39. Church and Politics

Whenever the church speaks about an ethical issue that also has a political dimension, it is accused of meddling in matters that are not within its competence, to opt for a particular political party, of being an enemy of democracy. There are those who say they would like to see the Church reduced to silence or just talking about liturgical issues or abstract dogmas. We offer the arguments of the Church to guide the faithful.

Rather the Social Doctrine is a set of moral principles, principles of action and standards of judgment, open to multiple applications in social life. It is the help of everything positive of the sociological sciences, but transcends them to give ethical and moral judgments that come from Sacred Scripture and the tradition of the Church. In other words, it can be said that the social teaching of the Church is the doctrine of the Church as referring to the social existence of man on earth. The Social Doctrine of the Church was born from the encounter of the Gospel message and its demands – including in the supreme commandment of love of God and neighbor and in justice – with the problems that arise in the life of society. It has become a doctrine, using the resources of knowledge and of the human sciences and is projected on the ethical aspects of life and takes into account the technical aspects of the problems but always in order to judge them from a moral point of view.
The Church, expert in humanity, offers in her social doctrine, a set of principles for reflection, criteria for judgment and directives for action for the changes in depth required by the situations of poverty and injustice, and are carried out, in such a way that it serves the true good of men.

The Church has the right to intervene in what the Church does not agree with, in the point of view that you want to reduce the Christian faith to the purely private sphere. Organizing social life without God is organizing against the true values and human interests. In Vatican II, the Constitution “Gaudium et spes”, spoke in paragraph 43 of the need to avoid the dichotomy between faith and social activity. Such a division would lead to two errors. In the first place: the rejection of the responsibilities in civilian life. This could happen due to a vision which excludes the importance of earthly goods for wanting to put in the first place the eternal city. The Council reminds us that faith must lead us to a more perfect fulfillment of our commitment in this world.

In the second place, it is necessary to banish the illusion that considers the earthly activities as something totally distant from religion. The Council Fathers made us see how from the Old Testament the prophets spoke against this view. For example, in Isaiah 58:1-12, the prophet declared the need to help the poor and oppressed, as the fundamental basis of any act of worship. In the New Testament Jesus spoke against those who were satisfied with the observance of the rules of the religion, without helping others. For example, in Mark 7:10-13, Jesus condemns those who, under the pretext of religion, they refuse to support their parents. That is why, in the same paragraph, the Vatican II declares that, “The Christian who neglects his temporal duties, neglects his duties towards the neighbor; lack, above all, to his obligations to God and endangers his eternal salvation.”

With this in mind we can better understand why in his first Encyclical, Redemptor hominis, John Paul II said that “man is the first way of the Church,” ( n. 13). The Pope returns to remember this statement at the end of his last social encyclical “Centesimus Annus” when speaking of the responsibility that the Church has to help people to better manage their earthly lives. The pope says that “The Church cannot abandon man” ( n. 53).

We see, therefore, that in the civil and church areas there is a common point in the concern for the good of man. The Church has a valuable contribution that can be used to promote the common good, which must be understood as material and spiritual at the same time. This is not a reason to think that the Church can meet the civilian functions of the State. But the differentiation of functions between the State and the Church does not imply that the Church is alien to the social question.

With regard to the non-believers, we can say that the social doctrine of the Church is addressed to not only Catholics but to all people of good will, as are written many encyclicals from the beginning. Although the obligation of a Catholic in front of the magisterium is not the same as that of a non-believer, the Church wants to offer all the fruits of its long experience and deep reflection upon man and society.

In Spain, each time that the Bishops speak out on an issue that has an ethical bent, and logically, political, they are accused of meddling. According to their accusers, the bishops could not speak of abortion, euthanasia, gender-based violence, terrorism, cloning, nor of the exploitation of illegal immigrants, of illicit enrichment by speculation, nor of abuses of politicians through corruption. What these accusers of the Church want is to see to the bishops as dumb dogs that are confined to speak exclusively of abstract doctrine or liturgy. It is very curious, in addition, that when they agree with something that the bishops or the pope agrees with, they cling to it and use it as a political argument; this happened, for example, when discussing the Spanish support to the North American intervention in Iraq in 2004, and socialists and communists quoted continuously to John Paul II in the Parliament to support his thesis that Spain should not collaborate in any way with the Americans; then it didn’t bother them that the Church spoke, while if the Church says something they don’t want to hear, it bothers them.

As the Spanish bishops said in the recent “Moral Orientations for the Present Situation in Spain, “The moral consideration of matters of public life far from constituting a threat to democracy, is a prerequisite for the exercise of freedom and the establishment of justice.”