Our Calling for the Common Good

By Jenny Sinclair

In this talk for head teachers at the EducareM School of National Formation, Jenny Sinclair explores how Catholic Social Teaching can help us play our part in the renewal of our country at this moment of great change.

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In this session, we’re going to look at why the common good is so important now, what it looks like in practical terms, what it looks like in terms of political economy in the Catholic tradition, how we are called to take responsibility, and how the common good is linked with our calling as Christians at this time.

Introduction

Let me just give you a very brief sketch of who I am and where I'm coming from. I grew up in an Anglican clergy family in London and then in Liverpool. My father was David Sheppard, the Bishop of Liverpool, who had a famous relationship with Archbishop Worlock for twenty-two years back in the 1970s to the 1990s.

But I was a rebel in my teens. I spent most of my time in the Liverpool music scene. I was the sort of teenager you as head teachers would be a bit concerned about.

I wasn't happy being the daughter of a bishop and I became estranged from the church.

But in my mid-twenties, I had a conversion experience, much to everyone's surprise and my own, and I was called into the Catholic Church, and I converted.

After that, I lived a quiet life, working in graphic design and in charities.

But then in 2011 - so that's what, 14 years ago - I felt the nudging of the Holy Spirit, and the first idea for the work that I'm now doing came to me.

I was seeing that things were going wrong in our society. You might remember the Tottenham riots; it was three years after the 2008 financial crash - and I realised the church was struggling to respond. Others joined me, and we felt that we were being called, initially, to explore that partnership between my late father and Archbishop Worlock. What we wanted to learn, from their twenty-two year joint leadership, was what was it about their partnership that made it so resonant? What would be useful for the church now in terms of the church's contribution to spiritual and civic renewal?

We saw that they played a critical role in Liverpool at a time of division, instability, unemployment and low confidence. To have church leaders so visibly working together not only ended a long history of sectarianism in Liverpool, but their solidarity made a lasting impact on the fortunes of a troubled city.

From them, we learned that when it comes to the civic vocation of the church, certain things stand out:

1. Christ centred, joint servant leadership across difference.

2. An outward-facing posture in relation to the neighbourhood, standing in solidarity, in particular with people who are poor. And of course,

3. Catholic Social Teaching - to discern a coherent response to the signs of the times.

So that was how we started.

But since that time, Together for the Common Good has developed. This is a new time, and it warrants new approaches. We draw on Catholic Social Teaching to enable people across the Christian denominations to play their part for the common good.

We do this through public lectures, consultancy, bespoke training for leaders, we create online resources, we produce a podcast, Leaving Egypt, which explores what it means to be God’s people in times of unravelling. We also have a 10-week schools programme for KS3 and 4, and soon we will have a resource for children in KS2.

Together for the Common Good has become an organic project with multiple strands, and many thousands of people have been involved.

Catholic Social Teaching and Common Good Thinking

As we developed early on, it was clear to us that Catholic Social Teaching stood out as the most coherent theological framework to understand the world. We felt that it ought to be better known much more widely. For too long it had been kept as this well-guarded secret in the Catholic Church, but especially across other church traditions and beyond, it needed to be known. And not only in a global development sense, as in the way that CAFOD frames it, but also here in our own country, in our domestic setting. And also, not only in terms of charity and social action, but also in terms of how we live it out in a holistic evangelisation.

Different people teach it in different ways. Mine is not typical. I'm not a theologian, I'm not an academic. My approach has been shaped through my work with grassroots communities, churches and schools. I read a wide range of journalism, I consult with political thinkers and philosophers, and my hope is to interpret the tradition in a way that's grounded in the political and cultural reality that we live in.

We sense that God is calling us to draw on the wisdom of this tradition for a particular purpose - to equip people to play their part in spiritual and civic renewal. And so, we ground it in political, cultural and social reality, and we don’t try and teach the whole spectrum of Catholic Social Teaching - that’s the job of the Church. We focus on the renewal of society, and we want to make it accessible to all, not just to Catholics, and so we call this "common good thinking".

The Catholic Schools Inspection Framework¹ now requires pupils to be actively engaged, and to take on leadership roles, in response to the demands of Catholic Social Teaching, locally, nationally and globally. Catholic Social Teaching can provide a story that involves everyone. And that story centres around the principle of the common good.

Why Catholic Social Teaching is important now

We sensed that God was calling us to draw on this wisdom for this particular purpose, to equip people to play their part - at a time of crisis across the West.

It was Ernest Hemingway who famously said, "change happens slowly then all at once." We are undergoing, as Pope Francis has said – he said this about eight years ago – he said we are living through “not just an epoch of change, but a change of epoch.”

He describes this change as a process of being stripped of “false securities.” It is no longer possible to “complacently enjoy” the illusions of the old era. It is no longer credible to continue with the assumption that governments have adequately represented us, or that the socio-economic model we've been living with can underwrite a flourishing life for all.

The upheaval we are now seeing was foreseen by those who understood the inherent logic of the dying system – and that includes our popes, they foresaw this. Of course, the devastating consequences of this dying system for the human being, for families and communities is its assault on relationship. They understood the disconnect it generated between ordinary working people and an arrogant governing class that presided over the corruption of our moral, social and economic life – probably over the past forty years, arguably longer. As a new geopolitical order emerges from the wreckage, most of that class still clings to the assumptions of that failed system.

What comes next is uncertain. Things are very chaotic at the moment. But the speed of events affects our capacity to discern wisely. Things are not obvious, and they may turn out to be the opposite of what they seem. We should want to proceed carefully. This isn’t easy when there is so much social pressure to take a position. We may hesitate for fear of provoking disagreement.

But it is important to understand the context we are operating in. Pope Francis has called this culture malign – and he says that its impact is most devastating on the young.

There is great uncertainty about the future. But as the people of God, we are not gloomy. These are great and wonderful days to be alive. Because we know that amidst this crisis, God is at work. This is a time when we find ourselves in increasing opposition to the world and yet called to live abundantly within it. We have a better story.

The common good is the antidote to individualism and collectivism. It provides a vision for renewal, in which everyone has a part to play. Responsibility for the common good must be taken at all levels - international, national, regional, local, personal.

Subsidiarity - responsibility at all levels

This is where the principle of Subsidiarity becomes so important. Subsidiarity as you know is one of the key principles in Catholic Social Teaching and it helps us to see how responsibility is to be taken at the appropriate level. It holds that decisions must be taken closest to those they affect, and a central authority should not do what can be done at a lower level so that all fulfil their unique roles. Its purpose is to uphold human agency.

Let’s look at what this might mean in practical terms. We can look out for signs of this as we play our part, as this new era unfolds. We think of this like a hierarchy of responsibility – this is the way that subsidiarity works.

First – there are responsibilities to be taken at international level – and that would look like solidarity between countries and institutions. Internationally it does not look like a central government, it does not look like centralised, globalised power.

At national level, it looks like building relationship between labour and capital, between employer and employee, between business and unions. It involves place-based investment, retraining, apprenticeships in the forgotten places; local banking and energy providers that are closer to people and more accountable. It involves a distribution of power.

At regional level, we would see institutional collaboration between employers, investors, unions, religious networks, dioceses, community networks and educational institutions, commercial organisations, and businesses, all working together for the renewal of their region.

This is how the vision of the common good in a Catholic Social teaching political economy emerges.

And then in the local, and this is particularly important, this vision is centred around a thick layer of civil society institutions where human beings can find fulfilment.

This might mean local associations, businesses and the links between them - it’s what Catholic Social Teaching calls intermediary institutions, between the person and the state, a humanising layer.

As Pope John Paul II described them, these institutions, “exercise primary functions and give life to specific networks of solidarity. These develop as real communities of persons and strengthen the social fabric.” (CA #49)²

In certain parts of the country where there are very few local institutions - where all you’ve got is a chicken shop, a betting shop and a pawn shop – there isn’t this thick humanising layer, and that means life is harsh between the person and the state. The person is more vulnerable to the manipulations of the market.

Pope John Paul II added that “the social nature of man is not completely fulfilled in the State, but is realized in intermediary groups…which stem from human nature itself and have their own autonomy, always with a view to the common good.” (CA #13)³

We might think of someone who has been long term unemployed but finds perhaps a voluntary role in a local club and through that gradually finds his way back to a sense of pride, a sense of self determination. Without that, he is at the mercy of the state - it’s too impersonal. We’re looking for something that is personal.

We’d be looking to build a rich tapestry of clubs, businesses, schools, charities, and religious bodies – working together - while each fulfilling, what Pope John Paul II calls, our vocational responsibility.

The local school is especially well placed to enable different groups to work together, to act together. And it’s particularly important, when thinking of Multi Academy Trusts, that each school has its own authentic character. This is not a top down vision. So each school discerns its own particular set of relationships in its neighbourhood.

Then further down the hierarchy, we get to the family, the building block of society, absolutely fundamental to Catholic Social Teaching. We need to find more and more creative ways of strengthening families – which have been so weakened in this failed system – and we need to be finding ways to build bonds between families so that they can support each other.

And then at the personal level – you and me - this means building back relationship where it's been stripped out. Less of the auto checkout and more making eye contact at the checkout. Saying hello to people in the street, not capitulating to this isolationist, separating type of culture that we’ve been in.

We need to become awkward customers: this is something I’ve taken from a wonderful Italian economist, Luigino Bruni. Bruni says that the market wants to create us into compliant consumers. As you’ll recall during pandemic, we all were sitting at home ordering on Amazon, so it’s no surprise that Jeff Bezos becomes the person who made the most money out of Covid. So we need to become awkward customers - borrow more, lend more, stop buying so much, stop looking up things on Google rather than asking a friend.

It’s all about staying human. It is about what we’d call a moral economy – to intentionally build a moral economy between us, as a counterweight to the dominating powers of market and state.

This calling to build common good belongs within an integrated evangelisation in its holistic sense.⁴ Pope Francis said that the church grows by attraction – it’s about how we live. That’s how people notice. It is about both our relational identity in God and about how we live.

The Common Good

What do we mean by the common good?

Now, I want to clarify what we mean by the common good - because it's often misunderstood. People tend to project onto it anything they want – such as “social justice”, “fairness”, “solidarity”, “equality” or some kind of utopia idea. It's not those things. The common good is not the same as social action either. It needs to be reciprocal, it enables, it empowers, it involves. So the kind of service provider posture of social action or “doing good to” is not common good.

The common good is about building a shared life, and this is how we describe it:

“The common good is the shared life of a society in which everyone can flourish as we act together in different ways that all contribute towards that goal enabled by the social conditions that mean everyone can participate.

We create those conditions and pursue that goal, working together across our differences, each of us taking responsibility according to our calling and ability.”

So you notice that the common good is not something that the government can just create. We have to participate, through all those levels. This is why subsidiarity is so important, this concept of taking responsibility.

Class

It's important to say that the common good recognises the reality of class. We must be honest about the consequences of globalisation and the dominance of a middle class culture that has pertained, particularly for the last forty years.

Too many of our communities in our post-industrial towns, not only in our country but across the West. Every country that has adopted this system has ended up with large groups of people - of communities - dispossessed, dishonoured, in fact abandoned, as we off shored jobs and investment to the far east. This is how Catholic Social Teaching helps us read what has gone on.

We have large parts of our own country that are completely disconnected. I would describe this as a breach of the common good. Reconciliation is possible, but not through class warfare – that is not consistent with Catholic Social Teaching. Catholic Social Teaching shows us that rebuilding can be achieved – but through negotiating just relationships, and of course through statecraft.

A civilisation of love: the purpose of Catholic Social Teaching

Now at this point I’d just like to connect up the common good here with the stated purpose of Catholic Social Teaching as is stated in the social doctrine. It’s stated purpose is to build “the civilisation of love”. It actually says that. This means we really need to pay attention to the Catholic Social Teaching tradition in terms of its political economy.

Of course, it starts with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (Of New Things) where we see the Church making a serious critique of the Industrial Revolution and its effects on human beings and families. Drawing in fact on the experience in East London – our own country - of Cardinal Manning and his intervention in the Great Dock Strike of 1889.⁵ In so doing, this was a profound recognition of the importance of defending the common good in the face of unconstrained capital. It just happened he was the son of a banker, so he knew what he was doing.

This is so important because it shows the need to understand the dynamic between labour (that is, human agency) and capital. This is one of the key tensions within Catholic Social Teaching, that they must be kept in balance. The point of this is to protect the humanity of the dockers, in that case, and their families. Think about it - you’ve got ten thousand dockers waiting on the quayside, half of them get work and half of them don’t. Cardinal Manning has seen this first hand and is reporting it back to the Vatican. That is how the first encyclical gets written.

Now I’m not going to go through every encyclical, but there are a few that are particularly key in this respect.

If we look at Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris, (Peace on Earth) which is particularly relevant now, because we have a situation where we really don’t have social peace in this country. We really have quite volatile conditions. He’s looking at justice, and we see again this attentiveness to upholding the agency of the human being – the agency. He’s also looking at the role of the market, the role of the state, the common good, he talks about solidarity, worker’s rights and so on. He emphasises in particular the importance of the moral order and natural law for social peace.

This civilisation of love is a vision of society built on love, justice and respect for human dignity with the common good as its foundation.

Then we come to Pope John Paul II - who himself introduced this phrase, the civilisation of love. He was of course a towering figure who brought us I think the greatest insights into a political economy that allows people to thrive. In his Laborem Excercens (On Human Work) and Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year), we look at the role of the state, the dignity of work in particular, the critical role of countervailing institutions – like unions, like local institutions - that ensure distributed power - to ensure that power does not become overcentralised.

Again, this theme is so important now as we see the tendencies of governments to become more technocratic, more authoritarian, and we see in the rise of oligarchs the concentration of capital, alongside the concentration of state power.

Pope John Paul II of course was an extraordinary man, who lived through both Nazi occupied Poland and was instrumental later – centrally featured - in defeating communism. This was a man who had faced evil in both these political forms. He was acutely aware of the dangers of the overcentralised power of the state.

Then later we get to Pope Benedict XVI, who in Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), makes a sophisticated critique of relativism which he says effectively becomes a dictatorship. If everyone gets to do what they want without a sense of mutual obligation, it means the state ends up having to step in to mediate between competing rights, so the state becomes bigger. His analysis is so relevant for today – we have this chaos now with so many different interests without a common story. He emphasises the importance of truth – the shared understanding of truth - and he talks about the tyranny of individual desires.

Then after the financial crash of 2008 his concern turns to the economy of course. Again, this theme of concern about concentrated power. This time the concentrated power of capital in Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), which is published in 2009. This time we are really talking about the inherent dangers of unfettered capital. His analysis of the neoliberal economy builds on John Paul’s political economy, and Benedict sets out the ethics of a common good economics which critically includes constraint on capital.

And then of course Pope Francis. He built on this inheritance, on the teaching of his predecessors, building on the teaching of his predecessors, bringing his own powerful sensibility for the natural world and the poor working class of the world in Laudato Si (Praise be to you, my Lord), a holistic vision. His instincts were to counter what he described as the “malign” culture of hyper-liberalism. And he did that by proposing the common good and civic friendship, and he did so with such beautiful language, his language of encounter and fraternity in Fratelli tutti (Brothers All). And crucially he was pushing for an integrated spirituality, a deeper spirituality, of listening, of discernment and accompaniment, that is integrated in this understanding of political economy. He did this in particular in Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) and his last encyclical, Dilexit Nos (He Loved Us).

This is such a rich and powerful resource for us to draw on in this time of crisis. You tend to find people who pick their favourite pope, but really we shouldn’t be doing that, we should be looking at the body of thinking in its entirety. We tend to get a pope for our times – isn’t that an amazing thing? We tend to get a pope for our times.

Repairers of the breach

As we saw earlier there has been a breach of the common good, which is really what has led to the great upheaval that we face. We as God’s people are called to join with Him in His work of repair, to restore and rebuild.

I’d love to share with you this beautiful passage in Isaiah:

“Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt.

You shall raise up the foundations of many generations.

You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”

Isaiah 58.12

As Christians, to build the civilisation of love, we are called to stand in the breach.

We need to be there and give recognition to that divide, and in the face of the dehumanising philosophies that we’ve been living with, we're called not only to challenge structures of sin but to build structures of grace. We must work together in the local to create conditions that enable people to feel they can build a life.

As Christians we know that our anthropology is relational. We weren’t created as isolated individuals. We were created in the image of God. God is a relational being. We are geared that way. When we’ve been in a system that has been geared the other way, for an individualistic system, it is no wonder that everything’s gone so wrong. And so our role here is to stand in the breach, to build relationships that will begin to build a shared life.

The common good: what it is, and what it is not

The common good is not woolly: it is not a vague idea where all values are equal, not a "you do you, and I’ll do me and we’ll get along" kind of liberalism, which as we’ve seen leads to a battle of rights. The common good emphasises a balance between rights and responsibilities. It is place-based, it’s embodied, it’s not abstract. It is non-partisan, non-tribal, non-party political.

The tradition places trust in ordinary people and it rests on the principle of Solidarity, and it is strengthened when we join together across our differences. Across old and young – so we should be looking for intergenerational opportunities; men and women, employer and employee, educated and uneducated, business and unions, faith and secular and so on. We must notice these divides and create spaces and places where people can bridge them.

The common good is undermined when we're isolated, separated, or divided by identity categories. It is quite different from identity politics ideology. The common good cannot be built in a "safe space" insulated from dissent. It requires deliberation. It requires negotiation. It requires diversity of opinion, listening, mutual respect, forbearance, forgiveness, and the possibility of redemption. Because its purpose is fundamentally relational.

It is based on the recognition of natural law, acknowledging people’s realities and calls us to work together across our differences – whether of class, socio-economic background, ethnicity, sex, age, ability, experience, and education. It’s realistic about human fallibility and yet it encourages virtue.

Emphatically it is not utopian: it is not some kind of medicine that's good for you, that justifies some kind of top-down imposition. It’s invitational and cannot be imposed or delivered. It arises from people’s free participation. It insists on the human agency that comes from true freedom in God, not the false freedoms of “choice” promised by consumerism, nor the totalitarian utopias of collectivist ideologies.

It is for everyone. But as the People of God, we are called into a special role, a kind of reweaving – especially in the local – to a building of our civic relationships that is covenantal not contractual. We are here for the long term, not like some sort of NGO, dependent on funding that might disappear. The church and therefore the church school has a covenantal relationship with place. Our commitment to this kind of solidarity means we are called to build a shared life.

Let me take you down a couple of side roads for a moment.

Catholic Social Teaching is not the same as Catholic social action

There’s a common misunderstanding around the difference between Catholic Social Teaching as a tradition, and Catholic social action. Some people talk about these things in the same breath, but they are not the same thing.

Catholic Social Teaching is commonly understood as a set of principles, to be focused on charity, social action and campaigning for justice, especially for global issues. Yes, but it’s not only those things. As we saw earlier, it is also a worldview. It is a framework for good judgment. As we saw earlier, it’s realised by the taking of responsibility at multiple levels, beginning with the person, then the family, the local institution, the regional, the national and the international. It’s grounded in reality but is also prophetic. It’s sometimes referred to as the Holy Spirit in practice.

It’s too easy to think that we’ve done that Catholic Social Teaching thing - perhaps by campaigning or fundraising for a charity, or by delivering a social action project - and to tick that box. Let’s just think for a moment.

Let’s consider the meaning of almsgiving. In the Catechism, giving alms is described as “a witness to fraternal charity”[3] – it’s actually more than giving money or services. It’s more about the gift of time and personal connection. Because charity in that quotation means love. It means a witness to fraternal love. It’s those moments of personal connection and the gift of time – that’s how we build the bonds of fraternity.

Pope Francis repeatedly called for a culture of encounter, and not to allow charity to become a means of keeping poor people at arm’s length.[4] In a busy school, “almsgiving” can easily become reductive and conflated with fundraising, for example.

But what might this mean for a child in the classroom who is poor? His ability to contribute is compromised, his family’s situation can become a source of shame. He is faced with the confusion of being invisible in his own classroom.

We can so easily allow charity and social action to fall into this service provider dynamic and create a false division between the giver and receiver. In this way we risk removing agency of someone who is poor and remove the possibilities of reciprocity.

This idea of love and charity (or almsgiving) must be reciprocal.

A proper understanding shows us that social action is only one aspect of Catholic Social Teaching. If we understand the challenge of this hyper-liberal culture, that has done so much damage, then we can see that the emphasis now must be on building relationships. Building the common good is the antidote to individualism.

This is the significance of Fratelli Tutti⁶. This is why Pope Francis so often spoke about the culture of encounter.

Shifting to a culture of encounter

This rhetoric of “culture of encounter” can be a bit abstract – it can float off in a nice fluffy sentence. But in all his encyclicals, and especially in his World Day of the Poor letters, Pope Francis warned us to stop “outsourcing”. He warned against keeping people who are poor at arm’s length – whether it is through fundraising, activism or welfarism. This doesn’t just apply to charities; it applies to all Catholic institutions. It’s a key aspect of Catholic identity.

Again and again, he warned against this “us” and “them” dynamic that is often prevalent in social action and charitable activity. Instead, he said we need to adopt a side-by-side posture of neighbour, to take personal responsibility and build relationships of reciprocity.

What needs to happen to make this possible?

At a time when so many of our young people feel dislocated, our schools must be places where we learn to take responsibility and build local relationships. To rebalance the over emphasis on rights and entitlements, to bring back a sense of a culture of mutual obligation.

We can ask in our schools, are we joining with our neighbours who are poor, and demanding investment and decent jobs, or are we just giving them charity?

What does solidarity look like?

Let’s think about solidarity.

Do our young people know what it looks like to stand in solidarity with the poorest in our communities? Not as service providers, not as rescuers helping victims, but as neighbours and friends who share in each other’s local concerns, joys, hopes and fears?

What would it look like for an independent school? Does an independent school partner with local schools in the area, on a really genuinely reciprocal basis, creating relationship?

What if the poorest in our communities are under our own roof? What if our young people are part of families trapped in poverty? Having an awareness of a Catholic Social Teaching political economy can help us here.

As I mentioned earlier, Catholic Social Teaching began as a response to the Industrial Revolution inspired by Cardinal Manning but today we face a new industrial revolution, driven by technological change on a scale we’ve never seen before. From the precarity of the dockside labour market, we now have the gig economy, we have Artificial Intelligence, large language models, implants and body modification. We are seeing not only opportunities of course, but also very real threats to human agency in all kinds of new ways.

As Catholics we are fortunate to have this architecture to help us think through these challenges, and we have a calling to defend humanity against the powers – against the dominance of technocrats, oligarchs, big corporations and the over centralised surveillance state.

Just as an aside, think about TikTok. Most of our young people are addicted to TikTok and they even say they wish it didn’t exist. It could be regarded as a form of enclosure. If you think about our history of the commons and the enclosures. Our young people’s relationships are captured by a business model. What would their relationships look like if they weren’t mediated by the likes of TikTok.

But there’s no point in being angry about it, we need to actually act and help our young people to see how this is an exploitative business model. This is just one example.

We don’t know what’s coming - but Pope Francis’s insistence on discernment of the Holy Spirit is key here. Because we are in a new time, we can’t use necessarily old methods to navigate this new time, so we really must lean on God.

Our calling

In this malign culture, we’re called to be non-tribal, to live out our countercultural story. It’s a better story. It’s a story in which everyone can play their part – where people are not subordinated, where people find their agency.

And as the new era unfolds it’s our job to find ways of staying human. This involves speaking truth to each other, we find connection when we are authentic. It involves accompanying people, not being shy about our God-given identity and our calling, and to understand and learn to discern our individual vocational responsibility – and indeed our vocational responsibility as an institution. Who are we as a people at this time in this place? How is God calling us? What is our unique role in this work of repair? What are our particular gifts and abilities?

We can enable our young people to begin to shape the world by the language they use – the language of solidarity not division, of responsibilities in balance with rights, of the dignity of decent work not only welfare entitlement, of creating, making and producing as opposed to consuming, of mutuality not individualism, of covenant not contract, of relationship, rather than self-actualisation.

Our young people are pressured to sell themselves as a product in a marketplace. It’s creating an unhealthy way of seeing the person, of seeing themselves. Pope Francis emphasised that young people are the most vulnerable in our society because of this. They don’t have a memory, as we do, of the time before, when we related normally. So they need help.

We can consider how we are helping our young people discern how God is calling them to build the common good. This connection between our spirituality, our method of discernment and the common good – I think it’s so important to bridge these two wings of the church, if you like. There is one side where the evangelistic stuff happens and the other side where it’s the social – we need a bridge between them. I think the bridge is our calling – our vocational responsibility. God is calling me: what for? In the local, in practical terms.

In terms of their gifts and skills, are we talking about their calling for their individual leadership prospects – say, speaking truth to power or becoming campaigners or leaders? Or is it a bit more about their calling as a good neighbour, as a friend, to be alert to how the market and the state have this tendency to separate and dominate? To see the importance of the relational in the local.

This is what we need to encourage our young people to do. Because as the digital revolution takes hold, life online may start looking preferable to real life, especially if you live in a poor, degraded area where the infrastructure is crumbling. You could not blame people for wanting to spend time online in that context. And we know how addictive it is designed to be. We need to encourage and create opportunities for our young people to meet together in embodied form in place, and to cultivate a relationship with place.

Catholic Social Teaching equips us to consider what it means to be intentional - about becoming repairers of the breach – both personally and in terms of political economy. So, considering how we are called, both inside school and in the neighbourhood, I would like to leave you with a beautiful phrase, a phrase that Pope Francis liked very much – and that is to regard everything we do as an occasion for communion.⁷

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Jenny Sinclair is Founder and Director of Together for the Common Good.

For more content like this, visit https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclair

Learn more about our Common Good Schools programme: https://commongoodschools.co.uk

FOOTNOTES

1. Catholic Schools Inspectorate

2. John Paul II Centesimus Annus

3. John Paul II Centesimus Annus

4. Pope Francis Evangelii Gaudium

5. To Live a Decent Life

6. Pope Francis Fratelli Tutti

7. Instrumentum Laboris, B2.52