3.1 SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
“When the separation of Church and State begins to mean separating religious faith from public life, we begin to separate government from morality and citizens from their consciences. And that leads to politics without character, which is now a national epidemic. (Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Denver, Colorado. Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in the Political Life)
The separation of Church and State is strictly defined in the 1987
Constitution to refer to two points only:
1) That no religion may be established as the official religion of the State.
2) That the State may not favor one religion over the others.
At the same time, the State shall forever allow the free exercise and enjoyment of religion and shall not require any religious test for the exercise of civil and political rights.
To be noted is the fact that nowhere does the Constitution prohibit the clergy and religious from participating in partisan politics. It is Church laws and traditional wisdom that prohibit such participation.
The separation of Church and State does not require division between belief and public action, moral principles and political choices. Rather, the separation of Church and State protects the rights of believers and religious groups to practice their faith and act on their values in public life. The Constitution does not advocate for a separation of Church from the State at all, rather the protection of religious freedom from the State.
Too often the separation of Church and State is invoked. This separation should not be used as an argument against the participation and involvement of the Church in shaping the politics of the country. Concretely, this means that the Bishops, Clergy and Laity must be involved in the area of politics when moral and Gospel values are at stake (PCP II 344). The Pope says “The Church wishes to help form consciences in political life and to stimulate greater insight into the authentic requirements of justice.”
3.2 WHY THE CHURCH MUST BE INVOLVED IN POLITICS
The human person is one. It is impossible to separate the spiritual from the physical. What a person is must include what a person does.
Faith and life cannot be separated from each other. How we live should reflect what we believe, and what we believe should guide us on how to live.
Religion cannot be divorced from politics because faith is incarnate and historical.
As Karl Barth, a Swiss theologian, says, “the Church ceases to be the Church if it shirks the political problems of the time. All this requires a completely new attitude towards the relationship of religion with politics. … As for the saying that religion and politics do not mix, Church critics are overlooking the fact that the Gospels are full of accounts of Jesus’ ministry, championing the poor and standing up for the rights of the underprivileged and marginalized in the community. This cannot be characterized in any way as being apolitical.”
3.2.1 THE CHURCH’S RESPONSIBILITY TO BUILD CONSCIENCES FOR JUSTICE
Although it is not the immediate responsibility of the Church to perform the political task of building a just social and civil order, she is duty-bound to contribute, by means of ethical formation, towards the understanding of the requirements of justice and the means of achieving them politically.
“The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about a most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.
“The Church has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands personal sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper.
“A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church. Yet the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about openness of mind and will to the common good is something which concerns the Church deeply.
“We have seen that the formation of just structures is not directly the duty of the Church but belongs to the world of politics, the sphere of the autonomous use of reason.
“The direct duty to work for a just ordering of society, on the other hand, is proper to the lay faithful. As citizens of the State, they are called to take part in public life in a personal capacity.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter, Deus Caritas Est.)
3.2.2 THE ROLE OF THE CLERGY IN THE POLITICAL WORLD
The clergy and religious do not take on the leadership in the world of politics and business. This is not their role. Their role is to provide the laity with the tools “to think and act as disciples of Jesus Christ, in a manner guided by the teaching of the Church.” And it is the job of Catholic laypeople “to change the thinking of their political party and their political leaders with the tools of their Catholic faith… Just as Catholic laypeople should be the leaven of Jesus Christ in the public square so we priests need to be the leaven of Jesus in the lives of our people.” (Archbishop Charles J. Chaput)
The Philippine Bishops have exhorted the faithful to join them in the “common resolve to clean up and to renew what we have seen as one of the most harmful aspects of our national life – today’s kind of politics. … Any serious believer in God cannot allow the state of our national politics as we have been talking about to persist. And in fact there is a duty for the Christian Catholic to translate politics by the Gospel, the Gospel with all its dimensions. The Gospel must influence every phase of life, every stratum of society, and restore all things under Christ. … Direct participation in the political order is the special responsibility of the laity in the Church. It is their specific task to renew the temporal order according to Gospel principles and values. On the other hand, it is the specific task of the hierarchy to teach authoritatively what the Church believes or holds concerning the political order.” (CBCP Pastoral Exhortation on Philippine Politics, 1997).
3.3 THE UNITY OF RELIGION AND POLITICS
All the arguments for the Christian involvement in politics have been excellently analyzed by J.G. Davies, a professor of theology at the University of Birmingham, England. It is sufficient here to refer to some of his main points in passing. “Politics, far from being a distraction from the spiritual, is the medium through which we love our neighbor and promote justice, peace and human rights. People are political because their daily position is set within a web of social structures. Unless we take the Incarnation seriously we cannot begin to see the proper relationship between politics and religion. When Christ entered human history he became totally one of us. Therefore, like the Incarnate Word, all Christians should be involved in all aspects of life, including the political, the sacred and the secular, for Christ came to: Preach the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and free the oppressed (Lk 4:16). Concern for poverty, liberty and oppression indicates a deep religious and political involvement in human affairs. As Scripture teaches, being one with our neighbor materially is a fact of economics (1 Jn 3:17f; Jas 2:21).. .If the Church is a sign of salvation, then it must be the vehicle of secular as well as religious deliverance, otherwise its message is bogus – an opium for the people. Christian practice, therefore, may not be restructured to the private and nonpolitical work.” (Swords and Ploughshares. Patrick JO’Mahony)
3.4 POLITICS AS A LAY CHRISTIAN VOCATION
Pope Benedict XVI on Sept. 11, 2008 affirmed the role of the laity in politics when he received in audience the bishops of Paraguay. He said: “A big part of the vocation of Christian laypeople is their participation in politics. The role of the laity in the temporal order, and especially in politics, is key for the evangelization of society.”
The call of the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP-II) in 1991 to the laity “to participate actively and lead in the renewing of politics in accordance with values of the Good News of Jesus” is loud and clear. “It is through the laity that the Church is directly involved.”
3.5 DOCTRINAL NOTES ON THE PARTICIPATION OF CATHOLICS IN POLITICAL LIFE
3.5.1 RELATIVISM
(from Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church)
There is a new relativism in our culture today that espouses “ethical pluralism” as the “very condition for democracy.” This is the doctrine that every point of view is of equal value and truth, and that there is “no moral law rooted in the nature of the human person, which must govern our understanding of man, the common good and the state.”
3.5.2 DEMOCRACY
(from Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church)
The life of democracy could not be productive without the active, responsible and generous involvement of everyone.
Democracy must be based on the true and solid foundation of non-negotiable ethical principles, which are the underpinning of life in society.
While democracy is the best expression of the direct participation of citizens in political choices, it succeeds only to the extent that it is based on a correct understanding of the human person. Catholic involvement in political life cannot compromise on this principle.
Democracy can never be a self-fulfilling justification for policies that are intrinsically immoral.
There can be no democracy without virtue, and there can be no human activity divorced from the moral law.
3.5.3 FREEDOM
(from Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church)
Political freedom is not – and cannot be – based upon the relativistic idea that all conceptions of the human person’s good have the same value and truth; but rather, on the fact that politics are concerned with very concrete realizations of the true human and social good in given historical, geographic, economic, technological and cultural contexts.
Authentic freedom does not exist without the truth. Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery.
Freedom is the highest sign in man of his being made in the divine image and, consequently, is a sign of the sublime dignity of every human person.
On the other hand, freedom must also be expressed as the capacity to refuse what is morally negative, in whatever disguise it may be presented.
Freedom makes man responsible for his acts to the extent that they are voluntary.
Freedom consists not in doing what we like but in having the right to do what we ought.
3.5.4 TRUTH
(from Catechism of the Catholic Church)
#2468. Truth as uprightness in human action and speech is called truthfulness, sincerity or candor. Truth or truthfulness is the virtue which consists in showing oneself true in deeds and truthful in words, and in guarding against duplicity, dissimulation and hypocrisy.
#2469. Men could not live with one another if there were not mutual confidence that they were being truthful to one another. The virtue of truth gives another his just due. Truthfulness keeps to the just mean between what ought to be expressed and what ought to be kept secret: it entails honesty and discretion. In justice, “as a matter of honor, one man owes it to another to manifest the truth.”
3.5.5 PATRIOTISM
Patriotism is love for the land of our birth. Our patrimony is everything bequeathed to us by our forefathers – the land with its natural resources, our spiritual values, language, traditions, and history. Patriotism evokes the reverence and love one has for parents, and as such, has a moral dimension. Our motherland is the Philippines, and we should give due respect to her symbols, which are the Flag and the National Anthem.
