Rights and the Common Good – The Josias

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The Josias was founded by a small community seeking to articulate an authentically Catholic political stance from which to approach the present order of society. Our goal is to make this site a working manual for those who wish to bring their faith into the public square and resist the tides of liberalism, modernism, and ignorance of tradition which have, in the past century, so harmed the Church and tied her hands in the struggle to advance the social reign of Christ.

Rights and the Common Good – The Josias

By Edmund Waldstein, O. Cist  [Cistercians of Common Observance] 

[Leo] Strauss goes on to argue that the consequence of this shift is modern individualism. The ancients (meaning Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, not, say, Lucretius) had been convinced that man can reach his telos only as part of a city, and that the common good of the city is therefore teleologically prior to the private good of the individual. Man’s duties towards the city and his fellow citizens are, as a consequence, prior to any claim of rights against them. But for liberalism, the individual is prior to the community, the community is established for the sake of defending the individual’s rights, any rights of the state or the sovereign are derivative from the rights of the individual, as are any duties the individual may have towards state or sovereign. This individualism of liberalism remains even when its notion of rights goes through great changes. Hobbes and Locke derived rights from nature, modern liberals, however, became impatient of the absolute limits to diversity or individuality that are imposed even by the most liberal version of natural right, they had to make a choice between natural right and the uninhibited cultivation of individuality. They chose the latter.[5]

For Aquinas, law is not primarily the expression of God’s will, but rather, the wisely ordered plan of creation in God’s intellect is like the “law” that guides the perfectly just willing of God. Law is an expression of reason, an ordering according to reason, even in God. And so justice results from rightly willing according to the wise or reasoned ordering of all things to God.[16]