La realización de lo cristiano en una sociedad pluralista

Resumen

44

In view of the laws that liberized abortion and divorce in the German Federal Republic, the author poses the question of how the Church can implement its teaching in a pluralist society. To this end he analyses the address given by the Chancellor of the German Federal Republic to the Catholic Academy of Hamburg. The central idea in the quotes adduced by the author from this address is the difference between fundamental values and fundamental rights. According to Chancellor H. Schmidt, the State should concern itself with fundamental rights which are a reflection of society and which possibly are not in accord with what up to now have been taken as fundamental values. The Church should concern itself with these values and see to it that society maintains them, but, if it fails to achieve this, the State should not impose them. It is the Church's fault if society looses some fundamental values. The State limits itself to noting social change and reflecting it in its laws, thus concerning itself with rights. In a later qualifying statement on these words, the Commission on Fundamental Values of the SPD, the Socialist party in power, recognises that the State should concern itself not only with rights but also with fundamental values which should be based on a broad consensus within the whole of society. This is an attitude which could give rise to complete arbitrariness in the content of these values.

What is the role of the Church with respect to unjust laws? It is evident, says the Author, that the democratic state of freedom tends to become identified with intermediate groups between the individual and the State. This is as much an error as is strict dualism. It also means that the Church in the context of the democratic state of freedom is simply one grouping among others. The State is considered as ideologically and religiously neutral. All of which, the author concludes, implies a complete turn-around of the traditional teaching of the Church on the essence and function of the state as was held to until Leo XIII. The function of the State at present is solely the tranquillitas ordinis civilis, as St. Thomas Aquinas puts it.

The author upholds that the Church has to act prudently in the specification of its ideas. The State at times deviates considerably from the theological-moral norms of the Church as the price to be paid for bringing about the tranquillitas ordinis civilis. And it is here that the problem lies. However, in the social sphere, the Church as an institution is necessarily in the back ground while it is here that the citizens have their true field of action. The Church's influence in the public sphere is produced through christian citizens and not through its ministers.

Another problem posed by the author is the question of the specific challenges and difficulties which this situation gives rise to regarding the Church’s preaching and the commitment of christians and christian groupings. Here it should be considered not only the influence of the Church on catholics but also the reverse: that of the Church on society and on catholics and of these latter on the Church and between themselves. All of this because exists a dialectic relationship between religion and society and between Church and society. The Church, says the author quoting Vatican II, should not specify the action of the christian in each particular case. That would be a sterile approach. Rather it should give guidelines of a very general nature and be very wary of specifying. The Church, for example should foster in the faithful the virtue of justice but not say in each case what is the most just action.

Palabras clave

Realización de lo cristiano, Sociedad pluralista