"I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first"– Sir Thomas More. "I shall drink to the Pope, if you please – still, to conscience first and to the Pope afterwards"– Cardinal John Henry Newman.
IF THE beatification ceremony yesterday in Birmingham was the spiritual focal point of Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain, its political/philosophical rationale was to be found in his eloquent articulation in Westminster on Friday, very much in the spirit of Newman, of the tension between religion and politics, religion and reason, and his appeal for dialogue between the two.
This was, after all, a state visit, the first papal one to Britain, a political as much as religious occasion, and a beatification whose significance lay in part in its expression of a papal preoccupation with moral relativism and the church’s right to remain central to political life.
It was a remarkable occasion, imbued with historical resonances. Benedict spoke in defence, and of the relevance of Sir Thomas More, whose death was a defining moment for the British Protestant constitution, the triumph over papal authority. And he used words that echoed, without directly quoting him, Newman’s critique of secularism and defence of moral norms in the Rome speech on the eve of receiving his red hat.
“By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?” the pope asked of what he termed “the ethical foundations of civil discourse”. “If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident – herein lies the real challenge for democracy.”
But the suggestion that the absence in our society of a religiously, specifically a Catholic-inspired ethic means an inevitable descent into a liberal secularism in which the idea of objective moral truths dissolves, is to mischaracterise British and Irish society, and the views of the majority of the church’s flock. Are we really ruled “by nothing more solid than social consensus”?
The truth is that ours is not an inherently amoral society. Most of us remain driven by a clear sense of right and wrong, one informed but not defined by traditional Catholic teaching. It also places a premium on freedom of conscience, our own and that of others, a “liberal”, democratic instinct which the church occasionally finds uncomfortable. But the call for dialogue and for the respect of the rights of religiously inspired politicians is welcome, and very much part of that spirit.