Democracy Needs Virtue (On the separation of Church and State)

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Subject: Democracy Needs Virtue (On the separation of Church and
State)

Date: Oct 28, 2008 4:36 PM

"The state should be separated from the Church so that the Church can
be herself
without government intrusion. But the Church should not be separated
from the state
because she is in the business of supplying the virtue that the state
needs in order
to be itself.

"As Pope Benedict XVI stated in Deus Caritas Est (“God Is Love”): “The
just
ordering of society and the state is a central responsibility of
politics.” How
far politicians have strayed from the view of America’s second
president, who insisted
that the American Constitution “was made for a moral and religious
people.”
===================================

http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/16366/

Democracy Needs Virtue

BY Donald DeMarco

November 2-8, 2008 Issue | Posted 10/28/08 at 11:57 AM

The primary function of the state is to ensure justice for all. This
noble idea
resonates nicely through the particularities of the fair wage, anti-
discrimination
policies, affordable housing, universal health care and social
justice.

Justice, however, is a virtue. Moreover, it is, in its essence, not
bureaucratic
but personal. Politicians, nonetheless, who love to talk about
justice, rarely understand
this. In general, they assume that justice is imposed on people by a
liberal government,
forgetting somehow that a society is nothing without its constitutive
people. If
there are no virtuous people, there is no social justice.

Pope John Paul II understood this. In an address to the United Nations
during one
of his papal visits, he told the countries of the world that
“democracy needs wisdom.
Democracy needs virtue, if it is not to turn against everything that
it is meant
to defend and encourage. Democracy stands or falls with the truths and
values which
it embodies and promotes.”

The distinguished Harvard social psychologist Gordon Allport conveyed
the same message
to the world back in 1954 when he pointed out that “the mature
democratic person
must possess subtle virtues.”

While the state should be concerned about justice, it is not in the
business of
cultivating moral virtues. The latter is more the work of religious
institutions,
especially those of a Christian nature. In his recent book, Render
Unto Caesar:
Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life,
Archbishop
Charles Chaput sheds important light on the relationship between the
Church and
democracy: “By forming people in virtues the world cannot, the Church
provides a
vital service, especially in a democracy.”

The Church both transcends democracy and is at its service. By
encouraging, teaching,
and cultivating personal virtues (and justice, not to mention wisdom,
are but two),
she is providing something that is not only “vital,” but also
essential for a true
democracy. For democracy without virtue is a sham. It is politics
bereft of a soul,
society devoid of guiding principles.

If separation of church and state meant that all her teachings should
be separated
from political activities, then democracy would lose its lifeblood.

In 1962, Archbishop Joseph Rummel of New Orleans excommunicated three
prominent
Catholics for publicly defying the teaching of their Church by
opposing desegregation.
The good bishop’s action won high praise from the secular
establishment. The New
York Times on April 19, 1962, for example, stated that “men of all
faiths must admire
[Rummel’s] unwavering courage” since he “set an example founded in
religious principle
and is responsive to the social conscience of our time.”

The Times did not castigate the New Orleans bishop for imposing his
religious values
on the secular world or for acting like a bully in excommunicating
three of his
own fellow Catholics. It was a situation in which justice was
recognized by the
Church and the state as having the same meaning.

The abortion situation is an entirely different story. Justice does
not change,
but politics certainly does. The Church holds that justice should
apply to the unborn.
The secular world does not. But this disagreement should not alienate
Catholics
from the democratic process. The disagreement, in essence, has nothing
to do with
church and state. It is a disagreement about justice, a virtue that is
almost always
better understood by the Church than by the state.

The state should be separated from the Church so that the Church can
be herself
without government intrusion. But the Church should not be separated
from the state
because she is in the business of supplying the virtue that the state
needs in order
to be itself.

As Pope Benedict XVI stated in Deus Caritas Est (“God Is Love”): “The
just ordering
of society and the state is a central responsibility of politics.” How
far politicians
have strayed from the view of America’s second president, who insisted
that the
American Constitution “was made for a moral and religious people.”

Donald DeMarco is adjunct

professor at Holy Apostles

College and Seminary

in Cromwell, Connecticut.