Palliative Care and the Common Good

This chapter aims to connect a relatively concrete and specific form of medical intervention—palliative care—to the relatively abstract and expansive concept of the common good. In doing so it explores the relationship of a Catholic conception of the common good to other central commitments and principles within Catholic social thought. These principles and commitments include: the social nature of persons, justice, the preferential option for the poor, and solidarity. The chapter concludes with a discussion of palliative care, drawing connections between a commitment to the common good and the provision of adequate levels of palliative care for all of those who need it.