The Covington Compact

The Covington Compact Explained

THE COVINGTON COMPACT (drafting version)

Preamble

“For men to be, there must be God. For men to be free, there must be liberty. For men to remain free there must be government. For men to prosper under government, it must be limited and never assume to do for men, what men may do for themselves. That government must have the consent of the governed; and that this consent, liberty and property are never to be the subject of suffrage. That the foregoing are contingent upon the ends of all men’s actions being directed towards the One True Common Good; we resolve the following.”

Whereas the 3 areas of life in a free society are Family, Vocation (business) and Government.

Whereas the Family is the unit of society that is not separable from society’s very existence.

Whereas for the family to materially flourish there must be vocations and that these vocations must be free from undue burdens placed upon it.

Whereas government, while it must exist, must be restrained from imposing burdens upon the family and its vocations.

We Therefore Resolve…

Keeping in mind the great success of the Barrington Declaration let us visit William F Buckley et al’s Sharon Statement which inspired an entire generation of young conservatives, yet the Sharon Statement proceeded from the POV that the U.S. Constitution…

Clause #5: That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power.

This, we believe is incorrect because the U.S Constitution does not proceed from the POV that Government must be ordered toward a society’s True Common Good. For our purposes, that Common Good is best explained by Fr. Thomas Crean.

“Were the good which is the end of a society to be something which is diminished by being shared, the participation in that good by one person would diminish it for the other participants and so harm them. As this is contrary to the identification of selves which is friendship and the ground of society, nothing less than a common, that is, a spiritual, good can ever be the basis of any society. Thus even a bank, if it is to be indeed a society simply speaking, and not a group of people who associate from avarice or necessity, must propose to itself some spiritual end, such as the rights of property or the just distribution of goods.”

With Crean’s definition as our starting place, imagine the great impact The Covington Compact might produce for America! But, the big question is: WILL YOU BE THERE TO HELP BRING IT TO FRUITION!?

TheCompact Is Divided Into 3 Sections