In his Apostolic Exhortation of 2013, the Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis speaks of the common good over and over. An example:
"It is the convergence of peoples who, within the universal order, maintain their own individuality; it is the sum total of persons within a society which pursues the common good, which truly has a place for everyone."
Essential to our democracy and the common good is citizen involvement, respect for each other and compromise. Yet Speaker of the House John Boehner rejects the word "compromise," Republican leadership in almost every state they control has sought to make citizen involvement more difficult with voting restrictions and the disrespect shown to our first African American president by Republicans is beyond all common decency.
I'm convinced that the rotten politics currently being practiced by conservatives in the U.S. served as a partial template for the pope's treatise.