A Catholic perspective acknowledges that not everyone will marry and indeed that not everyone needs or wishes to get married and start a family. A person may also choose personal fulfilment through living life as a single person or as a person who has chosen some sort of religious profession in direct service to the Church as is the case with Religious Sisters and Religious Brothers and with Priests. There is further consideration of these important and valid ways to live out one's identity as a human person below.

Saint John Paul II (1981) recognized the irreplaceable importance of the family, not only to the individual, but also as the gift that it represents to society at large. The Pope emphasized that the family is both the setting for physical nurturing and the privileged place where children are educated in all aspects of what it means to be human (Diocesan Department of Religious Education, 2005 p. 76). A committed and secure marriage partnership which is supported, supportive, and loving remains the best environment for the upbringing of children. From a Catholic perspective, the family includes mother, father and children, extended family of grandparents as well as aunts, uncles and cousins. Beyond these family ties though the family is about society as a whole. The first experience of society that we have as children is in the family context. The family is where we learn to engage with other people. The Catholic perspective sees families as both inwardly focused and outward-looking engaging with society and taking an active role in transforming society by making God present. In this way, families are opened up to 'the disruptive but ultimately Christ-bearing presence of others, especially others in need' (Coultier and Mattison, 2010, p. 222). The family in turn is what the Second Vatican Council, in Gaudium et spes, calls a domestic church, which, as a sign of Christ, brings God to the world through service to society beyond the confines of the nuclear family. 'The Truine God is a communion of love and the family is its living reflection' (2016 Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia 11). A married couple who experience the power of love know that this love is called to bind the wounds of the outcast, to foster a culture of encounter and to fight for justice. God has given the family the job of 'domesticating' the world and helping each person to see fellow human beings as brothers and sisters (2016 Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia).

The basic conditions include the provision of basic goods necessary for human flourishing. These goods are both concrete and abstract. We have seen that as beings made in the image of God, we are created with a capacity for free choice. Indeed our lives are only morally meaningful to the extent that we engage this freedom of choice. Consequently, one of the basic goods that must be provided as part of the common good is our ability to use our freedom. We also have a reciprocal duty to make sure that the use of our freedom does not diminish the capacity of others to use their freedom. This idea of certain basic goods necessary for all human beings to flourish is given expression in the idea of human rights. The Catholic perspective, in its social teaching, lists several rights necessary for the common good. Consider the following extensive quote taken from Pope Saint John XXIII's 1963 Encyclical 'On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity and Liberty'—Pacem in Terris: Man has the right to live. He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be looked after in the event of ill health; disability stemming from his work; widowhood; old age; enforced unemployment; or whenever through no fault of his own he is deprived of the means of livelihood. Moreover, man has a natural right to be respected. He has a right to his good name. He has a right to freedom in investigating the truth, and—within the limits of the moral order and the common good—to freedom of speech and publication, and to freedom to pursue whatever profession he may choose. He has the right, also, to be accurately informed about public events. He has the natural right to share in the benefits of culture, and hence to receive a good general education, and a technical or professional training consistent with the degree of educational development in his own country. Furthermore, a system must be devised for affording gifted members of society the opportunity of engaging in more advanced studies, with a view to their occupying, as far as possible, positions of responsibility in society in keeping with their natural talent and acquired skill. Also among man's rights is that of being able to worship God in accordance with the right dictates of his own conscience, and to profess his religion both in private and in public. According to the clear teaching of Lactantius, 'this is the very condition of our birth, that we render to the God who made us that just homage which is His due; that we acknowledge Him alone as God, and follow Him. It is from this ligature of piety, which binds us and joins us to God, that religion derives its name. 'Hence, too, Pope Leo XIII declared that 'true freedom, freedom worthy of the sons of God, is that freedom which most truly safeguards the dignity of the human person. It is stronger than any violence or injustice. Such is the freedom which has always been desired by the Church, and which she holds most dear. It is the sort of freedom which the Apostles resolutely claimed for themselves. The apologists defended it in their writings; thousands of martyrs consecrated it with their blood. 'Human beings have also the right to choose for themselves the kind of life which appeals to them: whether it is to found a family—in the founding of which both the man and the woman enjoy equal rights and duties—or to embrace the priesthood or the religious life. The family, founded upon marriage freely contracted, one and indissoluble, must be regarded as the natural, primary cell of human society. The interests of the family, therefore, must be taken very specially into consideration in social and economic affairs, as well as in the spheres of faith and morals. For all of these have to do with strengthening the family and assisting it in the fulfilment of its mission. Of course, the support and education of children is a right which belongs primarily to the parents. In the economic sphere, it is evident that a man has the inherent right not only to be given the opportunity to work, but also to be allowed the exercise of personal initiative in the work he does.The conditions in which a man works form a necessary corollary to these rights. They must not be such as to weaken his physical or moral fibre, or militate against the proper development of adolescents to manhood. Women must be accorded such conditions of work as are consistent with their needs and responsibilities as wives and mothers. A further consequence of man's personal dignity is his right to engage in economic activities suited to his degree of responsibility. The worker is likewise entitled to a wage that is determined in accordance with the precepts of justice. This needs stressing. The amount a worker receives must be sufficient, in proportion to available funds, to allow him and his family a standard of living consistent with human dignity. Pope Pius XII expressed it in these terms: 'Nature imposes work upon man as a duty, and man has the corresponding natural right to demand that the work he does shall provide him with the means of livelihood for himself and his children. Such is nature's categorical imperative for the preservation of man. 'As a further consequence of man's nature, he has the right to the private ownership of property, including that of productive goods. This, as We have said elsewhere, is a right which constitutes so efficacious a means of asserting one's personality and exercising responsibility in every field, and an element of solidity and security for family life, and of greater peace and prosperity in the State. Finally, it is opportune to point out that the right to own private property entails a social obligation as well. Men are by nature social, and consequently they have the right to meet together and to form associations with their fellows. They have the right to confer on such associations the type of organization which they consider best calculated to achieve their objectives. They have also the right to exercise their own initiative and act on their own responsibility within these associations for the attainment of the desired results. As We insisted in Our encyclical Mater et Magistra, the founding of a great many such intermediate groups or societies for the pursuit of aims which it is not within the competence of the individual to achieve efficiently, is a matter of great urgency. Such groups and societies must be considered absolutely essential for the safeguarding of man's personal freedom and dignity, while leaving intact a sense of responsibility. Again, every human being has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his own State. When there are just reasons in favor of it, he must be permitted to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there. The fact that he is a citizen of a particular State does not deprive him of membership in the human family, nor of citizenship in that universal society, the common, world-wide fellowship of men. Finally, man's personal dignity involves his right to take an active part in public life, and to make his own contribution to the common welfare of his fellow citizens. As Pope Pius XII said, 'man as such, far from being an object or, as it were, an inert element in society, is rather its subject, its basis and its purpose; and so must he be esteemed.' As a human person he is entitled to the legal protection of his rights, and such protection must be effective, unbiased, and strictly just. To quote again Pope Pius XII: 'In consequence of that juridical order willed by God, man has his own inalienable right to juridical security. To him is assigned a certain, well-defined sphere of law, immune from arbitrary attack.'