Have you ever thought about the relationship from the Church and the politics? How this “places” can be work together? Is it possible? Is not better worship the Lord without any political engagement?
Massimo Faggioli, Italian Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University and contributing writer to Commonweal magazine. Today at Assumption College, he tried to answer these and more other questions.
We can’t understand the catholic Church if we split the faith from the common good. The politics is intrinsically inside the life of the Church. Everything seems starting with the Council Vatican II when the Catholic Church clashed definitively with all kind of nationalism (Cfr. Ad Gentes, 15).
Indeed, from the Vatican II, the Church see herself as an instrument of peace, dialogue and reconciliation in the world. It means that from that time it is impossible to conceive a Church detached from the world: it is in the world and it is for the world.
But what happened in this world during the years of the Council?
- The secularization: believers starting to look sympathetic no believers;
- Change the role of religions in public life: it born of the modern concept of individual freedom;
- Catholic people start thinking how to be active in politics;
The biggest challenge of that century was indeed inside the word: community.
This word brings with itself two meaning: duty and gift. From that word it born the biggest challenge for the Church and for every religion in the world:
“Live with others and for others”
Massimo Faggioli
In effect, the root of the issues of actual politics is the myth of the “self-made man”. Without the care of the others there is no democracy.
Finally, when the “word” is corrupted, is falsified, there is no democracy and the only result we can expect from this mind is the violence.