We are probably all entering the new year of 2026 with a fragile flickering of hope and along with some trepidation.
Not only are the international and national reports troubling and downright puzzling, but here in Victoria on Friday, January 9, we endured a disturbing day of ferocious heat and even more ferocious wind, the first “black” bushfire day. The devastation from the fires on that day will scar the lives of many regional areas, businesses and people for a very long time.
If there are any good things that come out of such a day of fear and emergency, one is that in regions ravaged by the blazes it was impossible to think that we could isolate ourselves from the fate of or interdependence with others.
In this situation the “common good” was a clear end, not an abstract ideal with nuances of meaning and emphasis.
In my region around Ballarat in western Victoria, ash and blinding smoke from the fire front near Streatham and Skipton filled our own more urban lives “in town”. The constant eerie wail of sirens throughout that Friday were a constant reminder of the courage and generosity of many volunteer firefighters racing to save lives, properties and livelihoods.
On that day all the seemingly ordinary people, without theorising or “playing politics”, did brave, noble and loving things in recognition of a hierarchy of true and important goods that make up our shared task of the “common good”.
Not only did this include the ever crucial firefighting, but the opening of doors and hearts to evacuated farming families, the checking of people who were vulnerable, the donations of food and goods and, even at 9.30pm on Friday night, a spontaneously organised Mass and prayers at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Ballarat for all who were anxious, disorientated or connected to the fires.
This rich and thick notion of the “common good” forms the theme for the Thomas More Centre’s forthcoming one-day summer conference on February 14, “Christianity and the Common Good” (book here).
The aim of the day and the dinner in the evening is to allow our speakers, special guests and our participants to explore together the key dimensions of the “goods” that are constitutive and give purpose to human flourishing in Australia today. We believe that ordinary Christian faithful and those of goodwill have a vital collaborative role in the task of community and polis-building.
One of the most vivid defenders of the reality of the “common good” is the Catholic Scottish-American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. This newsletter published a short tribute for him at his death at the age of 96 last year.
In his many enormous contributions to thinking about the role of education, virtue and the life of communities, MacIntyre diagnosed the illnesses of the late and post-modernity of the West but also the inadequacies of some Christian thinking influenced unwittingly by the liberal secularism of the times.
He contributed an intriguing chapter to the book Common Truths: New Perspectives on Natural Law (2000), which included contributions from many other important – largely American – scholars who have teased out the sometimes bland published definitions of the “common good”, including Russell Hittinger, Janet E. Smith, Ralph McInerny, Robert P. George, and others.
MacIntyre begins his chapter with these thoughts: “Ours is a culture dominated by experts: experts who profess to assist the rest of us, but who often instead make us their victims.”
Here we are all familiar with the loss of localised expressions and engagement in the common good in our times by the layers and complexities of rule by bureaucracy, economic globalism and administrative structures.
MacIntyre contributed to the application of the deep social wisdom of St Thomas Aquinas in the vastly different world of our times.
He believed that human beings were essentially “sociable” and by constitution made for reason. This involved the respect for both our personal good and the common good “as an individual who is bound to others through a variety of familial, social and political relationships expressed in joint activity aimed at achieving the common good”.
Like Aquinas, MacIntyre argued persistently that “plain” people who were prepared to pursue virtue, moral maturity and intelligent discovery could contribute to rebuilding society and communities after the fragmentation of what he called “advanced modernity”.
This is not achieved by some magic or programming, but he writes that, “I have to learn about my good and about the common good from family and friends … and also from others … even strangers.”
The Thomas More Centre wants to revive the engagement by what MacIntyre famously called “plain persons” and their families and communities, in the discussion about faith and the common good.
The Reformed American theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, explained MacIntyre’s emphasis on “plain persons”:
“Plain persons are those characterised by everyday practices such as sustaining families, schools, and local forms of political community. They engage in trades and professions that have required them to learn skills constitutive of a craft. Such people are the readers he (MacIntyre) hopes his books may reach. Grounded as they are in concrete practices necessary to sustain a common life, they acquire the virtues that make them capable of recognising the principles of natural law and why those principles call into question the legitimating modes of modernity.”
While it is valuable to have trained scholars such as historians, theologians, legal academics and moral philosophers who assist us in our understanding of the common good, we hope our February conference will provide us all with imaginative, challenging and congenial inspiration.
Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre
