Politics is the art of the possible; but is the possible achievable without the ideal?

Last December, EU President Herman Van Rompuy spelt out his political vision before hundreds of people at a Brussels gathering of the Grandes Conferences Catholiques. Van Rompuy knows something about politics as he has occupied high political positions for quite some time.

I recently received a report of a speech given by someone else who also knows a thing or two about politics. Rocco Buttiglione, today a deputy speaker of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies, has been an active Catholic politician and academic.

Van Rompuy and Buttiglione experienced that the art of the possible is not worthwhile without the excitement of an ideal. They found their ideal in Christianity. Both view their political career as a way of putting their beliefs into practice.

The heading of this piece is taken from the speech by Van Rompuy. He emphasises the need to find balance between political realism and ethical idealism. Ethical idealismwithout political realism can fall into impractical rhetoric.

He continued that realism without ethical idealism easily falls into the trap of soulless activism. Action cannot stand without solid and thorough ideals. Short-term results can be achieved through populist activism, but in the long run the electorate is alienated from politics.

Read how beautifully he combines the ideal with the practical:

“Politics is about the real happiness of mankind... Politics is the struggle for power but also action at the service of men and women in order to give them opportunities for well-being.”

Is there a place for conscience in this entire balancing act between practice and ideals?

“Would you trust a man who put his political career higher than his conscience?” aptly asks Buttiglione while paraphrasing in different words the balance asked for by Van Rompuy. Christianity helps politicians keep a balance between these two poles. This balance often carries a price tag.

“Good things have a high price, but they are worth it, of course. If you want to be Catholic in politics, sometimes you have to make sacrifices and value your conscience more than your position, more than your seat in politics,” says Buttiglione.

He makes the apt emphasis: “We need people with conscience in politics”, while appealing to Christians: “You must make politics, you must enter into politics, and you must make with your hands the future of the land.”

Van Rompuy refers to two key aspects of Christian social teaching – solidarity and the common good: “Our political system (referring to democracy) cannot function without community spirit, without a sense of the bonum commune.”

This, in Catholic social teaching, is also balanced with the rights of the individual.

Pope John Paul II had beautifully explained the dangers that characterise the loss of balance between individualism and collectivism in the following way:

“On the one hand, people may easily place their own individual good above the common good of the collectivity, attempting tosubordinate the collectivity to themselves and use it for their individual good.

“This is the error of individualism, which gave rise to liberalism in modern history and to capitalism in economics.

“On the other hand, society, in aiming at the alleged good of the whole, may attempt to subordinate people to itself in such a way that the true good of people is excluded and they themselves fall prey to the collectivity.

“This is the error of totalitarianism, which in modern times has borne the worst possible fruit.”

Balancing realpolitik with idealpolitic is the only way forward.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt