The bishop of Cork and Ross, John Buckley, issued an excellent statement a few days ago to coincide with the General Election campaign.
In it, he tackles issues such as the right to life, housing and immigration. He urges Catholics to “engage with them [politicians] when they call looking for our vote. Our priorities and views must be reflected by our politicians.”
There is a school of thought which says that faith and politics must not mix. It is even shared by some clerics. That is clearly ridiculous. It is equivalent to saying values and politics should not mix. No-one believes that. A politician will be unavoidably shaped by some set of values. Why should those values not be Christian? It is because not everyone shares Christians values? But there is no set of values that is shared by everyone.
Pope Francis talks relentlessly about the social implications of the Gospel, including the implications for politics.
But Church leaders in Ireland have become extremely reluctant to comment on politics, especially at election time.
By total contrast, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, and the Church of England bishops, both produced election guides to coincide with last year’s General Election there. (See here and here respectively)
Why haven’t the bishops of both Churches here done the same thing?
If for some reason they couldn’t agree on what to do, then there is nothing to stop them doing so individually, as Bishop Buckley has done.
Christianity has a huge amount to say about the common good. Not enough Christians are familiar with this body of thought. It is incumbent upon Christian leaders to do something about this. At election time, Christians ought to think about politics as Christians and not put aside their Christianity in favour of some other set of beliefs that might actually be hostile to Christianity.
Hopefully by the time the next General Election comes around (that could be sooner than we think), the various Churches will do a lot more to help Christians think as Christians about politics.
