Archbishop Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia, has said that democracy in America has now reached a point where it has the power to “kill souls”.
Delivering the 2014 Erasmus lecture in New York on Monday, with the title “Strangers in a Strange Land”, under the sponsorship of First Things magazine, Archbishop Chaput examined the relationship between contemporary democracy and the Catholic faith.
“In a liberal democracy … anything that places obligations on the individual, except for the Government, which embodies the will of the majority of individuals, becomes a target of suspicion,” he said. “To protect the sovereignty of individuals democracy isolates them from one another and seeks to break down or dominate anything that stands in the way. That includes … the family itself.”
Following the political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, Archbishop Chaput continued: “Religion is to democracy as a bridle is to a horse, and only religion can moderate democracy because it appeals to authority higher than democracy itself.”
“But there is a problem,” he went on, “and it’s this. Religion only works its influence on democracy if people really believe what it teaches. What de Tocqueville called [democracy’s] power to kill souls and prepare citizens for servitude is arguably where we find ourselves today.”
Watch the lecture here.
Loading ...
