D.C. Schindler: The Dignified & the Efficient: On the Symbolic Significance of Authority

From “The Common Good and the Political Order: On the Church’s Responsibility for the World” Conference held by the John Paul II Institute in Washington D.C., November 4, 2022.

While there is a growing consensus among Catholics that our liberal political order is in crisis, there remain deep disagreements about the nature and end of political authority and the relationship between the Church and state. The aim of this conference is to consider the relationship between the Church and political order in light of the idea of the common good as developed within the Catholic tradition.
The liberalism of Western democracies, such as the U.S., has increasingly neglected the idea of common good in favor of the mere mediation of individual and group interests and rights. In doing so, it has reduced the Church’s mission to that of one interest group, whose private form of rationality is essentially irrelevant to public discourse, or worse, is an obstruction to material and political progress.
Yet, by reason and by faith the Church acknowledges the primacy of God as “the beginning and end of all things” (Vatican I, Dei Filius). How does the primacy of God and the corollary doctrine of the common good shed light on the nature and end of political authority? What is the ground of religious freedom? What is the nature of the Church’s responsibility for the temporal order?

Full conference details: https://www.johnpaulii.edu/events/the...

Learn more about Dr. D.C. Schindler here: https://www.johnpaulii.edu/academics/...

Hosted by the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington D.C. https://www.johnpaulii.edu