Politics is a noble vocation?

IN his recent visit to Cyprus, Pope Benedict told public officials that politics is a noble vocation. That piece of news, I am sure, must have elicited at least a second glance or a double take from many people.

We have become not only blasé to politics but also so skeptical and cynical about it that to associate it with vocation and anything spiritual and religious would sound like an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.

The way it is played out in many places nowadays, politics would seem to be the very antithesis of honesty and goodness. Sometimes, I hear people say that those who enter it must be ready to sell their soul and conscience to the devil.

And yet we cannot deny the fact that deep down in our heart, we know that politics is objectively important and necessary. It is also unavoidable. And it in fact plays a very crucial role in our life as a people.

It’s what is supposed to hold us together in an organic and functioning unity. It’s what keeps us going as a people, maintaining us, developing and helping us in our immediate concerns, and leading us to our ultimate destination.

Thus, we can say that politics is part of our nature and therefore part of the will of God for us. To call it a vocation is actually an understatement, since it can be and should be our way to personal sanctity and heroic apostolate.

Given its range and scope, politics is a tremendous way to God and to the people. Try to imagine the things involved there—the rectitude of intention, the hard work, the selflessness and heroism required, the patience, the clarity of vision, the constant monitoring of developments big and small, etc.

So we need not only to debug the way we do politics, but also to undertake a major overhaul of our political culture, involving everyone. This aspect of our life is crying for thorough and urgent transformation and change.

The other day, I was checking the blogs offering forums for political discussions in the local scene, and I was almost devastated by what I read there. So much muckraking and ugly catfights! And to think that the issues were relatively not that important. There was so much noise over practically nothing.

All of us, one way or another, have a part to play in politics. But the political leaders need to be clearly prepared and competent to play politics properly, without deforming its nature, thwarting its purpose, and truncating its message.

Politicians need to realize very deeply that they can function well only when they are adequately grounded on the authentic nature and requirements of politics. That’s when they can relate politics to its origin in God’s divine plan. Short of that, politics becomes easy prey to evil influences.

Politicians also need to be lean and mean in handling the endless predicaments they are likely to face in their work. They should have a firm and proper sense of priority, a good grasp of the criteria to guide them in their work.

Our main problem is that many of our politicians are still incompetent in directly relating politics to religion. Many of them think politics is just a game where faith and the morality that goes with it are not supposed to enter.

So they end up guided only by shallow values and quick fixes that often get snarled in inconsistencies. They fail to realize that the art of politics is essentially a very moral duty.

Pope Benedict precisely focused on this point. He said that politics should always promote the moral truth in public life. He proposed three ways to achieve this.

- Politicians should act responsibly on the basis of factual knowledge. In other words, to avoid biases coming from party pressures or selfish interests.

- Politicians should deconstruct political ideologies that supplant the truth. There are many such ideologies. They can also contain some good elements, but we have to be most wary of their questionable parts that can act as the animating factor.

- Politicians should continually make positive laws that are based on the ethical principles of natural law. A study of the positive laws in many countries reveals a steady departure from ethics and an adoption of pure pragmatism that can compromise genuine justice.

We need politicians who understand the value of these indications just spelled out by the Pope. Let’s pray and work hard for this goal.