The financial sector has “failed to wake up to the moral
responsibility” it has to serve society, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of
Westminster has said.
In a lecture at the London School of
Economics in central London, he said some financial leaders were seeking
a “change of culture” but that collectively the sector had failed to
reform itself.
“Until a different culture has taken hold, I cannot see
how a real and necessary change can take place,” he said.
In his
lecture, entitled “Good life in hard times”, the archbishop said that
society, the market and the state all exist “to be at the service of the
human person” and the common good.
He argued that promoting
religious freedom in particular contributed to a thriving civil society
and “increases our capacity to do good in the public square”.
He
addressed several myths that implied religious freedom is harmful to
society. One of these, he said, is that religion “pollutes the rational
mind”, and “should not be imposed on others”.
Another is that religious
freedom encourages fundamentalism, as if “any religious faith involves a
kind of lobotomy”.
But he said that as a society of many faiths Britain had a chance to export to the world a new model of tolerant pluralism.
“Britain
is a remarkable test case. We are living in a crucible in a global
experiment of religious co-existence,” he said.
“In this country we have
the opportunity, through the greater acceptance of the positive role of
religion, to exemplify and perhaps export a new model of tolerant
religious pluralism.”
The archbishop argued that religious voices should not be excluded, but should not be given special privilege, either.
He
said: “The mature and enlightened secular square should echo to the
sound of many faiths, in dialogue with one another and with secular
protagonists to the enrichment of all.”
FULL TEXT OF LECTURE
LSE Lecture- “Good life in hard times”
By Archbishop Vincent Nichols
2 March 2011
Thank
you for the invitation to deliver this lecture this evening. I am glad
to do so and I look forward to our conversation afterwards. The title
of this lecture, “Good life in hard times”, might, I suppose, be taken
by those with an economist’s cast of mind as a tacit bow to Marx. If
religion is the opium of the masses it ought to be a counter-cyclical
business –interest in the hereafter should grow as the ‘here and now’
gets harder. But the truth is that we are at one of those critical
junctures in society when not only the word “Big” but also truly big
questions are in play in public debate, including the place of religion
in the public forum.
The immediate party political fray
surrounding public expenditure is only partly about rival prescriptions
of how best to secure fairness and recovery from the recession. Beneath
lie more fundamental differences about the role of the state and what
the common good really demands. Across the political divide, and more
widely in society, there seems to be a genuine desire to go beyond mere
slogans and to explore how to create a more engaged and thriving civil
society. And then there is the so-called “well-being” agenda. What
makes us happy?
Looking back now on a decade of continuous economic
growth we know that human contentment did not rise as expected with GDP.
It’s about time we started to ask why, even if we might quickly admit
that it doesn’t make much sense for government to promote happiness as a
policy aim. Equally important – and still too often ignored – are the
profound moral questions that have come to the fore in the diagnosis of
the financial crisis and its aftermath, as we think through the role
and limitations of markets in serving society and promoting the common
good.
All these issues in their different ways raise questions
about values, and the moral and spiritual resources on which we might
draw to help us answer the question about what is the ‘good life’. I
believe that religious faith, and in particular the tradition of
Catholic social teaching, has something immensely rich to contribute at
various levels, the personal of course, but also in relation to the role
of the state, of the market and wider civil society. Later on in the
lecture I want to offer some thoughts drawn from the fruit of that
tradition.
But I want to start somewhere else.
There is in
Britain today a wariness and latent concern about religion – that it is a
problem to be contained and not a gift to be shared. So I wish to try
to dispel some myths about the place of religion and religious freedom.
I want to argue that promoting religious freedom increases our capacity
to do good in the public square, within due limits. Why the caveat
“within due limits”? Because I do not wish to defend everything done in
the name of religion any more than I would expect a humanist to defend
everything done in the name of humanity.
But I do want to take head on
four arguments against promoting religious freedom.
They are: (i) that
it is inherently divisive; (ii) that it encourages fundamentalist
extremism; (iii) that it pollutes and deludes, and (vi) that it
undermines respect for fundamental human rights. And having done that I
want then to put three positive arguments: (i) the richer
understanding of what it is to be fully human that religious freedom
expresses; (ii) the powerfully positive contribution which religion can
make to building a stronger civil society, and finally (iii) how a rich
understanding of religious freedom can help secure a viable pluralism in
a secular society . And that will then lead me on to say something
about the particular contribution from the tradition of Catholic social
teaching, which is available to all – and for free – in both good and
hard times.
So what are these four arguments against the promotion of religious freedom?
(i)
First of all there is the claim that religion is inherently divisive
and does more harm than good. This location itself is resonant with this
point. Some of Catholic martyrs of the Reformation were put to death
here in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and during the Gordon riots the Sardinian
Chapel, more or less on this site, was looted and burned to the ground.
In contrast, before coming to London in my present role, I was for 8
years the Archbishop of Birmingham, which has, I think, the largest
presence together of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus in the country. As
religious leaders we met regularly and worked together. That experience
led to a real growth in dialogue and respect.
A vivid illustration
of that came when there was widespread controversy, and some violence,
over remarks of Pope Benedict in a speech he gave in Regensburg with a
quotation about Islam and the use of violence. The central mosque in
Birmingham was, at that moment, holding a coordinating meeting of the
167 mosques of the Birmingham area. It immediately brokered an agreement
that no mosque would comment on the controversy because they wanted to
respect the Pope’s freedom to say what he wanted to say. Here a faith
was taking forward a proper agenda in provocative circumstances.
Then,
when the Pope came to this country last September, one of the meetings
he held was with leaders of faith – not just religious leaders but
people in leadership roles in different walks of life who were people of
faith, and of different faiths. It was the first such meeting to take
place in a Papal Visit anywhere in the world, and it powerfully
reinforced the message that people of faith share a common commitment to
the service of society arising from that faith, with tolerance and
respect.
Now it is true that religion has been and can be a source
of conflict and division, as indeed can atheism and any other belief
system even liberal relativism. But all the great faiths share in their
teachings, in one form or other, the Golden Rule: do to others as you
would be done by.
They share not only a deep respect for the other
person but they also extend that respect to the environment and to whole
of creation as the work of a divine creator. Yes we can all point to
the failings. When Ghandi was asked what he thought of Christian
civilisation he replied “I think it would be a very good idea.’ Britain
today is a remarkable test-case.
We are living in a crucible in a global
experiment of religious co-existence. In this country, we have the
opportunity, through the greater acceptance of the positive role of
religion, to exemplify and perhaps export a new model of tolerant
religious pluralism.
(ii) Then we have the second argument, linked
to the question of divisiveness, namely that promoting religious
freedom encourages fundamentalist extremism and encourages extremists to
use religion as their cloak. The fear of divisiveness is powerfully
reinforced by images of religious extremism. This is a completely
understandable fear.
We simply have to admit that in some stages of our
own history, and in parts of the world today, religion is associated
with intolerance and violence, often practiced by religious adherents in
direct violation of their own avowed religious precepts. It would be
naive and disingenuous to deny it. But having said that, it is a
mistake to think that religion per se entails fundamentalism.
There is
the strange view that any religious faith involves a kind of lobotomy,
and that anyone who really takes their faith seriously is to that degree
immune to appeals to reasoned argument. This is wholly false. Faith and
reason are not incompatible, and indeed they need each other. The point
was eloquently made by the Pope in his speech at Westminster Hall in
September last year.
He said:
“This “corrective” role of religion vis-à-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves. And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process. Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.”
(iii)
The third argument is that religion pollutes the rational mind. It
should not be imposed on others. Therefore promoting religious freedom
is a bit like advocating smoking in public places. The argument then
goes: if you cannot manage to give up your religion please do it in
private.
I’m often struck by how, in polemics about religion,
people of faith are seeking to ‘impose’ their views whereas their
secularist opponents are much more reasonably only seeking to ‘propose’
theirs. This sleight of hand barely conceals a deep prejudice about what
religion really is about. The truth is that to be human is to be a
meaning-seeking creature. Indeed the motto of this institution, the LSE,
emphasises this very point: ‘Rerum cognoscere causas’, ‘To know the
causes of things’. Even the simplest reading of such a motto must
recognise that it goes beyond the material and efficient causes. It has
to include formal and final causes too.
We are indeed ‘meaning-seeking
creatures’. We find ourselves having to give an account – if only to
ourselves – of what really matters to us in life and what the purpose of
life truly is. Whether we have a religious faith or not, we are each of
us still a missionary for something. In fact, it is how we behave, far
more than what we say, which conveys what it is we value most. And none
of us can leave our deepest beliefs – or many modes of behaviour – at
home when we go to work. Nor should that be asked of us. These beliefs
shape and inform who we are and how we think. So promoting religious
freedom, allowing space for faith in the public square, is simply
recognising this human reality, a reality common to every person.
But
there is also more to this argument than asking for the tolerance of
something which cannot be suppressed. In fact, the recognition and
appreciation of the moral and spiritual motivation which inspires so
much charitable, voluntary and educational endeavour serves only to
enhance and enrich society as a whole.
At the same time beliefs and
endeavours must be subject to proper public scrutiny – the ‘due limits’ I
mentioned earlier.
Any real imposition of religion would be a
theocracy which is indeed incompatible with religious freedom. But the
mature and enlightened secular square should echo to the sound of many
faiths, in dialogue with one another and with secular protagonists to
the enrichment of all. The secular public square should not be
faith-blind but faith-sensitive, welcoming and testing reasoned
argument.
Religious voices should not expect special privilege because
they are religious, but nor should they be excluded either. And whilst
public authorities will rightly seek to justify their actions by
reference to reasons which all can accept, in contributing to public
debate religious and faith voices should be free to speak from their
traditions as well as to adduce public reasons in their support.
Encouraging their willing and full participation enriches democracy and
at the same time facilitates the necessary dialogue between the world of
secular rationality and the world of faith of which the Pope spoke of
in Westminster Hall.
(vi) So far, then, we have considered three
charges against promoting religious freedom – that it is inherently
divisive, that it promotes extremism and that it pollutes the public
square. The last argument I want to consider is that promoting freedom
of religion risks undermining respect for fundamental human rights.
Today the argument is often put in relation to rights such as gay
rights, or the rights of women, or the concern about theocracy I
mentioned earlier. This charge has arisen in recent years in disputes
about the activities of religious charities and organisations where
respective rights are apparently in conflict.
Now as many of you
will know, Article 9 of the European Declaration of Human Rights is a
qualified right. Paragraph 2 states that “ Freedom to manifest one’s
religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are
prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the
interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health
or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
What matters is the common acceptance of a framework for the
adjudication of such disputes whether through parliament or the courts.
But
what about upholding the fundamental rights of all?
Given the recent
stories about persecution of homosexual people in Africa, for instance,
this is, I recognize, much more than an academic question. Yet may I
illustrate some easy misunderstanding.
The teaching of the Catholic
Church includes this powerful statement, made in 1986: “It is deplorable
that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice
in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the
Church’s pastors wherever it occurs.
It reveals a kind of disregard for
others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy
society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected
in word, in action and in law.”
The human dignity that we all
share as human beings is not defined by, nor derived from, our gender or
sexual orientation. The dignity we share is by virtue of our common
humanity. And this shared humanity is what lies at the heart of both
religious freedom and respect for fundamental rights.
In fact, far from
being a threat to fundamental human rights, the rich appreciation of
human dignity which religious freedom elicits and sustians is a source
of moral and spiritual energy in the defence and upholding of these
rights.
So having put and commented on four arguments against
promoting religious freedom, I want now to turn the argument around and
focus on three positive arguments why religious freedom increases our
capacity to do good in the public forum.
But before I do that, we
must address the presumption underlying the four arguments against
religious freedom we have just considered. The presumption is this: that
all religions are the same, and that a secularist stance itself is not a
religion or an ideology.
While up to this point my comments have been
cast in fairly general terms, I now want to speak out of the Catholic
tradition which has a sophisticated tradition of reflection on the
relationship of faith and reason, on the nature of religious freedom and
the construction of a culture, political and civil, which allows
authentic human flourishing and recognises the legitimate place of
positive secularity.
I fully recognise that problems of a different
kind arise for other religious perspectives in which there is no place
for the secular.
So with that in mind, what are the three positive
arguments why religious freedom increases our capacity for good in the
public forum?
First and foremost is the richer understanding of what it
is to be fully human that religious freedom elicits; second, the
positive contribution which religion can make to building a stronger
civil society; and thirdly how a rich understanding of religious freedom
can help secure a viable pluralism in a secular society .
(i) Let
us look then at the first argument, that religious freedom expresses a
richer understanding of what it is to be fully human. At the heart of
the political debate of our time is just this question of what it means
to be human. Many contemporary commentators have rightly criticised the
model of “homo economicus”, that is the idea that we are all
self-centred utility maximisers seeking the satisfaction of our
preferences, however defined.
As a model of what describes the
richness of our lives and interactions, this may seem a significantly
deficient description. Yet it might be uncomfortably closer to us as an
indicator of how we behave.
The facts, or statistics, are clear: there
is a lack of correlation, above a certain point, between income and
human happiness or contentment. Nevertheless there remains a pervasive
assumption within our culture that we are little more than separate
individuals who happen to share the same space, who ultimately owe
nothing to society and have no necessary bonds with others – as it has
been called, the “unencumbered” self.
The only thing we have in common
is the ‘market’ – or as it was quaintly put: ‘Tesco ergo sum’. This
leaves us with the challenging question about how we actually link the
individual with society.
Now I believe that attending to and
promoting religious freedom, understood in its richest sense, invites us
to inhabit a subversive and different story.
This begins with the
acceptance that we do not come into life as separate individuals but as
fundamentally relational. It acknowledges that to be fully human is
constituted by our deepening relationships with others, and I would add,
with God. Indeed, the very word ‘religion’ reminds us that we are
reverently bound to another, and therefore owe the duty of justice to
that other: and the virtue of justice, which includes religion, also
applies to our being bound to God.
It is not just that we are born into
relationships of dependence, or even that without our relationships we
could not grow or develop. It is that only through our relationships –
of love, friendship, the enlargement of our social ties – that we can be
fulfilled. To be fully human is to be more than an individual – it is
to be a person-in-relationship, self- transcendent, creative and
emergent. These are the very bonds that enable us to understand and
fulfil our freedom to be ourselves. It is ‘homo religiousus’ who is
truly happy, truly human because this person has recognised the deepest
reality of their nature.
This is the understanding of person that
the project of human rights actually seeks to promote today: an
individual, certainly, but one whose personhood depends on connections
with others. Such a person flourishes in his or her relationality, not
living alone in his or her castle, but mixing freely in society, a human
being composed never of oneself alone but always through connections
with others as well.
Furthermore, what religious freedom
–understood in its broadest sense of valuing freedom of thought,
religion and belief – reinforces is an understanding of “human dignity”
as a capacity to “transcend one’s own materiality and to seek truth”.
This brings with it a much richer vision of what it is to be human, a
theme which I will come back to shortly in discussing Catholic social
teaching.
(ii) I want now to turn now to the second argument in
favour of promoting religious freedom. This is that religion actually
and demonstrably contributes to social goods – to neighbourliness,
volunteering and philanthropy. The recent magisterial empirical study
of the impact of religion in the USA by Robert Putnam, “American Grace”,
has some fascinating insights about this.
The conclusions do not
entirely support my thesis for he assembles evidence that religious
Americans are somewhat less tolerant of dissent than secular Americans.
But on the question of the civic virtues – of generosity, altruism,
volunteering and good neighbourliness – there is, as he puts it, a very
clear and remarkable “religious edge”.
This is not simply that
religious people are more likely to give to or volunteer for religious
causes. Rather it is that they are consistently more generous in
relation to giving and volunteering for secular causes as well.
He
then asks ‘why?’
Through studies of people who have either gained or
lost a religious faith he finds evidence to support the idea that there
is a causal link. But the really interesting thing is that the link does
not appear to be with religious belief in itself. Rather the link is
with regular church attendance.
Friends in general have an impact on
civic involvement, but he says
“…friends at Church – that is, religiously focused social networks – are an entirely different matter. Having close friends at Church, discussing religion frequently with your family and friends, and taking part in small groups at church are extremely powerful predictors of the entire range of generosity, good neighbourliness and civic engagement …”.(p.472)
He goes on to note that
“….Devout people who sit alone in the pews are not much more neighbourly than people who don’t go to church at all… the statistics suggest that even an atheist who happened to become involved in the social life of the congregation (perhaps through a spouse) is much more likely to volunteer in a soup kitchen than the most fervent believer who prays alone. It is religious belonging that matters for good neibourlliness not religious believing…”(p.472)
Now I am not a sociologist and it
would be fascinating to know whether similar results held true in our
much less overtly religious society. There is certainly much evidence of
the contribution made by faith communities and churches to social
engagement.
And intuitively there is a rationale for the effects Putnam
describes as explanatory factors which could well apply here too. He
found, for instance, that religiously engaged people are more likely to
be engaged in civic life beyond their religious circles. He added also
this comment:
“….we suspect that religiously based ties are morally freighted in a way that most secular ties are not, so that pleas for good works seem more appropriate and weightier than comparable requests from a co-worker or someone you know from the gym”.(p.477)
In reflecting on this I could not help
but recall the very powerful contribution in this country made by the
churches and faith communities to the Jubilee Debt campaign in the run
up to the Millennium and in the Make Poverty History campaign which
followed, to give but one well-known example.
How essential is
religious contribution to the long term development and renewal of civil
society?
For advocates of the so called secularisation thesis, the
fact that religion shows no signs of disappearing has now combined with a
new appreciation of the human inspiration that religion and faith
bring, as a well-spring of moral and spiritual resources.
This is well
expressed in a now oft quoted recent conclusion of the great proponent
of enlightenment secularism, Jurgen Habermas, who speaks about the
“motivational weakness” of secular liberal societies.
Indeed he was
quoted by Gordon Brown in his recent Lambeth Palace speech, and I use
the same quotation myself, taken from Habermas’ work ‘An Awareness of
what is Missing: faith and reason in a post secular age’.
I quote:
“Among
the modern societies, only those that are able to introduce into the
secular domain the essential contents of their religious traditions
which point beyond the merely human realm will also be able to rescue
the substance of the human.”(from ‘An Awareness of what is Missing:
faith and reason in a post secular age’)
It follows, I think that
the religious contribution to the renewal of civil society is perhaps
more significant than we might think. Although it is now tangled up with
a political argument about expenditure cuts, how we achieve this
renewal is a good moral question at the heart of the idea of the “Big
Society”.
And Catholic social teaching has something worthwhile to say
about that too.
(iii) Before turning to that teaching, I want to
present my third and last argument in favour of promoting religious
freedom. This is how a rich understanding of religious freedom can help
secure a viable pluralism in a secular society.
It is striking
that the European Court of Human Rights has emphasised in its judgements
that freedom of religion goes beyond safeguarding the individual
conscience. In a leading case the Court said:
“It (freedom of
religion) is also a precious asset for atheists, agnostics, sceptics and
the unconcerned. The pluralism indissociable from a democratic society,
which has been dearly won over the centuries, depends on it.” (Moscow
branch of the Salvation Army v Russia (2007) 44 EHRR 46, para57)
For the court, this pluralism is – and I quote:
“built
on the genuine recognition of, and respect for, diversity and the
dynamics of cultural traditions, ethnic and cultural identities,
religious beliefs, artistic, literary and social economic ideas and
concepts”. (Moscow branch, para 61)
Now it might seem that what
the Court is advocating is simply a neutral space in which each can
express what they believe, and therefore that religious freedom is
underpinned by a kind of relativism. But this is far from the case. What
in fact is being pointed to is that the human dignity of each and every
person is the foundation of the right to religious freedom, and at the
same time respect for the human dignity of others places constraints on
how we each must exercise our own religious freedom.
If we look at the
recent debates about identity and multi-culturalism, if we think about
the fears evoked by religious extremism, what those fears often amount
to is that if we give free reign to these impulses then the rights of
others may be put at risk.
But in fact what guarantees the freedom of
all, and which at its best religious freedom itself promotes and
defends, is respect for human dignity.
If we reflect on the
extraordinary scenes played out over the last few weeks in the countries
of the Middle East we can see this.
In Tunisia the slogan was “Dignity,
bread and Freedom”.
And I was struck by this account from an Egyptian
journalist, Nawara Najem, of how it was that the crowds suddenly decided
to risk being shot and refuse to be intimidated. She said “Why did the
people not fear death? No one knows.
It was not only religion. It was
not only poverty. It was not only despair. Perhaps the answer is human
dignity. No force, however tyrannical, is able to deprive human beings
of this.” (The Guardian, 20 Feb 2011)
In our society today there
is unease about identity and culture, and the extent to which there is a
need for assimilation and integration of minority communities.
What
focussing on human dignity does is to shift the perspective away from
all our differences – the fact that we each have multiple identities in
terms of our ethnic origin, our faith, our language, our place of birth,
and so on – and instead concentrate our attention on the unique value
each person has simply in virtue of our common humanity.
The problem,
however, and it is I believe a growing one, is unless we have the
resources and language to return constantly to this perspective we can
so easily collude in the exclusion or in denying the rights of
particular groups of people.
We need to recover and hold on to a richer
understanding of what human dignity means, what it means to be a person,
and what it implies for the way we organise society.
And this
brings me to the final part of what I want to say.
So far in this
lecture I have sought to defend the idea that promoting religious
freedom increases our capacity to do good in the public forum within due
limits.
I have argued this from the Catholic perspective which has a
rich understanding of the diverse contributions which those of different
faiths make in a pluralist secular society such as ours.
Now I want to
offer you some of the perspectives that come particularly from the
Catholic tradition itself.
This will then lead me to say something
about the implications for state, the market and civil society if this
understanding of human dignity is to be served – if we are indeed to
find the Good life in hard times.
The Christian understanding of
human dignity is that we are each created in the image and likeness of
God, with this innate capacity for self-transcendence.
We are each in
the process of becoming. By our nature we seek love and truth as
something to be attained.
The orientation to truth is key: each person
has a God given capacity to search for the truth and to live by it, and
the gift of freedom allows us to exercise our conscience in both
discerning and living in the truth.
Human life in fact makes no sense
without this desire to seek what is true and to live in freedom.
Our
identity and dignity as free beings then is founded in our relationship
to God and therefore it makes sense to say that we are all members of a
single human family, each with a unique identity and a unique calling.
We are social beings, whose identity is in part constituted by the
relationships we have with others. We none of us can find our true
fulfilment entirely apart from other people.
It follows from this
understanding that there is a clear purpose to society, to the market
and the state.
Each in its own way exists to be at the service of the
human person at every level, to allow people either as groups or
individuals to reach their fulfilment more fully or more easily. This is
a simple but rather radical claim.
All political authority has a
subsidiary function – it should be at the service of the common good of
all, first of all the citizens of the state but also then with a wider
perspective which includes ultimately the whole human family.
Now
the idea that there is a clear purpose to society is not obvious. We
have become used to a highly impoverished way of thinking which
minimises our connectedness and emphasises our private lives, and leaves
society as the space in which we get on with our own thing, and allow
others to do the same.
There is, too, perhaps the legacy of a reaction
against totalitarian views which subordinate the good of the person to
some supposed ideal of the good of society. What Catholic social
teaching insists on is that the flourishing of all, respecting their
dignity, is this overall purpose.
Each person matters and no one is to
be excluded. There is job to be done, and we each have a part to play in
doing it.
The language used to describe this purpose – the
language of the ‘common good’ – is used so widely, with such different
meanings, that its distinctive meaning is not easy to capture. But there
is a useful image from mathematics. In a utilitarian calculus,
maximising the common good would be like an addition sum.
In Catholic
social teaching it is more like multiplication. You will understand
that, in a multiplication, if there is a zero, then the total is also
and always zero. So too if, in society’s efforts at progress, anyone’s
good is completely excluded – a zero- then the total is also zero and
the true common good cannot be realised.
The emphasis on the human
dignity of all immediately takes us towards a particular concern for the
weakest members of society – the old, the very young, the disabled, the
ill – and to ask how well their needs are being met. Catholic social
teaching also insists that the commitment to the service of the good of
others – the common good – is not something we can outsource to the
state to do for us. Cultivating a disposition of care for others is an
integral part of living a good life.
So it is clear that the tradition of Catholic social teaching has something to say about the project of revitalising civil society.
The debate opened up by David
Cameron under the uneasy title of the ‘Big Society’ is indeed a big one,
for it invites us to ask what the purpose of society actually is, and
that in turn depends on an understanding of what it is to be human.
This
is an important and necessary debate for our society to have, and it is
a different debate from the other necessary debate about public
expenditure.
Catholic social teaching is not a political
programme, still less a party political one. It sets out a clear moral
mandate for the role of the state at the service of the common good, and
if offers the principle of subsidiarity as a guide to warn against the
arrogations of power to higher levels than is necessary to serve human
dignity of all. What our teaching does, however, is to pose questions.
What moral criteria are being used in practice when decisions are being
made to reduce public expenditure? What are leaders appealing to in
people when they invite social change and transformation?
The
other area I want to touch on very briefly before closing is the place
of the market.
Again there is a pervasive assumption, which seems once
again to be abroad in the financial sector, that the free market
mechanism is subject to its own internal logic which somehow sits
outside the moral calculus we want to apply to the rest of society, as
if it were a scientific experiment subject to rigid laws.
The truth is
that what we are talking about are human decisions, and human decisions
are always taken in moral space.
Good business leaders have always
known this, and have always sought to articulate a purpose and instil a
culture within their organisations which places the operation of their
firms in private sector clearly at the service of society.
What we
saw in the financial crisis was bad business practice compounded by a
culture celebrating profit as an end in itself.
Last year I was engaged
in a fascinating dialogue with some of the leaders in the financial
sector in which it was clear that they were seeking a change of culture.
I applaud the leadership some have given, but also lament that the
financial sector seems collectively still to have failed to wake up to
the moral responsibility they have, as we all do, to serve society.
Until a different culture has taken hold, I cannot see how a real and
necessary change can take place.
This evening I have ranged far
and wide. It was important I think at a time when religious freedom is
so often questioned, to set out the case.
I wanted also to point up
areas in which the Church through her social teaching can contribute to
the project in which we all share, of enabling a good life in hard
times. But in closing I want to just go a little deeper into what the
contribution of the Church might be.
The Catholic tradition’s
commitment to human dignity does not depend on any political philosophy
or contingent social benefit. It derives from its understanding of the
event of the Incarnation and from the nature of the good itself.
The
Incarnation, God taking human form in Jesus Christ, reveals what it is
to be human and the meaning of human life, its potential for corruption
but also its intrinsic nobility, value and purpose.
No matter how deep
the corruption of human beings and the society they create, Christianity
can never abandon the human project or despair of it because in Christ
God has definitively and irrevocably chosen to be with us.
This is no
idealism, romanticism or utopian optimism. Christianity has a crucified
saviour and that means it can never diminish or avoid the actual evil
that human beings create as well as their potential for it. Yet,
precisely because of its realism, Christianity is a source of creative
hope and energy for the healing of the world.
The theologian Bernard
Lonergan, speaking of the reality of decline and disruption that marks
the energies of progress within any society, and is a symptom of the
alienation from ourselves and our own good says this:
“A religion
that promotes self-transcendence to the point not merely of justice but
of self-sacrificing love will indeed have a redemptive role in human
society …”
And that, in the end, is the true gift revealed and offered by Jesus Christ and his Church in which I and so many others have such confident faith today.
+Vincent Nichols
Archbishop of
Westminster
2 March 2011.