Parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom and France recently provide interesting ‘food for thought’ regarding politics and religion.
In France, President Macron’s Party was unpopular. The main reason seems to have been immigration. News-reports gave no indication that the unpopularity was because, a few months earlier, the President had promoted a change in the country’s Constitution to ensure that abortion continued to be available. In the U.K., the Conservative Party was unpopular for many reasons (immigration being one; others included scandals such as parties in 10, Downing Street, during Covid-related bans on social events, and deficiencies in public services). Because the governing Party was unpopular, the decision of the French President and of the U.K. Prime Minister to call a general election caused surprise. The outcomes caused very little surprise. Votes in the U.K. vindicated the prolonged huge lead for the Labour Party shown by opinion-polls; the Conservative Party suffered the heaviest defeat in its history, and now faces formidable questions about its future. In France, the governing Party were expected to do badly because the main opposition (the ‘RN’) had done so well in the preceding elections for the European Parliament, but unlike the one-day duration of voting in the U.K. the process in France takes two days separated by a week. The first day’s votes produced a prospect of the RN obtaining an over-all majority from the second ballot, but that did not happen; the RN’s opponents quickly formed a coalition which was represented by only one candidate in the second ‘round’ of voting, concentrating the anti-RN votes on that one candidate instead of being ‘split’. That succeeded in preventing the RN from taking complete control.
The Church is unpopular. The main reason is the ever-strengthening secular rejection of religiously-rooted restrictions on personal autonomy, coupled with a general lack of interest in the ‘hereafter’ and a belief that ‘now is what matters’. Internationally-publicised misconduct by official representatives of the Church has been a gift to the Church’s enemies and provides a convenient bogus excuse for already-established antipathy to religion. Unlike political Parties, the Church cannot be voted out of office, but it can be removed from people’s lives by their simply ignoring it, and (as has happened) by their voting – directly or indirectly – for proposals which violate its principles. Some Catholics continue to have some connection with it, but even among those the majority show little interest in or awareness of systematic trampling on such principles. The coalition to keep the RN out of power in France has no equivalent in organised effort to keep the Church’s enemies out of power; quite the reverse – there are Catholics who help them into power, and even some who de facto are among those enemies.
Another difference is that although the reasons and their comparative influence can be various, there is a politically-based recognition of an enemy and a collective will to oppose it, whereas there seems a negligible religiously-based recognition of that kind. Otherwise-religiously-minded people recognise enemies on political rather than religious grounds, and so instead of banding together in religious groupings they fall in behind one of the political groupings as if a political ideology fulfils religious criteria. A result of different political allegiances is that Catholics oppose each other. Is that regrettable? Prima facie, yes, but according to Catholic social teaching it is not.
The institutional hierarchical Catholic Church is entitled, and sometimes obliged, to make moral judgments about social, economic, and therefore also political subjects when fundamental human rights or the salvation of souls requires it,[1] but the Church is distinct from the political community.[2] The proper role of priests and bishops does not include direct intervention in the political structuring and organisation of social life; that is part of the laity’s function, acting on their own initiative with fellow-citizens.[3]
As far as possible citizens should participate actively in public life, and the Church pays tribute to countries whose systems allow the largest possible number to do that in a climate of genuine freedom.[4] “The choice of political regime and the appointment of rulers [should be] left to the free decision of the citizens,” and “diversity of political regimes is morally acceptable provided that they serve the legitimate good of the communities that adopt them.”[5] Democracy is the best expression of citizens’ direct participation in political choices.[6]
Experience has shown, and continues to show, that such participation is marred by disastrous error regarding the priority of religious and secular considerations. Catholics should maintain constant consciousness of belonging to God’s own personally- and exclusively-appointed instrument for arranging the world in accordance with His law. No human activity (whether of Catholics or of anyone else) is exempt from God’s dominion,[7] and although “[i]t is not the Church’s task to set forth specific political solutions – and even less to propose a single solution as the acceptable one – to temporal questions that God has left to the free and responsible judgment of each person”,[8] the “legitimacy of differing points of view about the organisation of worldly affairs”[9] does not justify prioritising moral relativism over the Church’s exposition of “non-negotiable ethical principles.”[10] “When political activity comes up against moral principles that do not admit of exception, compromise or derogation, the Catholic commitment becomes more evident and laden with responsibility”;[11] for example, in regard to abortion, euthanasia, divorce, and same-sex ‘marriage’.[12] The citizen is obliged in conscience not to obey laws and administrative policies which are contrary to the moral order.”[13]
Such principles seem to be highlighted far too little, so there should be no surprise when they are violated. “[T]hose who govern human communities…should behave as ministers of divine providence.”[14] So should citizens who help to put them in power. Individually and by collective activity, all are required to “remedy the institutions and conditions of the world when [those] are an inducement to sin,” so that virtue is favoured rather than hindered.[15] Yet the public are often told, expressly or by implication, that virtue and sin are divisively-subjective judgments and that diversity of opinion and lifestyle is an essential basis of democracy. Consequently people demand unlimited freedom of choice and law-makers give it to them. It is praised as ‘tolerance’. Opposition to it is condemned (i.e. judged, hypocritically) as ‘judgmental’ by advocates of ‘democracy’ and ‘choice,’ and the offending opponents are told to be tolerant and cease their opposition.[16] It is far from unusual to see ‘Catholic’ (?) electors and law-makers not only complying with that but also recommending it as the right thing to do. For example, research in many countries would probably uncover a situation similar to that in America, where in 2019 Catholic legislators had higher approval-ratings from pro-abortion campaigners than did non-Catholic ones. “If every Catholic were removed from Congress tomorrow, the unborn would have less cause to fear. … Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of Catholic politics.”[17] President Joe Biden exemplifies that problem.
Everyone agrees that “[d]emocracy must be based on the true and solid foundation of non-negotiable ethical principles,”[18] but there is less agreement about what those principles are and what their practical effects should be. Society cannot function well, and cannot fulfil Christians’ professed wish for God’s will to “be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” if dominated by a delusion that every possible outlook on life is of equal value.[19]
Despite the Church’s on-paper encouragements for laity to get involved, priests and bishops are much more notable for their reluctance to speak in anything but the most general terms about matters which have a political dimension. They seem terrified of attracting criticism for saying something which would be interpreted as preference for one political Party over another. Similarly, it seems difficult to find a ‘shepherd’ who will allow the attention of his flock to be drawn to a politician’s record regarding matters of high moral importance. So the sheep are left to wander and fend for themselves, and to join whichever fold they find agreeable.
As Church teaching implies, no political Party fulfils fully all the requirements of virtue. That is inevitable because people are imperfect. Therefore the Church should not link itself too closely, or even at all, to any specific Party. It is, however, entitled (and obliged by its mission[20]) to comment on specific subjects with which Parties concern themselves, and the Parties are embodied in the individuals who represent them. Therefore priests and bishops should not shrink from publicly holding such individuals to account by reference to Church teaching, or from advising Catholics accordingly.
The laity are in a difficult position regarding political involvement. Their decision depends on their own prioritisation of subjects, giving correct ‘weight’ to what the Church says. Unsurprisingly this results in there being Catholics in different Parties. A veteran British former career-politician, Ann Widdecombe, who became a Catholic, has written that “it is healthy to have Christians everywhere on the political spectrum. Government changes hands, and therefore we need Christians in all mainstream political [P]arties so that there is always some Christian influence being brought to bear on power,” and that (in that sense) “we must expect Christians to differ politically, and rejoice rather than despair when they do.”[21]
If “there is always some Christian influence being brought to bear on power,” to that extent a change of Government would be unimportant. The matter depends, however, less on the influence simply being exerted than on whether it produces a desirable result. Compounding the tendency within the Church to ignore systematic trampling on its teachings, there is a temptation for religiously-motivated promoters of minority-principles to regard their effort as a consolation-prize which they award to themselves after their latest defeat. Worse still, experience since the 1960s has shown that each such defeat is accepted to be – and is – irreversible. There is a ‘vicious circle,’ or ‘vortex,’ in which factors on a scale which is far beyond control combine to pull down laws and policies which Christian principles once inspired and sustained, and to replace them with relativist anarchy.
People like to be allowed to do as they like, and persuading them to accept limitations is difficult. The further that society moves from religiously-rooted limitations, the less durable would be (currently-unforeseeable anyway) successes in reversing the direction of movement. Politics and law are crucial in setting the direction. Both of them are responses to changes of attitude, and both help to shape attitudes. In societies comprising diverse beliefs and electing rulers by democratic procedures, there is an assumption that even if the resulting rules are not right by reference to a particular moral code they should be obeyed until changed democratically. The longer a rule remains, the greater the likelihoods that the people will ‘adjust’ to it and that other matters will dominate attention. Thus people become ‘habituated’ in long-established circumstances, and a rule which when first adopted may have been controversial comes eventually to be normal and ‘right’. Difficulties which had to be overcome before the rule was adopted become obstacles to changing it, especially if people have recognised that in fact the rule is quite useful when needed. If, somehow, it is changed to an extent that reduces significantly its long-established availability and/or advantages, the change(s) may well encounter problems of enforcement. Unpopular rules can be short-lived, especially if a political Party ‘cashes-in’ on the unpopularity by promising to end them. Because of such factors, Catholic influence over politics has suffered badly in recent decades, and there is no reason to expect reversal of the various disasters.
A great difference between general politics and Catholic social teaching is that the basic purpose of general politics is to give people what they want in this life (and thereby win their votes) whereas the basic purpose of Catholicism, and of its social teaching, is to teach people what they need for the next life (to which votes are irrelevant). So politicians act according to the direction in which ‘the wind is blowing,’ and there is no gain from trying to go against it. The progress of France’s RN Party and the severe defeat of the U. K.’s Conservative Party illustrate that. Whereas, however, supporters of defeated political Parties typically work to reverse its fortunes and to implement their principles to the extent that it is achievable, defeats of Catholic principle are typically regarded as permanent – evidenced by insufficient effort, or even desire, to reverse them. Contrary to ‘on-paper’ exhortations in documents of Vatican II, the mind-set which prevails seems equivalent to ‘benign patience,’ combined with complacent reference to human imperfection and optimism that ‘things will swing back the other way eventually,’ and meanwhile ‘we have to be tolerant and look for the good in people’. That was the kind of disposition evidenced by Pope St. John XXIII’s speech opening Vatican II. Alas, “it seems as if over the past fifty years the more the Church has opened itself to the world the more the Church has been overwhelmed by it.”[22]
[1] “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” paragraphs 2246 and 2420.
[2] Ibid., paragraph 2245.
[3] Ibid., paragraph 2442.
[4] Ibid., paragraph 1915.
[5] Ibid., paragraph 1901.
[6] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note “On the Participation of Catholics in Political Life,” 2002, II, 3.
[7] “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” paragraph 912.
[8] CDF Doctrinal Note, op. cit., II, 3.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., II, 4.
[12] Ibid.
[13] “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” paragraph 2242.
[14] Ibid., paragraph 1884.
[15] Ibid., paragraph 909.
[16] cf. CDF Doctrinal Note, op. cit., II, 2.
[17] Matthew Schmitz, senior editor at “First Things” magazine, writing in “Catholic Herald” magazine, London, 31st May 2019, p.21.
[18] CDF Doctrinal Note, op. cit., II, 3.
[19] Ibid.
[20] “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” paragraphs 2246 and 2420, op. cit. .
[21] “Catholic Herald” magazine, London, 16th August 2019, p.20.
[22] Deacon Kevin O’Connor, Requiem Mass for deceased ‘old boys’ of St Philip’s Grammar School, Birmingham; The Oratory, Birmingham, U. K., 18th November 2017.
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