DEMOCRACY is freedom in search of inspiration. It waits to be given substance, meaning, orientation and direction. By itself, it simply is a mold, a system that requires a lifeblood to warm up and start functioning. It needs to be given life.
So it depends on the vital elements of the citizens that have it—how they are as a people, their culture, their history, their beliefs and aspirations, their sense of life and purpose, etc. These get factored in and eventually get integrated into one workable whole through the democratic processes.
It can only be perfect to the extent that the people involved in it are. It reflects and mirrors them. But it can also project and mold them. It collects the sentiments of the people, but it can also cause other sentiments too, generating a kind of spiral that is open-ended.
That is why we have to take care of it. Democracy needs to be guided, and we the people involved, especially our leaders, should keenly feel the responsibility for it.
Relevant to all this, let me quote some lines from John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus, kind of dense but I must say all worth it. Let’s bear with it. Here it goes:
“Authentic democracy is possible only in a State ruled by law, and on the basis of a correct conception of the human person.
“It requires that the necessary conditions be present for the advancement both of the individual through education and formation in true ideals, and of the ‘subjectivity’ of society through the creation of structures of participation and shared responsibility.”
Then it warns us of a clever attitude that actually undermines authentic democracy.
“Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and skeptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude which correspond to democratic forms of political life.
“Those who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view, since they do not accept that truth is a determined by the majority, or that it is subject to variation according to different political trends.
“It must be observed in this regard that if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power.
“As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.” (46)
In the current debate for the RH bill that now exposes a few Catholic leaders not quite in step with Church teaching and discipline, this subtle anomaly of democracy distorted by agnosticism, relativism and the mere majority rule emerges.
It is argued that one just cannot be completely for or against it, since there are many good things about it and a few questionable elements, and that the Catholic Church just cannot have its “Humanae vitae” legislated because of the separation of Church and state.
There are a lot of misrepresentations in these claims, gratuitous short-cuts to favor precisely the questionable elements in the bill. This bill has already been scrutinized by many bishops and leaders in the Church and the consensus has been that it is a dangerous bill.
Of course, the bill is crafted to appeal to democratic sentiments—nothing wrong about that—but given the context in which it was created and developed, it will require complete naivete and an almost invincible ideological bias not to see the danger it poses on people’s morals as understood from Church doctrine.
At the very least, that bill is highly divisive. And so if only for that reason alone, it should be dumped. It’s actually not needed.
The good things it contains can continue to be done without the law. And the bad things it contains can also be done. No one can stop anybody from doing it. Just don’t make it a law.
Let’s conclude with some words of St. Paul addressed to those who tend to make exceptions from Church teachings. From his letter to Titus, we have some relevant points:
“Speak the things that become sound doctrine….In all things show good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.” (2,1ff.)
After all, democracy, while respecting pluralism, should also carry the bedrock foundations of a people’s beliefs. Dialogue and consensus-making are no excuse to sideline the faith. One’s faith is nothing to be ashamed about in public fora.
This is not a call for fanaticism. Rather, it’s for democracy to be properly inspired.
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