RELIGIOUS BELIEF must have a role to play in politics despite the opposition of secularists, who should not relentlessly pursue the removal of all religious symbols from public life, former taoiseach John Bruton said last night.
Drawing heavily on speeches from Pope Benedict XVI, who has said that secular rationality and religious belief need one another, Mr Bruton said the secularist view that politics “should neither influence nor be influenced” by religion is “naive in its understanding of human nature”.
Speaking at an event in the House of Lords, Mr Bruton said: “As long as religious belief exists, and there is every reason to believe it will always exist, the secularist notion that religion and politics should be kept entirely separate is simply unrealistic. It is unrealistic because politics can only work properly if a society has a shared ethos.
“As long as religious belief exists, it will contribute to the shared ethos of society. Thus it will influence politics.
“To attempt to organise society as if that was not true, is simply naive,” he said, delivering the Michael Fogarty memorial lecture to the Centre for Christian Democracy.
Fully accepting that secularists have an ethical code, Mr Bruton said people of religious faith “draw heavily on those beliefs in formulating their ethics”, he said, while their faith helps “to hold themselves to account for how they follow them in practice”.
The former Fine Gael leader, who has been mentioned as a presidential candidate, continued: “And naive beliefs, pursued relentlessly as they often are, lead either to tyranny or to the breakdown of the tolerance needed for democracy to function.”
Secularism did not appear out of thin air, but rather was a reaction to the “excessive and immoderate dominance” of religion in the past. “Secularists should beware of committing the same errors of immoderation in pursuit of their own cause now.
“For example, to seek to use the power of the State to remove every symbol of religious belief from the public space would be just as immoderate as past efforts to use the powers of the State to push one religion on people,” he said.
Urging European Christians not to confuse Christianity with some form of euro-centric cultural nationalism, he said that Switzerland’s decision to ban minarets in mosques is a denial of Muslims’ right to manifest their religious beliefs in public.
Referring to Ireland’s economic crisis, he said it has helped people to give “service to something greater than ourselves”, noting the sharp rise in the number of volunteers joining the St Vincent de Paul society.
The society has had more branches across Ireland in the last two years than it did in the previous 20, he said.
Ever-expanding wealth beyond personal comfort and security does not bring happiness, he said: “Sometimes, accepting that we have enough is a key to a good life.
“That may not please the economists who are constantly looking around for ‘consumer confidence’ – a barren and soulless concept, if ever there was one.”
