Religions > Atheism > Is There Only Secular Democracy? - Cardinal Pell addresses Acton Institute for Religion and Liberty
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Religions > Atheism |
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"Meteorite Debris" |
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31 Jan 2005 02:59:00 AM |
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Is There Only Secular Democracy? - Cardinal Pell addresses Acton Institute for Religion and Liberty |
http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?id=222
Is There Only Secular Democracy?
by George Cardinal Pell
Democracy is never unqualified. We are used to speaking of “liberal
democracy”, which as currently understood is a synonym for “secular
democracy”. In Europe there are parties advocating “Christian
Democracy”. Lately there has been interest in the possibility of
“Islamic democracy.” These descriptors do not simply refer to how
democracy might be constituted, but to the moral vision democracy is
intended to serve.
This is especially true in the case of secular democracy, which some
insist is intended to serve no moral vision at all. But as Pope John
Paul II argues “the value of democracy stands or falls with the values
which it embodies and promotes.” Democracy is not a good in itself.
Its value is instrumental and depends on the vision it serves.
An attempt is sometimes made to evade this point by drawing a
distinction between procedural and normative democracy. Procedural
democracy’s claims are minimalist: democracy should be regarded as
nothing more than a mechanism for regulating different interests on a
purely empirical basis.
To speak of normative democracy, however, especially if one is a
Catholic bishop, is to provoke panic in some quarters and derision in
others. Many things underlie this response, not least certain
ideological convictions about secularism. But most important of all is
a failure of imagination. Democracy can only be what it is now: a
constant series of “breakthroughs” against social taboo in pursuit of
the individual’s absolute autonomy.
But think for a moment what it means to say that there can be no other
form of democracy than secular democracy. Does democracy need a
burgeoning billion-dollar pornography industry to be truly democratic?
Does it need an abortion rate in the tens of millions? Does it need
high levels of marriage breakdown, with the growing rates of family
dysfunction that come with them?
Does democracy (as in Holland’s case) need legalized euthanasia,
extending to children under the age of 12? Does democracy need
assisted reproductive technology (such as IVF) and embryonic stem cell
research? Does democracy really need these things? What would
democracy look like if you took some of these things out of the
picture? Would it cease to be democracy? Or would it actually become
more democratic?
These are the things by which secular democracy defines itself and
stakes its ground against other possibilities. They are not merely
epiphenomena of freedom of speech, movement, and opportunity. The
alarm with which many treat people in public life who are opposed to
these things often implies that that they are a danger to democracy.
This over-reaction is of course a bluff, an attempt to silence
opposition almost suggesting that these practices are essential to
democracy.
If we think about the answers to the questions above we begin to have
an inkling about what a form of democracy other than secular democracy
might look like, an alternative I call “democratic personalism.” It
means nothing more than democracy founded on the transcendent dignity
of the human person.
Transcendence directs us to our dependence on others and our
dependence on God. And dependence is how we know the reality of
transcendence. There is nothing undemocratic about bringing this truth
into our reflections about our political arrangements. Placing
democracy on this basis does not mean theocracy.
To re-found democracy on our need for others, and our need to make a
gift of ourselves to them, is to bring a whole new form of democracy
into being. Democratic personalism is perhaps the last alternative to
secular democracy still possible within Western culture as it is
presently configured.
From outside Western culture, of course, come other possibilities. It
is still very early in the piece, of course, but the small but growing
conversion of native Westerners within Western societies to Islam
carries the suggestion that Islam may provide in the twenty-first
century the attraction which communism provided in the twentieth, both
for those who are alienated or embittered on the one hand, and for
those who seek order or justice on the other.
So alternatives are required. The recrudescence of intolerant religion
is not a problem that secular democracy can resolve, but rather a
problem that it tends to engender. The past century provided examples
enough of how the emptiness within secular democracy can be filled
with darkness by political substitutes for religion. Democratic
personalism provides another, better possibility; one that does not
require democracy to cancel itself out.
Democratic personalism does not mean seizing power to pursue a project
of world transformation, but broadening the imagination of democratic
culture so that it can rediscover hope, and re-establish freedom in
truth and the common good. It is a work of persuasion and
evangelization, more than political activism. Its priority is culture
rather than politics, and the transformation of politics through re-
vivifying culture. It is also about salvation - not least of all the
salvation of democracy itself.
George Cardinal Pell is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney,
Australia. This is an edited version of an address delivered at the
Acton Institute annual dinner in Grand Rapids, Mich., on October 12,
2004
--
epicurus1*at*optusnet*dot*com*dot*au
apatriot #1, atheist #1417,
Chief EAC prophet
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pk1956/
Apatriotism Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apatriotism
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves
were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in
Hell.
-Mencken
.
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01 Feb 2005 04:19:20 AM |
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http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?id=222
This is one MHR's response to Cardinal Pell
**Privatising Christianity*
*by Julia Irwin <http://www.juliairwin.org/>*
On Tuesday, when I was sworn in as a member of this parliament, like
many other members I swore an oath on the Christian Bible. Like many
other members of this parliament, I consider myself to be a Christian.
Like many members of this parliament, and like the great majority of
Australians who also consider themselves to be Christians, I am not a
regular churchgoer.
I attend church services as well as celebrations such as baptisms and
weddings. I also attend occasions at Buddhist temples and Islamic
mosques in my electorate. Like the great majority of Australians, when
it comes to filling in my census form I indicate a Christian
religion—in my case, Roman Catholicism.
But these days religion is no longer what it used to be. There was a
time when, among a group of friends, you would agree not to talk about
two things: politics and religion. Too many broken friendships and the
occasional broken nose made those subjects taboo among friends.
That is not to say that religion and politics were not connected. It
was always accepted that Labor Party branch meetings were held after
mass on Sundays, and the Church of England, as it was then known, was
referred to as `the Liberal Party at prayer'. The `them and us' of
politics and religion were two opposing teams.
Thankfully, much of the nonsense of those religious divides is behind
us. Only in places like Northern Ireland does that sectarian stupidity
continue to exist. But in its place there has emerged an equally
poisonous split.
Instead of a population which broadly defines itself as Christian and
maintains a broad set of values, we now have groups which claim to
hold the copyright to the Christian label and assert that they alone
are the arbiters of so-called Christian values.
When we had two competing groups, a level of tolerance was necessary.
You could agree to disagree or, as I said earlier, you could agree not
to discuss religion at all. But now that we appear to have privatised
Christianity and to have issued licences for some groups to have the
exclusive right to call themselves Christians, we now have a split
between those insiders and the great majority who may call themselves
Christian but do not have the registered trademark and so cannot
really call themselves Christians.
That would be fair enough if all it meant was that those monopoly
insider Christians went off on their own and did not bother the rest
of us. But when those insider Christians enter the world of politics
then we must consider their message in a different way.
It is one thing to lay down the rules for the card-carrying members of
the church, but it is something else when they want to apply the same
rules to every citizen in the country, and this is where their message
gets mixed up.
For the insiders, Australia is a Christian country, because the
majority of its citizens describe themselves as Christians. But do
those citizens describe themselves as Christians because they follow
certain teachings? I do not think so. They describe themselves as
Christians in a very general sense. They celebrate Christmas and
observe Easter if only by taking a holiday and they think of
themselves as Christians.
For those insiders to lay claim to this silent majority and assume
that their so-called Christian values are the norm is false. It would
be the same as assuming that the great majority of women who describe
themselves as Catholic — as I do — follow the church's teachings on
birth control.
It is equally false for similar groups to project what they would call
`family values' onto the whole population. As a society we have many
shared values. We take those values from many sources, and many of
those values are drawn from or are the same as what some would
describe as Christian values. But in the past 200 years Christian
values have been used to justify everything from slavery to genocide.
The biggest mistake we could make, however, would be to assume that
non-Christians, and the Christians of convenience as well, exist in a
value-free world, a moral vacuum. In a recent address
<http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?id=222> the Catholic
Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, spoke of this as secular
democracy and advocated an alternative Christian democracy which he
called `democratic personalism'.
Pell's democratic personalism is his response to secular or religious
humanism. But you could hardly describe democratic humanism as value
free. In fact, it was the humanist defiance of religion and secular
authority that gave birth to democracy and installed humanist values
in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Cardinal Pell asks:
/"Does democracy need assisted reproductive technology ... and
embryonic stem cell research? ... What would democracy look like if
you took some of these things out of the picture? Would it cease to be
democracy? Or would it actually become more democratic?"/
I might ask Cardinal Pell if he believes these issues are not properly
issues to be determined by us, as the elected representatives of the
people of Australia. Or are they to be handed over to the self-
appointed moral guardians of our society? And can those moral
guardians speak with the voice of that great majority of nominal
Christians?
I have greater faith in our process of democracy to ensure that the
will of the Australian people is reflected in their parliamentary
representatives, so I welcome the entry of political parties like
Family First.
But let us get one thing clear right from the start: it might be a
good marketing gimmick, a catchy name something that you cannot argue
with but it does not give you a monopoly on family policies. And when
the party itself has such close affiliations with the Assemblies of
God church it cannot claim to broadly represent the interests of
Australian families.
Even the `Family First' name was pinched from the New South Wales
government's Department of Community Services — but then the name `One
Nation' was a Keating government program before it was ripped off.
As I have said, I welcome the entry of the Family First party, and it
is fair for that party to set out its policies and to demand family
impact statements, although I would like to ask whose family those
impact statements are being aimed at.
Families come in all shapes and sizes, not to mention colours, and
even policies designed to be friendly to most families can
discriminate against others. What concerns me most is that one group
can claim to represent all families and to have a set of family values
which fits all shapes and sizes. The reality is that family policies
need to be tailored to address problems faced by individual families
and that requires a broad approach, not a neat prescription taken off
the shelf from another country or culture.
Take together the so-called moral and family issues. These and other
areas of policy cannot be allowed to become the exclusive property of
the religious right. We cannot accept the rewriting of history to
suggest that the whole world fell apart following the introduction of
the pill or rock-and-roll or Hollywood movies.
We cannot accept that only the church can set moral standards, and we
cannot accept parties with a narrow concept of families claiming to
represent the values of all families. That great majority of
Australians who are not among the insiders cannot be dismissed as
immoral and anti-Christian. They are no more or less moral than those
insiders. They have no less right to participate in the law making of
this great country, and rather than accept the moral values of others
they have the right to determine policy on moral issues in a rational
way.
If I can borrow another political slogan or two, it is time to fight
back. Instead of surrendering our principles, it is time to stake our
own claims to these areas of policy. For Labor members, that is a
matter of framing our policies on the basis of the moral values that
underpin them. That basis includes not only Christian values but also
those of other religions, as well as humanist values.
The principles and values that influence Labor policy were not formed
in a moral vacuum but over time have been drawn from a range of
influences. Nor are they the product of an elite few. Labor has always
seen itself as a mass party, drawing membership and policy from the
broader community.
Labor is not owned by any sectional interest or limited by allegiance
to one religious faith. As a secular party, it embraces all religious
denominations. On issues where its elected representatives may have
differences based on matters of conscience, members are free to vote
according to their own views.
The emergence of religious parties or religious factions within
parties poses a major problem for those who believe in a secular
democracy. The humanist values of tolerance and respect for different
religious views makes the religious right immune from criticism. The
principle that the state should not interfere in religious matters
places religious commentators out of bounds from lay critics.
But the religious right has taken advantage of that immunity to enter
public debate on a range of issues without fear of any fair public
assessment of its position. As secular political parties have found,
when you step into the political ring there is no quarter given or
asked. But where do Christian or family values fit in a charter of
budget honesty? When the religious right declares that it stands for
those values, where are the cries of, 'Where is the money coming
from?'
It is interesting to note that following the re-election of the
born-again Republican George Bush in the United States many people in
the Democratic Party there are asking the same questions. A party
founded on the principle of separation of church and state now finds
this fundamental concept under threat.
An expected outcome of the US election is that Antonin Scalia will be
appointed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Scalia's views can be
summed up in a speech he made three years ago in which he defined the
state as Saint Paul defined it:
/"... the core of his message is that government ... derives its moral
authority from God."/
According to Scalia, this represents the consensus of Western thought
until very recent times. He went on to say that the consensus has been
upset by the emergence of democracy. I would have thought that the
idea of the divine right of kings went out 200 years ago but it is
obviously very much alive in the born-again Republican Party in the
United States. Scalia's views also have a lot in common with the views
of Cardinal Pell, which I quoted earlier.
These views represent more than harmless statements by religious
leaders. They are a call to arms to destroy secular democracy; the
democracy that we speak of in a hand over the heart manner when we
consider our most precious institution and the freedom that we possess
as individuals to determine our individual and collective future. And
we should not forget the freedom to practice the religion of our
choice, because it is the separation of church and state that
guarantees these freedoms.
Cardinal Pell asks this question:
/"Does democracy need assisted reproductive technology ... and
embryonic stem cell research? ... Would it cease to be democracy? Or
would it actually become more democratic?"/
The answer to that should be crystal clear. How can a society which
gives up its right to decide on these issues be more democratic?
But where was the criticism of such an anti-democratic statement? What
are we afraid of — the fires of inquisition?
But you will not hear a word of criticism on talkback radio. No matter
how anti-democratic the statements are, you will not hear a word of
ridicule.
At the same time, commentators regularly accuse so-called left-wing
teacher unions of preaching godless humanist values or elites are
accused of being responsible for the assumed decline of civilised
society.
Only when the religious right is challenged to back up its claims,
only when it is subject to the same criticism and ridicule that others
face, will we have a fair political fight. It is time to take off the
gloves and take the fight to those who hide behind religion.
But more importantly it is time for the political supporters of
secular democracy to get off the soapbox and into the pulpit. It is
time to preach the values of secular democracy, the values of Western
and Eastern civilisation, the values of our Indigenous Australians,
the values of religions and also the values of humanism.
These values do not exclude meeting personal spiritual needs or social
needs. They are not godless values; they are not artificial values.
They are the values on which our society has been built. They are
values that exist in documents such as the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. They exist in our Constitution. They are the values that
exist in our Australian culture: the ideal of a fair go, of helping
your mates, of supporting and giving aid to each other in times of
disaster.
These values are not chiselled in tablets of stone. I doubt that they
exist in a single book. But they are recognisable as Australian values
just the same.
The challenge for political parties in a secular democracy is to
embrace these Australian values and to develop policies that reflect
the values we all share. We have a rich and diverse culture and not
all values are shared, but the values of tolerance and a fair go make
us a successful and peaceful society.
As centre left politicians struggle to come to terms with the forces
of the Christian right, we must look closely at what our values are.
We must develop confidence in our understanding of Australian society.
We must project what we stand for against a backdrop of what we
understand to be the values of Australian society. In that way we can
better represent our society and provide true democratic government
for our nation and for the Australian people.
--
epicurus1*at*optusnet*dot*com*dot*au
apatriot #1, atheist #1417,
Chief EAC prophet
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pk1956/
Apatriotism Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apatriotism
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves
were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in
Hell.
-Mencken
.
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