In one of the major speeches of his Pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI today spoke to the assembled members of civil society about the proper place of religious belief within political process.
“Britain has emerged as a pluralist democracy which places great value on freedom of speech,” he said. “Freedom of political affiliation and respect for the rule of law, with a strong sense of the individual’s rights and duties, and of the equality of all citizens before the law.
“While couched in different language, Catholic social teaching has much in common with this approach, in its overriding concern to safeguard the unique dignity of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, and in its emphasis on the duty of civil authority to foster the common good.”
The Pope drew attention to the collaboration of UK and the Holy See on pressing global issues such as international development and climate change.
“The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason,” he said, “Prescinding from the content of revelation.
“According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles.”
Pope Benedict remarked that reason and faith require one another, and that there should be no fear of dialogue between them. He attacked the “increasing marginalisation” of Christianity, affirming that faith must be recognised for its vital contribution to society and politics. Without religion, he noted, reason can be distorted by ideology.
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