Archbishop Scicluna’ homily during the Mass celebrating Independence Day 2019 lends itself to a further observation on what he calls the “sense of State” (The Sunday Times of Malta, ‘The art of stewardship’, September 22). It is a call that squarely impinges on the responsibilities of active citizenship in post-Independence Malta.
Re-considering the nature of the State, and the implications of the sense of the State as a civic duty for citizens, does not mean making a divinity out of the State or creating another religion alongside the Catholic religion. This mentality has its origin in the perception of the State as a purely political entity instead of conceiving it as a holistic organisation of society’s social institutions: civil, political and religious.
Discourse and language along these lines seem to have been the reason for enduring controversies on the relationship between the State and the Church. A paper on the subject by Joseph Trabbic, ‘The Catholic Church, the State, and Liberalism’, reactivates the different views of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. The aim is not to foment the previous controversy but to clarify the recent teaching of the Church and posit different competencies in their respective domains.
Benedict XVI may have been misinterpreted as recognising and giving a blessing to the confessional State in his 2005 Christmas message to the Roman curia on freedom of conscience.
Francis speaks of a ‘healthy secularity’ which tends towards a greater integration of religion and public life
What Benedict really acknowledges and condemns at the same time, however, is the irregularity of the State when coercing citizens to worship the State as a divinity – in other words, when the State is substituted for religion.
Indeed, this was the situation faced by early Christians who rejected the religion of the State, with many of them paying by their martyrdom.
It is true that the Church prays for political leaders in the Pauline tradition: “First of all, I urge that petitions, prayers, requests and thanksgivings be offered to God… for kings and all others who are in authority, that we may live a quiet and peaceful life with all reverence towards God and with proper conduct” (1 Tim 2:2).
Discussions sparked off by Benedict’s position have become famous for what the author of the paper has named the language of the “hermeneutic of continuity”, meaning that Pope Benedict is in line with the doctrine of the Church.
Pope Francis frames the discussion differently, taking the cue from the models of ‘secularism’, which he refers to as ‘laicismo’, and ‘secularity’, which he refers to as ‘laicidad’. In this context, Francis speaks of a ‘healthy secularity’ which tends towards a greater integration of religion and public life while separating the two respective competencies of Church and politics. For Pope Francis, there can be a secular State without it being an anti-religious State.
Faced by these two different points of view, what is the position of the official teaching of the Church? In a non-ambivalent tone, the Church states that the organisational structures of the Church and the State “are by nature different because of their configuration and because of the ends they propose.” However, “the mutual autonomy… does not entail a separation that excludes cooperation” (Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Church, pp. 213-214).
Philip Said is a former Education Officer and Żebbuġ local councillor.