QUOTATION: The Common Good

The second classic principle of Catholic social doctrine is the principle of the common good, or what might be called the communitarian principle; it complements and completes the personalist principle because men and women grow into the fullness of their humanity through relationships, each of us should exercise our rights in such a way that that exercise contributes to the general welfare of society, and not simply to our individual aggrandizement. Living in service to the common good is essential for the good of society, as well as for the integral development of persons.  Thus, in the classic Catholic view, society is a "natural phenomenon", not a remedial reality (...).

--George Weigel, "The Free and Virtuous Society", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: The Principle of Personalism

The first classic principle of Catholic social doctrine is the principle of personalism, which can also be called the human rights principle. According to this principle, all right thinking about society-- in its cultural, ecnomic and political aspects-- begins with the inalienable dignity and value of the human person. Right thinking about society does not begin with the state, the party, or the tribe; neither does it begin with ethnicity, race, or gemder. Rather, it begins  with the human person, considered as an individual possessing intelligence and free will, and therefore inherent dignity and value.  Society and it legal expression, the state, must always be understood to be in the service of the integral development of the human person.  The state, in particular, has an obligation to defend the basic human rights of persons, which are "built into" us by reason of our very humanity.  "Rights," in the Catholic understanding of the term, are not benefices distributed by the state as its whim or pleasure; they are goods to be protected and/or advanced by any just state.

--George Weigel, "The Free and Virtuous Society", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: Social Doctrine

The Church's social doctrine is not a third way between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism, nor even a possible alternative to other solutions less radically opposed to one another: rather, it constitutes a category of its own.

--Pope St. John Paul II