Another turn of the screw

WE need to bring to a higher level our understanding, and later our practice, of how Catholics ought to behave in political life. Nowadays, this issue is so swamped with complicated and confusing elements that to improve our praxis of it is like making another turn of the screw that is already quite tightly put.

The difficult predicament is again played out in this RH Bill debate and its side issues where some cities and even barangays are making ordinances that either favor or reject the bill.

Then we have some attention-grabbing developments like a women´s group that brands itself as ¨Catholics for RH Bill,” and various accusations hurled back and forth, including those that claim that Catholics are imposing their views on the rest of society. It´s time to really sort out things.

Back in 2002, the Vatican issued a document meant to clarify the role of Catholics in political life. It was entitled, ¨Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the participation of Catholics in political life.¨

It was prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and approved by Pope John Paul II. A convergence of conditions, political, social and cultural, provoked its making, conditions that prevailed in many Western countries and are now emerging in ours.

It centered on a phenomenon, now more technically termed as moral relativism, that raged in these developed, albeit spiritually decadent countries, afflicting a vast part of the population, especially among the more educated classes.

It has affected both Catholics and non-Catholics, and its basic problem is the belief that there are no moral absolutes in our life, and thus nobody, much less the Church, can say anything about what is right and wrong other than what a popular consensus would say.

It´s a product of a secularized society, where God is general taken for granted, if not denied. People just make their own ideas, theories and ideologies about what is good and evil for us as the basis for our morality, our personal and social life, and our legal system. Any claim of an objective, universal natural moral law is practically denied.

The document tries to remind everyone there is God who is the author, guide and purpose of our natural moral life in all its aspects and levels—personal, familial, professional, social, cultural, political, etc. And that we just have to try our best to conform ourselves to his will, his law and commandments.

Citing the example of the English St. Thomas More, who precisely essayed the right attitude of Catholics embroiled in a political issue with a prominently moral character, it reminds us that ¨man cannot be separated from God, nor politics from morality.¨

It warns us that the world today in immersed in a ¨kind of cultural relativism...evident in the conceptualization and defense of ethical pluralism, which sanctions the decadence and disintegration of reason and the principles of natural moral law....

¨As a result, citizens claim complete autonomy with regard to their moral choices, and lawmakers maintain that they are respecting this freedom of choice by enacting laws which ignore the principles of natural ethics and yield to ephemeral cultural and moral trends.¨

Let´s be clear about this point about the ¨decadence of reason and the principles of natural moral law.¨ The clarification on relativism, cultural, moral or ethical, should not be viewed as a confessional claim, but rather a consequence of reason not properly used and of an ignorance of what is called natural moral law that ultimately has God, not us, as its maker.

The very germ of the problem seems to be the mistaken belief that any reference to God is necessarily outside of the natural order, and therefore outside also of the democratic processes and exercises.

There are, of course, still references made to God in our political life, but they are mainly formalistic in character, that is to say, not be to taken seriously. Such references would hardly have any practical consequences.

It´s time that Catholics be thoroughly consistent with their faith in their political activities, a consistency that recognizes the legitimate autonomy of our temporal affairs such as politics, knows the reasons for such autonomy and also knows how to defend our Catholic position as citizens like anybody else.

The crucial challenge is how to be consistent with our Catholic identity while respecting the distinction between religion and politics, our being faithful of the Church and citizens of our country at the same time.