By Hilary White
ROME, September 21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Basing political and civil life on moral relativism and the shifting sands of popular opinion will lead ultimately to totalitarian ideologies and anti-human practices, Pope Benedict told a gathering of politicians, intellectuals, businessmen and ex-Prime Ministers on Friday.
Standing on the spot in Westminster Hall where St. Thomas More was condemned to death by Henry VIII’s government, Pope Benedict took up his longstanding theme of warning against the “dictatorship of relativism.”
He again voiced his concern “at the increasing marginalization of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place in some quarters, even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance.” This relativistic “tolerance,” the pope warned, has led paradoxically to the suppression of the rights of religious believers.
He pointed to the move to suppress “the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas…in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none.”
“And there are those who argue – paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination – that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience.”
As an alternative to subjectivist and relativistic approaches, Benedict offered the answer found in the tradition of Catholic social teaching that “maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason” and not only through biblical revelation. Religion in the political debate, he said, can help “purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles.”
The pope took More, whom the Catholic Church holds up as a martyr and model for politicians, as his starting point in a call for objective morality in politics. Without the “corrective” role of religion in the public sphere, “reason too can fall prey to distortions,” that can lead to evil institutions like the 18th century slave trade.
It was the “misuse of reason,” he said, that “gave rise to the slave trade…and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century.” The pope held up the British political campaign to end the slave trade as an example of legislation “built upon firm ethical principles, rooted in the natural law, and it has made a contribution to civilization of which this nation may be justly proud.”
“This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.”
“Religion, in other words, is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation,” the pope said.
Thomas More – the statesman and Chancellor of England who refused to capitulate to the king’s insistence that he, not the pope, was the head of the Church in England – is revered by believers and non-believers “for the integrity with which he followed his conscience, even at the cost of displeasing the sovereign.”
More, he said, faced the “perennial question” faced by all modern secular governments: by what fundamental moral principles should society be organized and governed? “Each generation,” Benedict said, “as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: what are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend?”
In answer, the pontiff warned, “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.”
Many commentators have seen the Pope’s Westminster Hall speech as the keynote of his state visit to Britain and the summation of the core themes of his political doctrine. Speaking to LifeSiteNews.com before the visit, Fr. Timothy Finigan, the popular clerical blogger and pro-life activist predicted that the Westminster Hall speech would be the most important of the pope’s year, in which he would “address in a courteous and gentle way the West’s problems.”
The Vatican’s assessment of the British trip has been positive. On Sunday just before departing for Rome, papal spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi referred to the “spiritual success” of the pope’s visit. “We’re all convinced that this has been a huge success, not so much from the viewpoint of the numbers which there were, mind you, but from the very real and strong sense that people were listening and that the pope’s message had been received with joy and respect by the faithful.”
“This was a marvelous trip during which hundreds of thousands of people saw, heard and met the pope.”
In his parting message, standing next to Prime Minister David Cameron on the tarmac at Birmingham airport, the pope said that in his contacts with thousands of British people, he had sensed their “yearning” for Christianity and for objective truth, in a Britain that has become a “highly secularized environment.”