The common defense comes firts, but the common defense is BOTH part of the states promotion of individual liberty AND the common good. However, the common good is a much broader concept that includes social directives that cannot logically be considered more important than the State's protection of individual liberty. So why is "the general welfare" mentioned in the Preamble?
The Preamble does not set the Constitutional limits of the federal government. Also, I am not arguing that the general welfare is not a legitimate aim of government. I am just stating that if you consider it more important than protecting individual liberty, you are one of the few.
I don't really care if I'm in the majority or not. I'm only interested in the truth. And the truth of the matter is that the common good comes before the protection of individual liberties, since the State must first provide for the common defense, for the benefit of society as a whole (the common good), before it can secure individual liberties.
Similarly, the right to life logically precedes the right to exercise personal liberties. Only living people can exercise their liberties.
From a strictly logical standpoint, the protection of individual liberties cannot be the first principle of the State because a prior principle is assumed, that the protection of liberties is the good for society. Therefore, the first principle of the State is the promotion of the good for society or "the common good." No prior principle is assumed, except man's final end, the promotion of which properly belongs to the Church.
Finally, personal liberty as a first principle of the State results in a contradiction: is a citizen of such a State free to relinquish his liberties?
In a State properly based upon the first principle of securing the common good, the State can act to prevent its citizens from relinquishing their rights without contradiction.
State and ChurchI. THE BASIS OF RIGHTS
All rights and duties on earth come ultimately from God through the Divine Law, either natural or positive. The character of our natural rights and duties is determined by the purpose to which the Creator shaped the nature of man, and natural knowledge of them is acquired by human reason from the aptitudes, tendencies, and needs of nature. Duties and rights descending from positive Divine Law are determined by some additional purpose of God, over and above the exigencies of human nature, and are to be learned only from Divine Revelation, either in its explicit declaration or its rational content. Man has one ultimate purpose of existence: eternal happiness in a future life. But man also has a twofold proximate purpose: to earn his title to eternal happiness, and to attain to a measure of temporal happiness consistent with the prior proximate purpose. The State is a natural institution, whose powers, therefore, come from the natural law and are determined by the character of the natural purpose of the State plus whatever limitation God has, because of qualifications in the last end of man, ordained in the Divine Positive Law. The Church is a positive institution of Christ the Son of God, whose powers, therefore, are derived from the Divine Positive Law and are determined by the nature of the purpose He has assigned to it, plus whatever further concession He has made to facilitate the accomplishment of that purpose. In any consideration of the mutual relations of Church and State the above propositions are fundamental.
The goal of the State is the temporal happiness of man, and its proximate purpose the preservation of external juridical order and the provision of a reasonable abundance of means of human development in the interests of its citizens and their posterity. Man himself however, as we have said, has a further goal of perfect happiness to be realized only after death, and consequently a proximate purpose to earn in this life his title to the same. In the pursuit of this latter purpose, speaking in the abstract, he had a natural right to constitute a social organization taking over the worship of God as a charge peculiarly its own. In the concrete however, i. e., as a matter of fact, God by positive law has vacated this natural right and established a universal society (the Church) for Divine worship and the securing of perfect happiness in the hereafter. God, furthermore, has appointed for man a destiny which cannot be attained by mere natural means, and consequently God has conceded to man additional means commensurate with this ultimate purpose, putting these means at the disposal of man through the ministration of the Church. Finally, He has determined the form of external public worship to be rendered, centring it about a sacrifice, the efficacy of which is from itself, being, as it is, a repetition of the Sacrifice of Calvary. The goal, then, of the Church is the perfect supernatural happiness of man; its proximate purpose, to safeguard the internal moral order of right and wrong; and its external manifestation, to care for Divine worship and minister to man the supernatural means of grace. The State, then, exists to help man to temporal happiness the Church, to eternal. Of these two purposes the latter is more ultimate, man's greater good, while the former is not necessary for the acquisition of the latter. The dominating proximate purpose of man must be to earn his title to eternal salvation: for that, if needs be, he must rationally sacrifice his temporal happiness. It is clear, therefore, that the purpose of the Church is higher in the order of Divine Providence and of righteous human endeavour than that of the State. Hence, in case of direct collision of the two, God's will and man's need require that the guardian of the lower purpose should yield. Likewise the argument for the extension of the powers of the higher society in a measure into the domain of the lower will not hold for such extension from the lower into the higher.
II. THE RANGE OF JURISDICTION
As there are many distinct States of equal natural right the subjects of each are restricted in number, and its government of them is practically confined within the limits of its own territory. Within this territory it has full power to govern them, defining their rights and in some cases restricting the exercise of these rights conferring purely civil rights and imposing civil duties, holding its citizens to a proper condition of public morality, owning property and qualifying private ownership of the same--all within the exigencies of the civic purpose of preserving external juridical order and Promoting the prosperity of the citizens, and over all bound by the enactment of the Divine Law, both natural and positive. In a word, the State controls its own subjects, in the pursuit of its own natural end, in all things where a higher right does not stop it. A higher right will be a right existent because of an ulterior or a more essential destiny of man than the purpose which civil society pursues for him. The Church has the right to preach the Gospel everywhere, willing or nilling any state authority, and so to secure the rights of its members among the subjects of any civil polity whatever. The Church has the right to govern her subjects wherever found, declaring for them moral right and wrong, restricting any such use of their rights as might jeopardize their eternal welfare, conferring purely ecclesiastical rights, acquiring and holding property herself, and empowering her subordinate associations to do the same--all within the limits of the requirements of her triple purpose, as laid down by the Divine Positive Law, of preserving the internal order of faith and morals and its external manifestation, of providing adequate means of sanctification for her members, and of caring for Divine worship, and over all bound by the eternal principles of integrity and justice declared in the natural and positive Law of God.
In all purely temporal subject-matter, so long as it remains such, the jurisdiction of the State over its own subjects stands not only supreme, but, as far as the Church is concerned, alone. Purely temporal matter is that which has a necessary relation of help or hindrance to man's temporal happiness, the ultimate end of civil society or the State, in such wise that it is at the same time indifferent in itself as a help or hindrance to man's eternal happiness. It is of two kinds: primarily it includes all human acts so related, and secondarily persons or external things as far as they are involved in such acts. In all purely spiritual subject-matter, so long as it remains such, the jurisdiction of the Church over her ecclesiastical subjects obtains to the complete exclusion of the State; nor is the Church therein juridically dependent in any way upon the State for the exercise of its legitimate powers. Purely spiritual subject-matter is primarily made up of human acts necessarily related as help or hindrance to man's eternal happiness, the last end of the Church, and at the same time indifferent in themselves as a help or hindrance to man's temporal happiness; secondarily it extends to all persons and external objects as involved in such acts. In all subject-matter not purely spiritual nor purely temporal, but at the same time both spiritual and temporal in character, both jurisdictions may enter, and so entering give occasion to collision, for which there must be a principle of solution. In case of direct contradiction, making it impossible for both jurisdictions to be exercised, the jurisdiction of the Church prevails, and that of the State is excluded. The reason of this is obvious: both authorities come from God in fulfillment of his purposes in the life of man: He cannot contradict Himself; He cannot authorize contradictory powers. His real will and concession of power is determined by the higher purpose of His Providence and man's need, which is the eternal happiness of man, the ultimate end of the Church. In view of this end God concedes to her the only authority that can exist in the case in point.
In a case where there is no direct contradiction but a possibility of both jurisdictions being exercised without hurt to the higher, though neither jurisdiction is voided, and they both might, absolutely speaking, be exercised without mutual consultation, practically there is a clear opening for some adjustment between the two, since both jurisdictions are interested in avoiding friction. Though concordats were not devised precisely for this purpose, they have in many cases been used for such adjustment (see CONCORDAT). Consistently with the superiority of essential purpose indicated above, the judicial decision as to when a question does or does not involve spiritual matter, either purely or in part, rests with the Church. It cannot lie with the State, whose jurisdiction, because of the inferiority of its ultimate end and proximate purpose, has not such judicial faculty in regard to the subject-matter of a jurisdiction which is as far above its own as the ultimate end and proximate purpose thereof is above that of the State. In analogous fashion every higher court is always judge of its own jurisdiction as against a lower.
All the above is matter of principle, argued out as a question of objective right, and it supposes that the jurisdiction is to be applied through the respective subjects of the same. In point of fact the duty of submission in a citizen of a State to the higher jurisdiction of the Church does not exist where the citizen is not a subject of the Church, for over such the Church claims no governing power. It may also be by accident subjectively obscured in one who, though in point of right the Church's subject, in good faith fails, through an erroneous conscience, to recognize this fact, and, by consequence, the Church's right and his own duty. The subject of the State has been made fairly clear by human law and custom; but the frequent rebellion, continued through centuries, of great numbers of the Church's subjects has confused in the mind of the non-Catholic world the notion of who is by revealed law a subject of the Church. The juridical subject of the Church is every human being that has validly received the Sacrament of Baptism. This birth into the Church by baptism is analogous to the birth within the territory of a State of the off spring of one of its citizens. However, this newborn subject of the State can, under certain circumstances, renounce his allegiance to his native State and be accepted as the subject of another. Not so one born into the Church by baptism: for baptism is a sacrament leaving an indelible character upon the soul, which man cannot remove and so escape legitimate subjection. Yet, as in a State, a man may be a subject without full rights of citizenship; may even, while remaining a subject, lose those rights by his own act or that of his parents; so, analogously, not every subject of the Church is a member thereof, and once a member, he may lose the social rights of membership in the Church without ceasing to be its subject. For full membership in the Church, besides valid baptism, one must by union of faith and allegiance be in fellowship with her, and not be deprived of the rights of membership by ecclesiastical censure. Hence, those validly baptized Christians who live in schism or, whether by reason of apostasy or of initial education, profess a faith different from that of the Church, or are excommunicated therefrom, are not members of the Church, though as a matter of objective right and duty they are still her subjects. In practice the Church, while retaining her right over all subjects, does not--except in some few matters not of moment here--insist upon exercising her jurisdiction over any but her members, as it is clear that she cannot expect obedience from those Christians who, being in faith or government separated from her, see no right in her to command, and consequently recognize no duty to obey. Over those who are not baptized she claims no right to govern, though she has the indefeasible right to preach the Gospel among them and to endeavour to win them over to become members of Christ's Church and so citizens of her ecclesiastical polity.