Part One: RELIGION & POLITICS
Common Good Consciousness is both religious and political. Our worry is: will progressive consciousness swallow Catholicism or can Catholicism adapt? 'Common Good' consciousness equally obliges religion and politics.
Religion and politics run on parallel rails, mutually working. If rails diverge, the cultural train derails. Our times are fraught with religious/ political divergence. 'Progressive' consciousness should mutually inform religion and politics.
Andrew Latham puts it, “we must work to shape and inform a state that…would allow citizens…a…truly authentic form of pluralism, one suited to the realities of the postmodern/ postliberal era.” [COMMONWEAL, 12/2/2016, Vol. 149, No. 19, pp. 12-19].
Radical disagreement regarding the ‘good’ life precludes a consensus regarding the common good. He calls for “revising Catholic political doctrine to shape a new way of political engagement suited to the social, cultural and political realities of our time”.