All Saints Day and Catholic Social Thought

Today is All Saints' Day, and we celebrate, among other things, the "communion of saints" (i.e., according to the online "Catholic Encyclopedia, "the spiritual solidarity which binds together the faithful on earth, the souls in purgatory, and the saints in heaven in the organic unity of the same mystical body under Christ its head, and in a constant interchange of supernatural offices").

I once read somewhere -- but, unfortunately, I cannot remember where -- a wonderful reflection on the connection between Catholic Social Thought, and Catholic thinking about justice, on the one hand, and the "communion of saints," on the other. It strikes me that this is a rich connection. Certainly, CST notions of "solidarity" and "the common good" resonate with the idea of the solidarity and "communion" between the Church on pilgrimage and the Church in Heaven. I also think, though, that the "communion of saints" idea reminds us that, in Catholic Social Thought and Catholic Legal Theory, thinking about "community" and "the common good" is richer than it (perhaps) is in merely political discourse. That is, for Catholics, the "common good" that is the appropriate aim and end of just laws is not just a utilitarian "greatest good for the greatest number" notion; the Catholic community is not just a "crowd", and the "common good", for Catholics, is not some creepy, Rousseau-esque or statist abstraction. The "common good" is, instead, the set of conditions that enables the authentic human flourishing of individual persons, in community (or "communion"). What the saints enjoy is not immersion into the General Will, or a communitarian abstraction -- they enjoy, instead, true human flourishing, the aim of authentic human freedom, as persons encumbered with what C.S. Lewis called "The Weight of Glory."

Rick