Denver Catholic

5 DENVER CATHOLIC | OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2024 having retreated into yourselves, as if you were already justified, but gather instead to seek the common good together" (§1905). There are goods we all seek, which we can more easily realize together. That includes mate- rial needs, but it certainly includes higher ones as well, for unlike animals, we cannot simply fulfill our needs on a bodily level. We want to know the truth, and so we build schools. We want to create beauty, so we build structures that rise to the heavens. And we want to find something that will last beyond this passing life. Throughout history, this has driven society as people have banded together to manifest the most profound truth that together, we are ordered to a Good beyond this world that should be wor- shipped and celebrated. Society exists to pursue the full flourishing of the human person— sprung from the family and ordered toward higher goods, such as the pur- suit of truth and virtue. The Church has always taught that the family is the foundation of society. Without people, there is no society, and there is no future without children. To act contrary to the good of human life undermines the very purpose of soci- ety and the foundation of the rule of law as securing the good. We can never view government as an abso- lute good because it must respect its roots in the family and the goods that transcend it, including the dignity of the human person. A society that strikes against its own foundations in the dignity of the human person and the family will inevitably fall. ⊲ In order to overcome today's widespread individualistic mentality, what is required is a concrete commitment to solidarity and charity, beginning in the family." POPE ST. JOHN PAUL II BY DR. R. JARED STAUDT Director of Content for Exodus 90

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