When Pope Benedict (Pictured) was in Britain recently he responded to an invitation to address members of parliament in Westminster Hall, where Thomas More was tried and condemned in 1534 for following his conscience. In his address the pope asked what happens when the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determinedBenedict did not go on to say that religion provides those moral principles as perhaps some might have expected him to do. He clearly stated that the Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason. In other words – human beings do not need religion to tell them what is right and wrong. A mother does not need the Church to tell her to nurture her newborn child.
What the pope did say was that the role of religion is to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. So faith gives a light to reason to find its way, but it is reason – not faith – that comes up with the principles.
People today believe that we live in an enlightened age where we can make up our own minds about how we want to live. As long as our choices do not harm anyone else we are pretty well free to do what we like. The problem is: how do I know I am not harming others or indeed myself? If I am the only judge, and if my reasoning is defective or underdeveloped, I may well think I am not hurting others. But in fact I may well be. I may persuade myself that burning more and more fossil fuel is necessary for progress but it may be reasonably certain I am thereby indirectly causing hunger in the Sahel.
I only managed to hear and see snippets of the popes visit to the UK, but what the commentators said was almost as interesting as what he said. One of them was telling us the pope talked about what he called temptations to young people about indulging in drugs and sex and pornography and so forth. I wondered what he, the commentator, called them?
Another said religion should take its turn in the queue like everyone else who is trying to gain our attention. In a sense he is right. Religion does have to compete in the market-place for attention, just as Paul did (unsuccessfully) in Athens (Acts 17). But the call of faith is not only reasonable, it is also a relationship beyond reason which a person may or may not experience.
While in Britain Pope Benedict honoured John Henry Newman whose motto when he became a cardinal was cor ad cor loquitur, heart speaks to heart, and the pope commented, this gives us an insight into his understanding of the Christian life as a call to holiness, experienced as the profound desire of the human heart to enter into intimate communion with the Heart of God. This sentiment is beyond the queue.
The moral principles on which a society bases its laws and actions have to be based on a consensus arrived at through reason that is to say the reflective study of politics, economics and the social sciences – but also through faith, which draws on the beliefs and religious experience of the citizens not only of this country but of society more generally. We are not an island, geographically or in any other way.
Post published in: Opinions