Mathew Schmalz, Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy Cross.
Posts By This Author
Taxing the Rich to Help the Poor? Here's What the Bible Says
12-11-2017
The idea that government has an important role to play in human flourishing was made by Pope Leo XIII in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. In it, the pope argued that governments should promote “the common good.” Catholicism defines the “common good” as the “conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”