RELIGIOUS BELIEF must have a role to play in politics despite the
opposition of secularists, who should not relentlessly pursue the
removal of all religious symbols from public life, former taoiseach John
Bruton said last Wednesday night.
Drawing heavily on speeches from Pope
Benedict XVI, who has said that secular rationality and religious belief
need one another, Mr Bruton said the secularist view that politics
“should neither influence nor be influenced” by religion is “naive in
its understanding of human nature”.
Speaking at an event in the
House of Lords, Mr Bruton said: “As long as religious belief exists, and
there is every reason to believe it will always exist, the secularist
notion that religion and politics should be kept entirely separate is
simply unrealistic. It is unrealistic because politics can only work
properly if a society has a shared ethos.
“As long as religious belief exists, it will contribute to the shared ethos of society. Thus it will influence politics.
“To
attempt to organise society as if that was not true, is simply naive,”
he said, delivering the Michael Fogarty memorial lecture to the Centre
for Christian Democracy.
Fully accepting that secularists have an
ethical code, Mr Bruton said people of religious faith “draw heavily on
those beliefs in formulating their ethics”, he said, while their faith
helps “to hold themselves to account for how they follow them in
practice”.
The former Fine Gael leader, who has been mentioned as a
presidential candidate, continued:
“And naive beliefs, pursued
relentlessly as they often are, lead either to tyranny or to the
breakdown of the tolerance needed for democracy to function.”
Secularism
did not appear out of thin air, but rather was a reaction to the
“excessive and immoderate dominance” of religion in the past.
“Secularists should beware of committing the same errors of immoderation
in pursuit of their own cause now.
“For example, to seek to use
the power of the State to remove every symbol of religious belief from
the public space would be just as immoderate as past efforts to use the
powers of the State to push one religion on people,” he said.
Urging
European Christians not to confuse Christianity with some form of
euro-centric cultural nationalism, he said that Switzerland’s decision
to ban minarets in mosques is a denial of Muslims’ right to manifest
their religious beliefs in public.
Referring to Ireland’s economic
crisis, he said it has helped people to give “service to something
greater than ourselves”, noting the sharp rise in the number of
volunteers joining the St Vincent de Paul society.
The society has had more branches across Ireland in the last two years than it did in the previous 20, he said.
Ever-expanding
wealth beyond personal comfort and security does not bring happiness,
he said: “Sometimes, accepting that we have enough is a key to a good
life. That may not please the economists who are constantly
looking around for ‘consumer confidence’ – a barren and soulless
concept, if ever there was one.”
SIC: IT/IE