In an episode called In God We Trust from the hugely successful American television show created by Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing, Martin Sheen plays Democratic President Bartlet and Alan Alda plays Senator Vinick, the Republican candidate for the American Presidency. During a spat over the role of religion in the political arena, Vinick asks Bartlet: “Whatever happened to the separation of Church and state?” To which he replies: “It’s hanging in there but I am afraid the Constitution doesn’t say anything about the separation of Church and politics”.
Christian tradition has always encouraged those who have withdrawn from the city to live a life of contemplation only on one condition, that their vocation is motivated by love of the city. Those who choose a life of contemplation because the care of their fellow brothers and sisters distracts them from God simply do not understand who God is in Christian discourse. For this reason, the Church cannot abandon politics, in its classical meaning – the attainment of the good life for all. Consequently, the question of religion and politics is not the same as that of Church and state. Failure to make this fundamental distinction results in confusion and error.
In simple terms, the separation of Church and state means the government does not appoint bishops and parish priests and the Church does not appoint presidents, prime ministers and judges. No religion should be preferred over others.
Although the Roman Catholic religion is enshrined in our Constitution, the Church should and is being careful not to take “advantage” of her unique position. Constitutionalists argue, however, that the mention of “Church” in the Constitution is a description of fact rather than a principle. In other words, it has no prescriptive power.
Martin E. Marty, a religious scholar, coined the term “public Church”. He lists three fundamental elements for an effective participation of the public Church in society: respect for the legitimate sovereignty of other social institutions; acknowledgement of some responsibility for the welfare of the wider society; and a broad ecumenical outlook: working not only with other believers but with all people of goodwill, including non-believers.
Many would argue that the term “public Church” is a contradiction in terms because faith should be confined to the private domain. Privatisation of religion has bedeviled modern Christianity since the Enlightenment. Advocates of the public Church do not fear an age without belief but an age of belief without social meaning.
Two documents from Vatican Council II offer a unique insight into how the Church should engage with society.
Gaudium Et Spes, envisaged a Church more deeply interactive with the modern world thus rendering it “more political” in broad social terms.
Dignitatis Humanae, on the other hand, has rendered the Church “less political” (= Christendom no more) in its projected juridical relationship with the state. The essential principle is that the Church’s social role must at all times be religious in nature and finality. Nevertheless, the exercise of this role frequently has politically significant consequences.
After some blunders and serious missteps that were the reflection of her mindset at particular eras in her history, the Church understood that her proper competence lies in addressing the moral and religious dimensions of political questions. The outcome of this should be indirect engagement in the political arena. Not surprisingly, this is where the hard questions and misunderstandings arise. The effort to keep the Church’s engagement in the political order “indirect” certainly involves ongoing crucial choices and distinctions. But this effort is fundamental because the alternatives to an indirect engagement are equally undesirable: either a politicised Church or a Church withdrawn from human affairs. The first corrupts the transcendence of the gospel; the second betrays the incarnational dimensions of Christian faith.
Working out the relations between Church and state and between religion and politics demands all the insight we can muster. In both instances, we should be ready to tackle headlong the complexities, ambiguities and overlapping spheres in which practical wisdom must find feasible principles compatible with fundamental constitutional imperatives. Those who look for absolutes that call for no fragile balancing acts or hazy lines of delineation between what is allowed and what is not are doomed to frustration and inertia.
The author is chancellor of the Regional Tribunal of Second Instance (the Church Court of Appeals).