, particularly by folks explicitly speaking of interests, and folks who are generally incapable of comprehending what the good even is.
McDonough’s comments on the “common good” seem totally lacking in content. Seek common interests, but sometimes you have to fight. It’s good to work together with your allies. What’s this from, Everything I Need to Know About Foreign Policy I Learned in Kindergarten?
Larison’s comments are just confusing (to me, at least). What’s this “terrible damage to the common good” when force is used “unjustly”, etc.? Since he’s not talking about civil war, the object of the unjust force is not part of the community to whom the good applies. What then is the damage to the community? Divine retribution? Bad conscience?
P.S. Pretty much everyone, hawk or dove, believes that the Olmert government’s waging of the war in Lebanon involved a stupid and unnecessary waste of lives.