An Irrational Climate

 “I’d like to talk to you about climate change sometime. I’m not sure we agree,” said a friend at this morning’s Bible study. 

Indeed, we probably don’t, I say as I just returned from a walk without a coat in northern Delaware the day before the start of the Great Antiphons. 

Pope Francis impeccably diagnosed the true cause of climate change, which is human sin and alienation from God, leading to idolization of earthly comfort and the exclusion of care for fellow man and for God’s creation. This is common sense, as is the solution: repentance from mindless consumption and a willingness to sacrifice comfort and sloth in favor of a more ascetic and dare I say traditional way of living. 

It doesn’t matter if Al Gore is lying, the hype behind recent wildfires and hurricanes is exaggerated, and climate models are fudged. 

What about fossil fueled suburban mediocrity is worth fighting for? 

If climate change is not real, it doesn’t matter. I still want to live in a walkable neighborhood where I don’t need to sit in an uncomfortable metal death trap and strap my kids into harnesses to access basic amenities or see my friends and family. When I do drive, I’d rather not release enough Carbon Monoxide to kill someone. I’d like to power basic amenities without releasing at least five well known toxins. I’d prefer to get most of my food from local farms rather than factories halfway across the country (or the world). We should all want decentralized energy sources so we don’t have to depend on utilities run by teamsters or suppliers like Enron. And what is so objectionable about, say, cutting payroll taxes (which are unavoidable) and shifting those taxes to carbon emissions (which are far more avoidable)? Or cutting the massive government subsidies handed out to oil and coal companies? 

What about the current energy infrastructure is in harmony with tradition? Which looks healthier and more traditional? When are we going to understand that the modern idolization of technology is precisely what destroyed traditional culture and ways of life? 

A German parish near me asserts that it was given a death blow when I-95 destroyed a chunk of its neighborhood and sliced the rest in half. This had to be extremely common and responsible for a huge share of the decay of the once proud jewels of urban church architecture and art. It did not help that this came right around the time of the liturgical reform. The ancient Israelites organized their tents around the tabernacle. We organize our tents around highways, garages, and parking lots. 

King Edward I banned the burning of coal in England, and for good reason, given that more people die from air pollution than from the covid bugaboo. Pope Gregory XVI banned trains in the Papal States, and the experience of ruined families, dispossessed natives, and runaway government expansion following the US railroads would seem to back him up. 

I know the typical arguments contra, from the deranged to the most compelling. They are not good arguments. Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, and climate scientists may lie. Melting ice caps do not. And it’s adorable when American conservatives pretend to care about poor Americans’ energy bills, miners’ livelihoods, and economic development in poor countries as an excuse to block action on climate change.

At a certain point, it’s time to move past the personal dislike for folks visibly identified with action on climate change and be cunning as serpents. Take the proffered opportunity to strike a blow at secular industrialism. Build up local agriculture and businesses especially those of the faith, find a walkable neighborhood with a strong parish if you can, get your energy from someone other than the state or a multinational corporation, and encourage your environmentalist friends to read the Pope’s encyclical. Maybe a short version that skips the awkward forays into climate science and rants about air conditioning. If you like that, you may also like other greatest hits such as Rerum Novarum, Humanae Vitae, and Quanta Cura. 

I can’t drive (pre)55

 

This morning I attended a beautiful Rorate Mass: a votive Mass in honor of Our Lady, lit only by candlelight, beginning before dawn. It also happens to be the feast day of Pope Saint Damasus I (in the old and new calendars!). Now I get this was a Mass in honor of the Blessed Mother, but there was no collect or even mention of the good Pope. 

Why care? Well it turns out he proclaimed a canon of the New Testament, commissioned Saint Jerome to begin work on the Vulgate Bible, fought heavily against multiple heresies, especially the often triumphant Arianism, pushed the Roman Emperor to remove the altar of victory from the Senate, and dealt with clerics being corrupted by the Church’s sudden increase in wealth and political standing. 

Hearing about this saint seems rather important if one wants to share the beauty of how the Church gave us the Scriptures with Protestant brethren and how to deal charitably but firmly with politicians and clerics tending toward heresy and corrupted by worldly concerns. 

So why no mention of Saint Damasus today? I suspect it’s because of the limits placed on Collects in a Mass in 1955 and 1960. There were already two during our Mass: one for Our Lady and one for the Advent feria. 

Before 1955, the limit to Collects in a Low Mass could be five or seven. By the 60s that was heavily reduced, and in the Novus Ordo it’s just one. This explains why none of these saints whose feast days (old calendar) fell on Sundays in the last year were commemorated: Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Mark, Saint James the Greater, Saint Anthony of Padua, the Passion of Saint John the Baptist, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Saint Therese of Lisieux. 

These changes to the Collects coincided with chucking most of the Octaves in the liturgical calendar (such as Corpus Christi, Sacred Heart, Assumption, Holy Innocents). And trimming the number of Old Testament readings in Easter Vigil by about half. As well as losing Last Gospels, for example when a major feast (like the Assumption this year) overrides a Sunday, the Assumption Gospel is proclaimed, and the Last Gospel is the Gospel for the Sunday. The Communion Confiteor was also dropped, removing the communal confession of sins directly before receiving the Eucharist. And all of these changes were before the Second Vatican Council. 

What’s the big deal?

First, I would flip the question. The changes are imposing mandatory limits to Collects per Mass, mandatory eliminations of centuries-old octaves and, for six decades, mandatory reductions in Scripture readings during Easter Vigil. Why is it necessary to mandate these things? Surely a pastoral approach at most allows rather than demands lightening of Collects, Octaves, and Vigil readings.

The bottom line is that Mass is the main setting where the faithful interact with the Church. Everything that happens or doesn’t happen at Mass matters. If prayers invoking the saints are removed, if Scripture readings are cut, if feasts are cut or removed, if a confessional rite is removed, it matters. It tells the faithful that those things are less important than making the liturgy go faster and reducing the need to contemplate what is proclaimed at Mass. 

It is sobering to realize that there is no parish where Mass is said according to the centuries-old traditional rites of my British and German ancestors. The few traditional Masses available are by-the-book 1962 Missal Masses, a Missal which leaves behind all the richness I just mentioned and more besides. 

I pray that as time and divine providence give us greater clarity, we move away from rigid legalism and toward the Church’s traditional understanding of handing down a received liturgy that grows organically through the centuries under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

—-

Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little." And he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." 

Ex Ore Infantium

 

This bulletin announcement greeted me when I looked to find traditional Mass times at a nearby parish for Immaculate Conception and the Circumcision of the Lord. 

Where to start?

Scriptural

This is an inflammatory misuse of Scripture. 

Our Lord spoke these words in reference to swindlers using the court of the gentiles of the Jerusalem temple to cheat the people on currency exchanges, not parents bringing young children to liturgy. Our Lord spoke these words just after cleansing the temple. It is dreadful to conflate removing children from the nave to cleansing the temple in a church often bereft of children and a society fond of abortion and contraception. 

I know we’re Catholic, but are we supposed to pretend we don’t know the far more relevant passages from the Synoptics with the opposite message? I’m sure the children being shooed away from Christ by the disciples were “noisy and misbehaving”. Children are almost never quiet or perfectly behaved, why else would the disciples turn them away? Nevertheless, Christ demands that they be brought to him without preconditions, for to them belongs the kingdom of God and he who receives a child in Christ’s name receives Christ. Christ’s words apply broadly, not just to the narrow question of contraception. 

Logistical/Prudential

Define noisy children. If my six-month old is learning to babble, does that cross the line? What about my five year old asking me about the different parts of the Mass and following along in his missal? The proper word here is “disruptive.” No parent should be told to leave the room during liturgy because of a curious or excited child. 

Pastoral

Do you want Catholics to follow the Church’s teaching on openness to life and to catechize their children by bringing them to liturgy, or not? It is unbearable that we still have this attitude among orthodox elements of the modern church. 

The challenges parents now face with childrearing are unnatural and at times unlivable. Parents of the past generally benefitted from parents or other family living close by, stronger neighborhoods that watched out for children, morally and intellectually healthier schools, children who spent most leisure time playing outside, reasonable limits on technology, and more affordable housing and healthcare costs. 

Most Catholic parents I know have few to none of these advantages. Now, many such parents can expect to have their children on top of them 24/7 under threat of a CPS call, with alternatives being hiring a nanny, daycare, cringeworthy schools, or relocation to an area tolerant of free ranging children. I know many families who have gone with this latter option. 

Visits from family often trigger friction because most family members do not come from large, orthodox Catholic families and find the life of a large household, complete with family rosary, to be weird, overwhelming, and frustrating. 

In this environment, I have seen exactly one parish put together a parents’ night of any kind, with childcare. I have seen no parish mom’s groups. Our previous parish, the one with the all are welcome sign in front, refused to help us set up a mom’s group then refused to baptize our third child until we provided a state issued birth certificate. 

At my college town’s local Oratory (which hosted all manner of talks on the importance of following Church teaching on sexuality), a friend felt excluded from the congregation when he and his wife started having kids as they were pressured to hear Mass from a conference room outside the chapel. Within a few years they had left the Church for Eastern Orthodoxy and now appear to be secular liberals. 

I have heard exactly one priest, my current pastor, state that liturgy is open to all baptized Catholics and that children have as much right to be there as anyone else. 

If older Catholics find it difficult to maintain a focused and prayerful attitude in an environment with lots of children, it’s worth pondering why that is. There were no “cry rooms” in the 50s when 75% of Catholics, kids and all, piled into church every Sunday and yet somehow we made it work. Most parents are hypersensitive already and will remove truly disruptive children without secret police disguised as ushers kicking them out. 

“They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.” 

That’s sadducaic!

 

I’m confident you have never heard the word “sadducaic”, but I wish you heard it often. It is fashionable for modern Catholics to rail against pharisaism. By pharisaism, they mean doctrinaire, spiritual arrogance that is hypocritical and drives people away from the faith. 

This line of thinking is trendy because it is deeply unpopular to be a Pharisee. But it is very popular to be a Sadducee. 

Quickly: the Sadducees were the rich, “chief priest” class in Judea at the time of Christ. The name comes from the high priest Zadok (Sadoc) from the time of Kings David and Solomon. They lurk throughout the NT but show up clearly a few times: in the crowds coming to Saint John the Baptist, asking Christ a mocking question about the resurrection of a woman and her seven deceased husbands during Holy Week, arresting Saints Peter and John in Acts 4, and at Saint Paul’s trial in Acts 23. 

The Sadducees:

-Occupied the high priestly positions and temple worship. 

-Colluded with the Roman authorities for money and power. The high priests were appointed by the Romans. 

-Rejected widely accepted Jewish doctrine, including the immorality of the soul, the afterlife, the resurrection, the existence of angels and spirits, and (to a degree) Scripture outside of the Pentateuch (Gen, Ex, Lev, Num, Deut).

-Opposed oral traditions outside of that narrow canon of Scripture

So the Sadducees were a clique of high ranking priests and rich politicos who did the bidding of the secular authorities and rejected both sound doctrine and tradition behind a facade of religious authority. 

If that sounds awfully familiar, you can understand why you’re unlikely to hear a clear description of who the Sadducees were and a thorough denunciation of Judean and modern sadducaic behavior in a Sunday homily or interview with a high ranking cleric. 

The Sadducees were mortal enemies of the Pharisees, and it’s always easy to denounce people in the opposing camp. 

However, Christ urged the disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. It’s not enough for us to reject the separatist, legalist, and arrogant tendencies of the Pharisees. We must also oppose the theological ignorance, unbelief, and careerism of the Sadducees. Our Lord answered the insolent question about the resurrection by proving wrong every assumption the Sadducees had using their own source material (Exodus). 

“Is this not why you are wrong, that you know neither the Scriptures, nor the power of God?” This, just after he had decked the Sadducees’ power base by cleansing the temple, and just before he proclaimed “Your house is forsaken” and prophesied the temple’s final destruction. 

What devastating words to hear out of the mouth of God himself. Privilege built on betrayal and apostasy does not last. 

So if you find yourself in a conversation where someone scorns true doctrine, lazily bows to the secular establishment, or compromises their beliefs to get ahead; don’t be afraid to point out: Jesus said don’t be sadducaic.

Doctores

 

Earlier this year, an exchange between Joe Rogan and Bill Burr on Rogan’s podcast went something like this:

Rogan: Do you want people to walk down the street with a mask on?

Burr: I don’t want to start this bullshit. I’m not going to sit here with no medical degree listening to you with no medical degree, with an American flag behind you smoking a cigar acting like we know what’s up better than the CDC… I watch the news every two weeks and “I’m like, mask or no mask? Still mask? Alright, mask.”

Rogan went the technocratic angle pointing out how the WHO notes that cloth masks have limited effectiveness and primarily recommends masks for those caring for covid patients. But I wish he had taken down the underlying assumption that mere laity may not question declarations from those with a medical degree or the CDC. 

Why is this important? Because there are at least a half dozen reasons why medical advice from doctors can and should be challenged, and not doing so can lead to prolonged sickness and excess mortality. In this example, clinging to masks over ensuring grocery delivery for the elderly and improved air filtering and ventilation in buildings (especially multifamily buildings housing hundreds of quarantined individuals) has gotten hundreds of thousands of people killed while prolonging pointless arguments. 

This assumption that we can’t question doctors or the CDC is silly for a handful of reasons both high-level and specific to doctors. Let’s start with high-level. 

First: Credentialed experts almost always disagree. So no matter what, someone’s always going to be disagreeing with an exalted doctor. 

Second: credentials are not a guarantee of superior knowledge, they are a confirmation that an individual has completed an approved course of study, test, or practical experience at some point in time. 

It’s rare that you see this barrier to criticism applied to other professions. One doesn’t typically see the argument that a New York Times columnist can’t criticize a Republican tax plan because the columnist isn’t an economist or a political scientist. Or that someone can’t give a training to coworkers without an education degree. 

Third: Knowledge evolves, and credentials typically do not. My credentials measure a broad base of knowledge I demonstrated at a point in time, not whether I retain that knowledge or stay abreast of evolving knowledge. Continuing education or recertification requirements are often a joke. 

Fourth and related: Books and the internet make relevant, accurate information widely available to everyone willing to do the research, credential or no credential. 

Fifth: Specialization. Degrees are typically broad, today’s world knowledge is highly detailed and focused on a much more specific niche within that larger domain. A degree in electrical engineering is no guarantee that the graduate knows anything about 15-minute interval smart meters. 

Sixth and perhaps most important: Credentialed experts have their own interests and biases. Left unchallenged, it’s natural for them to promote advice and policies that are best for them, truth be darned. 

Seventh: Credentials require time and money, and not everyone with the suitable knowledge has the time or the money. 

How many critical discoveries have been made by those without “proper” credentials or job experience? 

A New York Times columnist who has spent six months researching tax policy and speaking to a diverse array of experts on the topic is far better qualified to pass judgment on a tax plan than an economist who got a degree 20 years ago, works as a consulting manager, has never specialized in tax policy, and whose firm receives significant money from customers directly benefiting from the proposed tax plan. 

Which brings us to medical doctors. 

Most doctors are unlikely to have recent, detailed backgrounds in epidemiology and aerosol transmission. The Washington Post enjoys reminding Senator Paul of this on a regular basis. 

Many of the peer reviewed studies on masks and aerosol transmission are publicly available to anyone willing to carefully read them. If you’re reading the same studies the CDC is reading at the same time, who’s more knowledgeable? Do the CDC experts have hands-on experience treating covid patients and measuring aerosol transmission? 

And finally, doctors in this country are overwhelmingly biased in favor of pharmacological intervention, often overlooking or ignoring obvious, less costly, and more healthy solutions to medical problems. It is a significant reason why Americans pay more per capita for health coverage with the worst health outcomes of major high income countries. 

Doctors have been wrong all the time. Everyone has a story of a doctor declaring “x months left to live” for relative Y who went on to live for another several years beyond the doctor’s estimate. Doctors and experts once endorsed tobacco smoking, thalidomide, DDT, asbestos, PCBs, and indiscriminate prescription of antibiotics, all found to pose major health issues. 

I cannot tell you the number of times this has hit home for me personally. I went to a nurse practitioner several years ago when my throat was so swollen I could barely eat. The diagnosis was acid reflux and the immediate recommendation was to take omeprazole. The omeprazole worked, but my gut felt weird after taking it and it made no sense that I as a 29 year old man needed to take acid reflux medication for the rest of my life. Sure enough, I cut out both the omeprazole and my morning glass of orange juice and have had no problems since. You’re telling me I shouldn’t be questioning doctors after that experience? 

My wife struggled for years with bad and incomplete advice from doctors on how to deal with her Hypothyroidism before making dramatic changes to her diet and supplement regimen. It is certain that after five years of study and practical experience my wife knows more about digestion-related autoimmune disorders than most primary care physicians, endocrinologists, and pediatricians we’ve spoken with. This has been proven time and again in her conversations with those doctors. 

Which brings us back to the original question on masks. You don’t have to have an MD or a CDC job on your resume to figure out whether a certain type of mask does or does not block the spread of viral particles, and it is silly to suggest otherwise. Refusing to question the medical establishment will lead to stagnation of knowledge, sticking with failed approaches, and hubris on the part of doctors leading to more failed health initiatives. 

This isn’t to say throw out any recommendations made by a doctor. Only to say that doing sound research, asking hard, insightful questions, and challenging assumptions is how the evolution of scientific knowledge moves forward. Shutting that virtuous cycle off for the vast majority of society is going to do more harm than good. 

Veritas Tua

 “Well that’s your truth!” While taking his sons to the park, a friend of mine recently overheard an old man saying this to another old man. Exasperated, my friend high tailed it away lest he morph into, as he says, “Furious George.”

This idea that truth varies for different individuals is an old one. Plato discussed this idea in the Theaetetus dialog. It has survived through the ages, showing up in the lines of Scar from Lion King. 

It is normally associated with young people, but I see it more commonly and more deeply among old people. The young people I know are often convinced that there is an objective truth. They use words like justice and equality in the belief that these are supreme goods, and many of these youths demand punishment for those who say otherwise.

Promotion of relativism by the elderly hits home for my family. We have relatives who insist that we must accept and affirm them without reservation, by which they mean we must affirm their rudeness, hurtful comments, and burdensome demands. In conversations with friends, this is fairly common among relatives in their 60s and 70s. I have some speculations on why this is the case, but we’ll get to those musings in another post.

The thing is this relativism breaks down immediately. My relatives maintain that they are the type of people who are owed affirmation when they take advantage of close family, start fights, and personally attack us in public. To which I respond that I am the type of person who is owed reciprocity, a peaceful and supportive family, and kindness. 

These things cannot both be true. My relatives either have to A) drop their pretense to universal equality to insist that they’re intrinsically more valuable than us, which would torpedo their political views, or B) reject their belief that each individual gets to decide their own moral standards and impose tolerance of them onto others. Instead they go with Option C) Go silent and refuse to confront the matter, hoping that we just shut up and make the discomfort go away. 

It makes one want to rewatch the final scene of Boondock Saints. “These are not polite suggestions. They are codes of behavior.” 

What’s most irritating is that there really is an objective moral standard they’re insisting on: Don’t make us uncomfortable. This is what Pope Benedict XVI termed the Dictatorship of Relativism. Relativism is never really relativism, it is an iron-fisted demand that pleasures and conveniences continue uninterrupted and unquestioned. 

It is like modern, secular governments pretending that they are neutral in regards to religion. The reality is state-enforced Agnosticism that excludes religion from education and civic life. The reason for doing this is ultimately more convenience for the government in keeping the peace and fostering uninterrupted economic growth. It’s easier to keep people quiet if they’re focused on amassing more stuff and never ask hard questions. 

The Dying Idol of Americanism

 

When I was a child in the 90s, there were (as there always are), assumptions that were not to be questioned. Among them: freedom of speech, assembly, press, and religion were unequivocal goods to be protected full stop, the goal of life is to obtain a good education leading to a stable job leading to economic self sufficiency and comfortable retirement, that the modern era was far better and had shed the problems of prior eras, that the government was generally good and trustworthy, that religion was a private experience meant to serve an individual’s need for inner fulfillment that must take a backseat to everything else I just listed. 

That 90s bourgeois consensus is dead. More and more folks in my generation perceive a binary choice: uncompromising progressivism or no-holds-barred conservatism. We are rejecting the promise of classical liberalism: lasting peace and economic prosperity can be achieved by abandoning the use of force to impose ideological conformity. 

In the last two years: 

-Conservative American pundit Tucker Carlson visited Viktor Orban in Hungary, a leader who openly rejects political liberalism

-A mob of supporters of the Republican President marched on the US Capitol to overturn the results of an election that had been backed by many Republican judges and state government officials

-Public schools, retail stores, and community events were shut down by executive fiat for an indeterminate time period to combat a pandemic that is at worst minor by historical standards

-The centrist Governor (son of a daily communicant) issued requirements to suspend baptisms and reception of Communion as done in Catholic rites until persuaded otherwise by backchanneling from his mother and the local Bishop

-The President of the United States who scarcely won election and promised otherwise imposed a requirement for tens of millions of workers to receive a vaccine that did not exist 12 months ago

-An activist group at Netflix launched a campaign to bar programs like Dave Chappelle’s from being hosted on the platform, following similar attempts to silence Jordan Peterson and even early gay rights sympathizer JK Rowling

Americanism is dying. Conservatives believe the need to protect Constitutional rights requires them to undermine democracy, liberals believe the need to protect social welfare and protect minorities requires them to undermine Constitutional rights.

In the midst of this and a deeper delving into the truths of the faith, I had to be honest with myself and let go of my idol of Americanism. It is true that many parts of the US Constitution are valuable because they articulate and enshrine timeless principles of natural, God-given rights. It is also true that a society whose only unifier is freedom has no unifier at all. Every generation must reanswer the question freedom for what? We do not have a shared culture expressed in architecture, history, cuisine, public events, and family traditions like those I saw in Spain, Croatia, and Israel. Democratic control over the political order has also convinced us that reality is likewise up for a democratic vote. And democratic votes can be manipulated by savvy influencers. 

For most of American history, those accorded Constitutional rights professed government neutrality in matters of faith but actually acted on the assumption that Christian moral principles were the basis of society. But this was not a sure thing. Though figures like Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and Lincoln came to understand the importance of faith and regular prayer, others like Jefferson preferred to censor the Bible to suit liberal attitudes about miracles, and Thomas Paine rejected institutional religion altogether. 

As de Toucqeville pointed out, America had no established aristocracy. It also had no overarching organized church or quasi hereditary institutions like guilds to act as competing centers of power. This soon created unbridled competition that allowed plutocrats like Andrew Carnegie and JD Rockefeller to amass enormous power, creating irresistible calls for expanded action by the only competing institution left: the government. In came the demagogues like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who ignored the Constitution to get their agenda across the finish line. 

Americanism is built on a deeply flawed and unsustainable foundation. The Constitution and American ideals have not stood the test of time. Beyond failing almost immediately when it came to Presidential elections (requiring resuscitation by the 12th Amendment), the country almost ended over the Constitution’s forced acceptance of slavery. More recently the vague language in the Commerce Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment have allowed any branch of the federal government to do whatever it wants and get away with it. And they often use this license to demolish cultural norms and undermine freedom of religion. 

This is why the Catholic Church warned against Americanism until Americanist influence began running the show after WW2 and into the Second Vatican Council. A society with no guiding ideals besides freedom will produce selfish citizens seeking primarily to maximize their own gain, or competing identity tribes seeking to take care of themselves at everyone else’s expense. A society with no established church will see religion dominated by the selfish ideals of the state and cultural fashions. A society with no reasonable limits on speech, press, and educators will be flooded with misinformation. 

This is not theoretical. There is a reason the excesses of Wall Street, the explosion of identity politics, manufactured wars, and mass closure of churches and suspension of the sacraments are happening in America and in a Western Europe heavily influenced by postwar Americanism. 

This is why my generation perceives a choice. Not content with the limp libertarianism and careerism of Generation X, we either choose to pursue Americanism to its logical conclusion of the dictatorship of relativism, or we reject the misguided notions of freedom and rediscover the purpose of government as leading man toward the common good and the kingdom of God.