Father Eric J. Banecker
Pope Benedict XVI visited his homeland of Germany in 2011 and gave an address to the Bundestag, the primary legislative body of the Federal Republic of Germany. He took the opportunity there – as he so often did – to teach them something. And even if many of those listening were not so interested in what the pope had to say, his talk is a master class on the Christian understanding of politics.
I thought about it after the shocking assassination attempt against Donald Trump right here in our home state. Whatever one thinks about Mr. Trump (and there are many opinions to be sure!), the fact is that the shooting was sickening in general, and tragic for those killed and injured. In addition, it will likely add fuel to an already white-hot national political culture.
That political culture is the problem. While information will probably emerge that shows the shooter to be mentally unhinged, one cannot deny that the divisive political rhetoric pumped through speakers and screens all day creates an environment in which even perfectly sane people can act in antisocial and even morally reprehensible ways – all in the name of allegiance to a certain political “tribe.”
This is what Pope Benedict said that day in Germany, which for me is both the center of the talk and the most pressing crisis of our current political moment: “For most of the matters that need to be regulated by law, the support of the majority can serve as a sufficient criterion. Yet it is evident that for the fundamental issues of law, in which the dignity of man and of humanity is at stake, the majority principle is not enough.”
In other words, the governments established by nations for the preservation of peace and the welfare of the citizenry function best when they all agree on first principles of law and morality and set about discussing the specific applications of those higher laws in the context of a given place and time.
What should be the tax rate for people in the upper quintile of earners? How should firearms be regulated in a just and safe way? What policies need to be taken to secure the country from attacks foreign and domestic?
The answers to these questions are contingent and provisional. This does not mean they are of no consequence; rather, the answers will inherently change based on the circumstances of a given time and situation.
But when legislatures and courts are fighting about the basic realities of human nature, governments cannot carry out any of that work which is proper to them, and instead create an environment of intense debate and conflict.
“Render under Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” said our Lord to the scribes. There is a certain loyalty and allegiance that we owe to the government which is placed over us. But that allegiance is inherently limited. But it can be easy to forget those limits and let politics become all consuming when as a society we are re-litigating fundamental questions of human existence every few years, questions that no government can or should be tasked with answering.
As Pope Benedict goes on to say, those laws are not subject to the decision of the majority, but come to us from God himself in the natural law, which is written on our hearts. As he said to the Bundestag, “Unlike other great religions, Christianity has never proposed a revealed law to the State and to society, that is to say a juridical order derived from revelation. Instead, it has pointed to nature and reason as the true sources of law – and to the harmony of objective and subjective reason, which naturally presupposes that both spheres are rooted in the creative reason of God.”
It is significant that he delivered this speech in his native Germany, where less than 100 years ago, a tyrannical government rose to power by denigrating the human dignity of entire classes of persons – including, but not limited to, the Jewish people.
About 175 years ago, another fundamental question of human existence caused a fever pitch of vitriol and resentment in our country: should human beings ever be considered the property of another human being? It seems to us today completely unbecoming of a humane society to even entertain the alternative.
And yet, entire systems of economic and cultural life had developed around the institution of slavery. Even those living in the North were complicit in this shameful activity to the degree that they tolerated it for the sake of preserving the fragile Union.
No matter how ingenious the proposed solutions to the problem – the so-called “Great Compromise” of the Constitutional Convention, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Compromise of 1850 – none of them sufficiently addressed the core issue: human beings possess an inherent dignity that comes from their creator, and any system of laws that condemns them to be the slaves of another person is inherently unjust.
Compromise is for tax policy and zoning laws, not for the question about what it means to be a human being.
Until we can come together to answer this question in a resounding way, any calls for unity will be well-intentioned but futile. As Saint Paul taught, on earth we have no lasting city. In other words, our first and overriding allegiance must be to the City of God, not the earthly city where we abide during our earthly lives. That said, it is a duty of Christians – especially the laity! – to work to sanctify all fields of human activity, including the political process.
Unlike the Church, there is no divine guarantee about the continued existence of the United States of America. And we know that a faithful Christian life can be lived anywhere, even amid places of extreme injustice (how many saints there were even in concentration camps!). At the same time, we should not just hunker down and wait for the world to burn. Instead, those filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit should seek to be instruments of peace and justice in the time and place in which we live.
Step one is to agree on the fundamentals. May we work together to make that a reality.
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Father Eric J. Banecker is pastor of Saint Mary Magdalen Parish in Media, Delaware County.
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