THE TABLET
THE INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY Founded in 1840
A SOCIETY OPEN TO FAITH
ope Benedict XVI comes to Britain at exactly the right time. The country has a new government which preaches a new kind of politics, whose content is still largely unspecified. The former government, now in opposition, has gone in search of a new leader and a new philosophy. Thus many questions whose answers were once taken for granted about priorities and values in British soci- ety have been opened up afresh – and it is not entirely clear where society can turn in order to answer them. The finan- cial crisis that began in 2008 has shown the need to redraw the relationship between private interest and the public good in order to move the balance towards the latter – but without answering the question how. The Government’s policy of large cuts in public spending asks hard questions about the will- ingness of the majority to look after those less fortunate, and indeed reignites the old debate about the difference between the deserving and the undeserving poor. Why should we care for our neighbours? Why not let them sink or swim? If these are some of the underlying moral questions facing the country, the Pope has already shown that he has pondered them deeply and formulated certain propositions in response. The key task the Pope faces at the start of this week’s papal state visit is to show that his answers connect to those ques- tions. One who clearly thinks they do is the Prime Minister, David Cameron. In defiance of the waves of negativity over the papal visit emanating from parts of the mass media, Mr Cameron declares: “We may not always agree with the Holy See on every issue. But that should not prevent us from acknow - ledging that the Holy See’s broader message can help challenge us to ask searching questions about our society and how we treat ourselves and each other.” His generous message, on page 6 of this week’s Tablet, is an explicit and transparently sincere appeal for the Pope’s help. He recognises what the media often ignores, that the presence of faith in British society, far from being a historical anachronism, is vital to its functioning.
P Social capital
This was also articulated by the Conservative Party chairman Baroness (Sayeeda) Warsi in a speech on Wednesday to the College of Bishops of the Church of England, where she high- lighted the contribution of faiths to wider society, telling the Anglican senior clerics that if you deny faith, “you deny the ability of a huge part of society to articulate where they have come from, what they are working for and who they are. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than when you consider the social action of millions of British believers and the work of the almost 30,000 faith-based charities.” This contribution of faith communities to what is termed social capital was defined by Pope Benedict in his 2009 encycli- cal Caritas in Veritate as “the network of relationships of trust, dependability, and respect for rules, all of which are indispen- sable for any form of civil coexistence”. Both the public and the private sectors rely on those values being present for their own ability to function, but they can do little to replenish them. For that, they must rely on sources of moral strength, insight and guidance that lie outside their own closed systems. It is commonly accepted in Britain that the stock of social capital is depleting, and in its stead there is a rising empha-
sis on atomised individualism and a gradual breakdown of social coherence – of what might be termed neighbourliness, social solidarity or, best of all, fraternity. The slogan “Broken Britain” used by the Conservatives before the May election was always too crude for a complex set of phenomena, but it did convey a sense that time is running out for many parts of the social fabric, which are in danger of losing their way. But this should never be equated with “secularism”, as if there was some past golden age of piety where no such problems existed. There are many aspects of life in modern Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, which are truly admirable. Its problems are the prob- lems of a highly developed and sophisticated civilisation, the building of which the Catholic Church can celebrate along- side its secular partners – not of a world in a state of utter moral collapse. Nor is it, as Cardinal Walter Kasper curiously claimed this week, a country overrun by “neo-atheism”.
Eternal dimension
Pope Benedict will not be ashamed to link his diagnosis to the need for faith in God, nor indeed ultimately to his own Catholic faith. His full message is the full Gospel, but as in the ministry of Christ himself, it can only be unfolded grad- ually. If he can at least awaken some sense of a missing transcendental dimension to modern life, and of the direc- tion in which searchers might look to deepen their understanding of themselves, he will have achieved much. But he knows there will be few takers for the simplistic message – become Catholic, and all will be well. Indeed, rarely has the moral standing of the Catholic Church received such a buf- feting as from the ongoing trauma of the clerical child-abuse scandal. The Church’s failure to protect children from predatory paedo - phile priests, and its neglect of the needs of victims, has finally destroyed any claim to moral superiority over others. It would be far better to acknowledge humbly that the Church is search- ing, too, for solutions to its own weaknesses as much as for solutions to the problems facing wider society. Catholic Social Teaching is not a blueprint for a promised land. It is, like the societies whose problems it addresses, a work in progress. Nor can child abuse be regarded as fully dealt with merely by having better child protection procedures. If there was some- thing endemically rotten in Catholic culture, in places as far apart as Belgium, Boston and Belfast, it is even now not yet fully understood and weeded out. The purification of the Church is a work in progress too. Maybe it has hardly begun. Unlike that of Pope John Paul II in 1982, this papal visit is a state visit, a status fully and warmly endorsed by Mr Cameron, though the invitation originated from his predecessor in No. 10. At a symbolic level, it marks recognition of the unique role the Holy See plays in international affairs as a force for good, both in the practical work it does and in the values it encour- ages. But the existence of the papacy, “against whom the gates of hell shall not prevail”, also signifies that humanity is not alone in its journey, nor is the journey pointless and without a destination. The British need gently reminding by Pope Benedict of the eternal dimension to life that has shaped them as a people throughout their history –the source of faith, hope and charity that is pure gift from the hand of the living God.
2 | THE TABLET | 18 September 2010
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48