Jebus said:
Yet, he shouldn't do that. Popes shouldn't be 'political', they should be religious leaders.
I don't get where this cry for 'political' popes is coming from in the second half of the twentieth century: in the centuries before that, everybody was yelling the Pope had to keep it's nose out of politics. Which is the wisest thing.
You shouldn't connect religion to politics. If you do, you'll get what's happening in the USA: a worldly leader that invokes God into his political decisions, and thus basically discrediting both his politics and his religion.
I guess it all started when the Vatican didn't condemn the Holocaust in WWII. Fine, it was a terrible thing, but it simply wasn't the Pope's JOB to go around condemning political actions. Like it or don't, what that pope did was the correct thing to do.
I`m a firm believer in a secular state, as it`s easy to understand that from many posts i made here, and still i strongly disagree with with this view. I think there`s a bit of a confusion in the planes of action and reasoning here, and a simplification of what separation between state and church means.
If in the Christian countries there was a different intensity of the connection between the Church and the political powers, with countries more "faithful" than others, there was a basic allegiance that was nuclear in the pre-modern world. The Peace of Augsburg produced the first crack in this system, with the German States being able to choose if they wanted to remain catholic or become Lutheran. In the spectacular turmoil of ideas on those times, with the foundations of the modern sovereignty concept being laid by Jean Bodin in a process that would take centuries to become fully solid, many changes happened, caused mainly by the Reform. So Westphalia and the birth of the modern nation-state was more an inevitability than an accident in history. The basic principle of
cujus regio, ejus religio (whose the region, his the religion) finally won after a few more wars, that Westphalia successfully ended, and the
Rex est Imperator in Regno Suo becomes fully accepted, starting a separation that the Modern Ages Revolutions and the philosophical contributions of many turned into what we now know and take for granted in the western world.
The thing is the Roman Catholic church took it`s time to fully accept this, but it has accepted it, and adapted itself to the liberal and democratic principles in the sovereing nations. Now that doesn`t mean that they should go silent and apolitical, as it is th historical Orthodox view, for instance (with some interesting exceptions).
The State must at all times understand that it rules not for the few members of an organised religion but for the entirety of the citizens that constitute the nation. That was the lesson of the Religious Wars in Central and Northern Europe, that to achieve the goal of a real conection between the State and the citizens one has to appeal to political links, and put religious differences aside.
In this sense school prayers like those in the US or crucifixes in public (in the sense that are state funded) schools like some in Portugal and Ireland are profoundly wrong, and a sign of a confusion that is dangerous, the state must be impartial when dealing with the citizens ,equality in the eyes of the Law means exactly that, while the Church must redraw itself from trying direct Theocratic rule, since by definition it can`t be impartial.
But, and this is a big But, that doesn´t mean it can`t express their views and try to exsert influence in order to spread those beliefs. This is simply because of the same equality in the eyes of Law i´ve talked about before. In democratic societies religious freedom is a basic freedom. It should be upheld, and the Church must have the rights to express their views as everyone else. Look that i said same rights, not a state condoned preponderance, the Church Doctrine and beliefs should be respected as any other organized group beliefs, or individual views.
So after the dominance of the religious over the political, meaning the partial over the totality, and the idea of the political without the religious, wich means oppression against an important part of humanity, one can find a synthesis, where the political has the upper hand on the religious, but respects the religious institutions as long as they operate within the basic principles of an open pluralistic society. This is more important where the states operate either against the religious institutions as policy, in the sense that they should defend their right to survival, even by resistance, like in the cases of the soviet block, China or in the events that took place in East Timor. When States in general go against the ideas of the Church then it has the right to act in defense of those ideas, not only defending the poor and the excluded, like this Pope did, but also defending their basic ideas regarding life and human dignity, wich placed me a few times against his stance, although respecting their right to say it. In democracy no matter how idiotic the idea may be it deserves to be discussed, even if it´s to deny it vigorously.
So the right of the Church to be active is something i defend, the Church has it`s place in the Polis as others have; as long as it doesn`t go beyond the configuration that the modern states arranged to it`s role and tries to go all Iranian on us those rights should be respected.
By the way the Pope that was in the Vatican in the 30s and during the war made the first attack against the paganistic ideas of some of the third way regimes in 1934 or 36, and there´s a curious encyclic in 1943 that was the most corageous attack on the lack of humanity of the pro-nazi field that was produced inside the geographical boundaries of the Axis. So they weren´t all that apolitical at the time...
On the Pope i`ll get back later, he deserves a long post, but this one was bit too long...
in fact that general declaration of principles became the basis for practical actions, for a new way of understanding the relation between work and the Church yes, but more than that it´s a political guide of action with a moral basis that allows a full ideological set of beliefs to be applied in day-to-day life. That´s as most political as you can get, and the existence of so many christian democratic parties, with protestant or catholic filliations, is the proof that the Popes actions can not be taken just as vaguely normative and very declamatory, but have real effects in the life of real people.
