David QuinnCatholics should tap into political dimension of faith, writes David Quinn
Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin and Bishop Phoncie Cullinan of Waterford are to be applauded for tackling head-on the long-standing practice of political parties raising money outside of church gates.
Bishop Doran particularly criticised parties that “consistently advocated policies and introduced legislation which undermine marriage and the right to life of the unborn” and yet “turn up outside our church gates, Sunday after Sunday, to ask Massgoers to fund their activities”.
This would apply to all the main parties in Ireland, including Fianna Fáil. While Fianna Fáil allowed its parliamentary party members a free vote when abortion legislation was introduced for the first time two years ago, the party itself officially supported that legislation.
All the main parties supported same-sex marriage in the recent referendum and none allowed a free vote. This is why Senator Jim Walsh had to resign the party whip. To be specific, he voted against the Children and Family Relationships Act, but that was designed to pave the way for the marriage referendum so the two were closely connected.
In addition, Labour’s attitude towards faith-based schools ranges from mildly to very hostile and, while Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael don’t really have a bee in their bonnets about the matter one way or the other, they could hardly be classified as defenders of faith-based schools even though they remain very popular.
For their part, Fine Gael TDs are more likely to leap to the defence of fee-paying schools than faith-based schools. This may be due to the fact that parents who send their children to fee-paying schools are the more likely to lobby their politicians, especially on Dublin’s south-side where many fee-paying schools are based.
As the recent marriage referendum also showed, none of our parties has a strong belief in religious freedom. They believe in freedom of worship, but when religious believers manifest their beliefs in ways that run counter to ‘equality’, it is freedom of religion and conscience that must give way.
And yet as Bishop Doran correctly points out, all of these parties are happy to “turn up outside our church gates, Sunday after Sunday, to ask Massgoers to fund their activities”.
He might also have mentioned that these same parties and their candidates are happy to canvass for votes come election time outside those same churches.
What’s going on? Obviously the various parties will go where they can to win votes and collect money. Clearly there hasn’t been a sufficient reaction against them when they do this outside churches. Why hasn’t this happened? The answer, I think, is that many Mass-going Catholics make very little connection between their faith and their politics.
Possibly many Catholics have fallen for the line that faith and politics shouldn’t mix at all and should be kept entirely separate, something that is entirely contrary to the thinking of Pope Francis.
This allows politicians to legislate for abortion and campaign for same-sex marriage without drawing down on themselves the anger of the majority of Mass-going Catholics.
Safe in this knowledge, our parties know they can plough ahead on these issues but have to be more careful when it comes to raising taxes or cutting spending because Catholics do not see either of these as having much to do with their faith and therefore do not make an artificial distinction between their faith on the one hand and their politics on the other.
However, it can easily be argued that tax and public spending do touch on our faith because the Catholic faith has a total vision of the common good.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the common good as, “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily”.
Tax
Obviously questions of tax and spending touch on this. How could they not? For example, if taxes are very low, many of those in need of material help will not receive it. If, on the other hand, taxes on business (say) are too high, then entrepreneurs will have little incentive to start new businesses and unemployment will rise.
If decisions concerning tax and spending are not seen as being exclusively matters of faith then why in the world should the question of the right to life (the most basic right of all), and the nature of the family (also of the most fundamental importance) be seen as exclusively matters of faith?
Why in the world should Mass-going Catholics be content to let their politicians get away with legislating for abortion and same-sex marriage and become indignant if spending is cut or taxes are raised? It makes no sense at all.
The Catholic vision of the common good obviously makes the right to life of all human beings a central part of it. Likewise it makes the good of the family – founded on the marriage of a man and a woman – central to it.
Mass-going Catholics need to be much better educated in the vision of the common good and take this vision into account when voting at election time.
Opinions among faithful Catholics will legitimately differ on this or that aspect of the common good, for example at what level to set income tax or corporation tax and on what level to set welfare expenditure. But no Catholic can support a ‘little bit’ of abortion or the radical redefinition of the family, marriage and human nature itself.
If they do, then their conception of the common good has gone badly awry and far out of step with what their Church teaches.
The bishops need to take a strong lead in selling to Mass-going Catholics again a properly Catholic and properly rounded vision of the common good that will influence how Catholics vote at election time.
There are still around a million adult Massgoers in the country. If they had in their heads a proper vision of the common good they would see that our political system is now sharply at variance with that vision and would alter how they vote accordingly.
If enough do this, our politicians would then sit up and take notice.
At the moment, the Catholic vote is too small to pay any attention to. This is completely our own fault and it will not change until Catholics become much more conscious of the political dimension of their faith.