Giving Politics a Soul

Abstract

Politics does not enjoy credibility in today’s context, and this is not good news. Trust around it must be rebuilt. This can happen only if politics is lived within a proper relationship to faith. The Second Vatican Council fostered lay awareness, capable of discerning concretely in real situations. Faith generates secularity; it does not merely tolerate it. The recent magisterium of Pope Francis, in the encyclical Fratelli Tutti, has identified fraternity as an ethical-anthropological paradigm for a proper understanding of politics at the service of the common good. To give politics a soul means placing Christian spirituality back at the center, restating the reasons for commitment, and learning dialogue as a way of life. The quality of social bonds is the measure of politics.