This is Very Clarifying

I just finished reading a CDF document from 2002 on Catholics in political life. In it, the CDF recognizes that:

"It is commendable that in today’s democratic societies, in a climate of true freedom, everyone is made a participant in directing the body politic. Such societies call for new and fuller forms of participation in public life by Christian and non-Christian citizens alike. Indeed, all can contribute, by voting in elections for lawmakers and government officials, and in other ways as well, to the development of political solutions and legislative choices which, in their opinion, will benefit the common good. The life of a democracy could not be productive without the active, responsible and generous involvement of everyone, 'albeit in a diversity and complementarity of forms, levels, tasks, and responsibilities'. By fulfilling their civic duties, 'guided by a Christian conscience', in conformity with its values, the lay faithful exercise their proper task of infusing the temporal order with Christian values, all the while respecting the nature and rightful autonomy of that order, and cooperating with other citizens according to their particular competence and responsibility."(#1).

Further: "A kind of cultural relativism exists today, evident in the conceptualization and defence of an ethical pluralism, which sanctions the decadence and disintegration of reason and the principles of the natural moral law. Furthermore, it is not unusual to hear the opinion expressed in the public sphere that such ethical pluralism is the very condition for democracy" (#2).

And: "In this context, it must be noted also that a well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals. The Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine. A political commitment to a single isolated aspect of the Church’s social doctrine does not exhaust one’s responsibility towards the common good. Nor can a Catholic think of delegating his Christian responsibility to others; rather, the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives him this task, so that the truth about man and the world might be proclaimed and put into action" (#4).

"The appeal often made to 'the rightful autonomy of the participation of lay Catholics'A in politics needs to be clarified. Promoting the common good of society, according to one’s conscience, has nothing to do with 'confessionalism' or religious intolerance" (#6).

And read this: "Faith in Jesus Christ, who is 'the way, the truth, and the life' (Jn 14:6), calls Christians to exert a greater effort in building a culture which, inspired by the Gospel, will reclaim the values and contents of the Catholic Tradition. The presentation of the fruits of the spiritual, intellectual and moral heritage of Catholicism in terms understandable to modern culture is a task of great urgency today, in order to avoid also a kind of Catholic cultural diaspora. Furthermore, the cultural achievements and mature experience of Catholics in political life in various countries, especially since the Second World War, do not permit any kind of ‘inferiority complex’ in comparison with political programs which recent history has revealed to be weak or totally ruinous. It is insufficient and reductive to think that the commitment of Catholics in society can be limited to a simple transformation of structures, because if at the basic level there is no culture capable of receiving, justifying and putting into practice positions deriving from faith and morals, the changes will always rest on a weak foundation" (#7).

I wonder why more is not made of this particular document. It seems to me that here are the seeds for a reclamation of Christendom here, even though the authors would probably not wish to advertise this. And, of course, I don't mean "Christendom" in terms of the erroneous view of the synergy of Church and state (which was always fractured and partial, anyway, and always to the detriment of the Church), but "Christendom" in the sense of re-orienting our lives to God as the medieval monastics did.

This document expresses my own reservations about the "New Evangelization," which seems to presume that one can proclaim Christ in the absence of a sustaining culture. And, just transforming structures really is an exercise in futility. We want a resurgence of a robust Catholic culture, not some weak, generic "Christianity."