Church in the World

Catholic politicians must be committed to church teaching

Pope Benedict XVI has called for the formation of Catholic politicians who coherently promote church teaching at a time when relativism is weakening democracy.

In a speech on 21 May to the Pontifical Council for the Laity, the Pope said the contribution of Catholics in the political arena could be “decisive only if the intelligence of faith becomes intelligence of reality, the key to judgement and transformation”.

Pope Benedict’s words are likely to prove controversial. In the United States, for example, the question of how far a politician should allow his faith to guide his position on abortion and other “life” questions remains a source of fierce and bitter divisions.

The Pope said it was a “demanding challenge” for church groups and leaders to prepare their people for effective political action. “There is a need for authentically Christian politicians, but even more so for lay faithful who are witnesses to Christ and the Gospel in the civil and political community.”

The Vatican’s office for the laity, which was established by Pope Paul VI in 1967 and raised to a pontifical council in 1976, was holding its twenty-fourth plenary assembly on the theme, “Witnesses of Christ in the political community”.

Participants included some 32 bishops and priests and 34 laypersons who are involved in the council.

“It is still the competence of the lay faithful to actively participate in political life, in a way that is always coherent with the teaching of the Church,” the Pope insisted. Catholic political leaders were called to champion the “search for wide consensus with all those who have at heart the defence of life and liberty, the protection of the truth and welfare of the family, solidarity with the most needy and the necessary search for the common good”.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, rector of the Pontifical Lateran University and the unofficial chaplain to Italy’s parliament, was one of four Italians and a Uruguayan who gave keynote addresses. He told participants there was an urgent need to begin preparing a new generation of Catholic politicians. “I fear that younger generations will continue to lose interest in politics and, sooner or later, it will become an occupation like so many others that lack any sort of idealism,” he said. The archbishop, who is also president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said prayer must be a part of a Christian politician’s professional life otherwise he or she would fall prey to “easy compromise and would no longer be able to have an authentic passion for the truth”.

In his address to the group Pope Benedict said defending the truth about the human person was an especially important task for today’s politicians, an allusion to gender and life issues. “The social question has become, at the same time, an anthropological question,” he noted. Lay associations, new ecclesial movements and the ongoing World Youth Day gatherings should help prepare Catholics for “social and political commitment”, noting this was not based on “ideologies or partisan interests” but on the desire “to serve humanity and the common good in light of the Gospel”.