So, we have a result!
What that will mean for the good of our society is yet to be seen, and not just because there is much for an incoming administration to determine rightly or wrongly. For, the health of a democracy requires more than a mandate and a government majority.
Government can facilitate and encourage other elements in civil society to play their proper part in advancing the common good of all, but cannot take their place. Subsidiarity is a necessary, not just a desirable, feature of the social ecology.
What’s more, a healthy society depends on a great many informed conversations in and out of Parliament and across the different sectors and levels of society to find workable answers to its deep-seated and long-term problems, answers that will come at significant cost to some.
The challenges we face
A worrying feature of the election campaigns is how much has turned on who will govern the nation and not on what they will do to address, if not resolve, for example, the breakdown in social care, in the NHS, and in the justice system. Nor have we seen an intelligent debate about how best to tackle climate change, let alone discussion of the role the United Kingdom should play more widely in international relations.
Sadly, we have seen the recurrent willingness of some politicians to make unrealistic claims or promises, especially in managing immigration or the economy; and we have also seen the popular appetite to swallow these promises, to want easy fixes to intractable problems, though with precious little faith in politicians as a class.
Building up the common good
All this means that Catholic bodies and individuals have an important role to play in the aftermath of the election to work together in fostering the as-yet missing conversations as well as in working more practically to build up the common good through this or that community project – this credit union, that food bank, this drop-in centre, that asylum welcome.
We need to engage both with those who voted and the many who didn’t in serious discussions about the hard choices to be made. Informed by Catholic Social Teaching, we have a duty, both by what we say and do, to see that as far as possible the costs of reform do not fall to the poorest, the least able to bear the consequences.
Putting across our vision
One small place to begin might be for Catholic bodies and individuals to reflect on how well or otherwise they were able to put across their vision for a fairer and more compassionate society during the election campaign.
What are the lessons learned? What are the helpful contacts made and the networks to be fostered? What synergies did we discover? What went wrong, fell flat?
It may be that one strength of the Church’s Social Teaching is its confidence in articulating a coherent vision for a fairer society, and the elements that go towards such a society. This confidence may be given in part by a moral vocabulary or ethics that includes rights, and can no doubt make space for modern codes of conduct, but which also includes duties and has at its centre the life of virtue, one in which the flourishing of the individual only comes about in the common flourishing of all.
The website of the Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice with its new videos can of course be a useful resource. Soon it may be time to make an appointment with the new or returning Member of Parliament for the local constituency, but what should the priorities be in making the most of that meeting?
Bringing in the reign of justice
A little over a century ago, the Dominican friar, Vincent McNabb, argued that ‘The first duty of charity is to bring in the reign of justice.’
By this he meant not only the upholding of criminal justice - the prevention of crime, the punishment of crimes committed, and redress or compensation for the victims of crime, but also and primarily distributive justice, that goods of different kinds should be fairly distributed within society. He warned of the divine judgement awaiting those whose ‘charitable’ gifts hid from themselves and others the habitual or characteristic injustice of wealth made from sweated labour.
McNabb’s first duty must be ours also.
Richard Finn O.P., Las Casas Institute for Social Justice