I’ve been puzzled about something for some time now. In Catholic social and political teaching, the secular leader is supposed to uphold the common good, and Catholics are supposed to support leaders who uphold the common good. In a fallen world, we do not expect every leader to seek Christ’s guidance in making a decision. We can exhort leaders to uphold the common good, but we may recognize that a leader, however flawed, is in the best we can do in a particular moment in time and circumstance.
This pretty much describes the history of the Church’s relationship with political power since the beginning, or at least in the post-Constantinian era (true, there were occasions when the Church became too close to secular power, and became tainted by it, but that’s another story). What this meant was that the Church supported, anointed, and blessed secular leaders who were (to put in mildly) imperfect. A list of such examples could fill a book. I will provide only one, dating from lat antiquity, partly because it represents the Church figuring these things out at a very early stage, and partly because I really like this period of history.
Theoderic ruled Italy in the late fifth and early sixth century. Between periods of chaos and deprivation, he provided stability and the rule of law. (It’s common to describe him as a “barbarian”. In fact, he was a Roman citizen who hailed from the same region as the emperor Justinian and spent his youth in Constantinople). He was a good ruler. And, by and large, the Church supported him, despite him being an Arian. He won the support of Christian luminaries like Cassiodorus and Boethius. And yet… he was most imperfect, a man of the sword. He came to power after a war against the previous ruler of Italy, Odoacer. They finally agreed to share power, and held a banquet to celebrate this agreement. At the banquet, Theoderic ran his sword through Odocaer, proving himself a both a liar and a murderer. Somewhat paranoid, he eventually had Boethius killed too.
Was the Church right to support him? Undoubtedly. He was the best that Italy could hope for in terms of civil government at the time. What about his near-contemporary, the famous emperor Justinian, a man who fought for the Chalcedonian faith and yet a man who had 30,000 protesters people killed in the Hippodrome, a man who started ruinous war after ruinous war and who bankrupted the treasury? The Church supported him too.
Somehow democracy is supposed to change everything. If a Christian living in Constantinople at the time had the right to vote for candidate Justinian against some other general, suddenly the voter shares the blame for every evil act perpetrated by Justinian (or Theoderic, or anybody else). Given the gravity of the offenses against life and human dignity in particular, it would not have been possible to vote at all– at that time, or at most times in human history. After all, these acts are intrinsically evil, so appealing to the different standards of the time simply won’t work. But is there such a discreet difference in the first place between voting for someone in a democracy and supporting someone in a non-democracy? I do not think so, for otherwise the solution would be to abolish democracy altogether, on the grounds that it constitutes one gigantic occasion of sin.
One final thought: nothing I have said here disputes the duty of every Christian to fight for what is right in the public sphere. We seek the common good, to the extent possible given the particular circumstances of the day. But let’s be realistic, and not assign magical qualities to the act of voting. That would fall into the liberal trap of assuming the onset of democracy represented a discreet break with the past, a brave new world where everybody was more virtuous than before. We don’t really believe that, do we?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In