What politics is there for
In the New Testament Jesus acknowledges the need to be loyal to earthly rulers, but at the same time cautions against raising temporal authorities above God. In fact, his exhortation, “Give to God what belongs to God and to Caesar what belongs to Caesar”, precisely calls for recognising God as supreme authority.

South Africa’s parliament in Cape Town in 1906. The Church teaches that politicians are called to govern for the common good—when they don’t, the people have a right to disobey their authority.
Vatican II’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes affirms that the human person is the foundation and purpose of political life. Hence, the role of politics is to organise and ensure unity among people.
Pope Pius XII, in his Christmas 1944 radio message, gives an interesting detail: “A people does not mean a shapeless multitude, an inert mass to be manipulated and exploited”, but a people that is able to form and express its own opinion on public matters.
The foundation of political authority therefore demands to direct all people towards the common good.
“Political authority must guarantee an ordered and upright community life without usurping the free activity of individuals and groups but disciplining and orienting this freedom by respecting and defending the independence of the individual and social subject, for the attainment of the common good,” the Catholic Church teaches in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (CSDC).
When the political authority leads the society to aspirations that are morally good, then people must obey it. And God is the ultimate source and end of such moral order since authority is not a power determined by criterion of a solely sociological or historical nature, the CSDC says.
Political authority must safeguard the fundamental human and moral values that flow from the very dignity of the human person. These values “no individual, no majority and no state can ever create, modify or destroy”, Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae.
Arbitrary fiddling with such basic human moral laws therefore risks undermining the entire society in its foundation. So, political authority has the obligation to enact laws that conform to the dignity of the human person; and a law is truly human to the extent that it measures up to God’s will.
Consequently, when the political authority makes laws that go against human dignity, it defeats its own purpose of existing and renders itself illegitimate.
In such cases, people have the right to conscientious objection since, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “citizens are not obligated in conscience to follow the prescriptions of civil authorities if their precepts are contrary to the demands of the normal order, to the fundamental rights of persons or to the teachings of the Gospel”.
People are free to boycott laws that are contrary to the precepts of God, and do so not just as a moral duty but also as a right which civil law should recognise and protect.
This is why the Church values the democratic system that allows people participation in the affairs of their society, free expression and passing of information. This demands a truly independent media and not one that is a mere tool for government propaganda.
Politicians must refrain from attempts to manipulate civil society and citizens, especially by such means as making access to jobs, services or contracts conditional to party membership or ideological loyalty.
The people should, as the CSDC puts it, retain “the prerogatives to assert this sovereignty in evaluating the work of those charged with governing and also in replacing them when they do not fulfil their functions satisfactorily”.
Nevertheless, elected leaders need enough freedom to do their job.
Democracy should never be reduced to majority whims. Rather, there should be consensus on values such as the dignity of human person, and democracy should be at the service of those values.
“A democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism. Democracy is fundamentally a system, and as such is a means not an end. Its moral value is not automatic, but depends on conformity to the moral law to which, it, like every other form of human behaviour, must be subject,” the CSDC notes.
Therefore, the vocation of the political community is to lead human persons in society towards realising their aspirations that are truly human. However, its authority is not ultimate for it owes obedience and submission to God.
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