'The politics of atheism'

Writing for the Australian ABC 'Religion and Ethics' site, Professor John Milbank, one of the leading exponents of Catholic social thought in the UK, ponders the rise of atheism in the politics of the Left.

Marxism was the first current within socialism to think of economics in entirely materialist terms and so to regard capitalism as a necessary phase of development. The Chinese Communist Party is witness to how easy it is for this to mutate into the idea of the final necessity of Capitalism after all.

But pre-Marxist socialism was mostly religious, and the Labour Party up until recently continued this legacy. Sometimes we think of religious and moral socialism as the "soft option."

But to the contrary, it was this legacy - inspired by Methodism, Anglicanism and Catholicism, and not by hyper-Augustinianism - which seriously hoped to render all economic practice moral. It sought a just distribution in the first place, and, prior to Anthony Crosland's revisionism in the late 1950's, not just an ameliorative "redistribution" that was entirely predicated upon the promoting of capitalist growth.

The truth is that the differences between social democracy and neo-liberalism are in the end trivial, and that both sides have covertly to borrow from each other. This is because the worst ravages of an amoral market have to be plastered over by the State, but in the end the main game for either ideology is producing 'wealth' that is defined indifferently to questions of true human flourishing.

It is for this reason that a secular Labour Party today tends to abandon its critique of a market where things and money dominate people ('capitalism' if you like) and defines itself instead as against all tradition and in favour of unfettered personal choice.

A programmatic atheism is at work in the growing hostility to the Crown, to the House of Lords (which needs reform, not total mutation into a second House of Commons which would likely be a less radical body), to the Churches, to the family and to group-rights, and in favour of foxes, exclusively metropolitan life-styles and absolute value-pluralism.

Indeed, it can sometimes appear that for sections of today's Left, as for past totalitarianisms, a naturalistic atheism is the main program. This is why political categorisation is increasingly made in terms of attitudes to sexual issues, to traditional cultures and to religious belief, rather than to issues of substantive economic justice. 'Culture wars' have come to displace older debates about just distribution.

But the evidence of history is that the politics of atheism drifts towards a nihilism of the rule of power alone. The evidence is equally that advocacy of the sovereign power of the individual soon gives way in practice to the absolute power of the amoral market and of the sovereign State whose only purpose is itself.

In the face of this drift of the Left towards secularism and away from radicalism, there is today a remarkable counter-tendency that is a real source of hope. This is a new tendency of religious bodies, and especially of the Catholic Church, in despair at the nihilistic drift of secular politics, more directly to articulate and enact its own political views, often outside current conventions of what counts as Right or Left.

These views, as exampled by Benedict's encyclical Caritas in Veritate, refusal to be resigned to the notion that there is any aspect of human life where justice cannot be implemented.

Osservatore: the Kindly Light

This week's English-language edition of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano carries an editorial by Gian Maria Van on the success of the papal visit. Snip:

It was thanks to the broadmindedness of the media in this great country marked by what, today, has become a multi-ethnic society in relaying his gestures and words on a perfectly organized Journey, that multitudes were able see Pope Benedict speaking to elderly people and conversing with them, "as a brother above all". They saw him gently caressing children just as on his last day, on leaving the Nunciature, he caressed a blind child in the arms of his mother who, moved to tears, could not stop thanking him and adoring the Blessed Sacrament in the impressive silence of the 80,000 young people who had gathered for the Vigil a few hours before Cardinal Newman's beatification.

Indeed the tenderness Benedict XVI shows to the little and the weak explains his powerful words renewed and repeated in the face of the crimes of the abuse of minors by members of the clergy and his meeting with some of the victims and with a group that works for the protection of children.

The British Episcopate, which collaborates with the civil authorities, is exemplary in this regard, in line with the age-old tradition of the care and education of young people which, in the past, was undeniably to the credit of the Catholic Church and her many institutions in every part of the world.

In brief, this was a historic journey. It was marked by the official and cordial Visit to Elizabeth II, a universally esteemed Sovereign, by the solemn meeting with the civil authorities in Westminster Hall (where the Pope paid tribute to the institution of the British Parliament), and by conversations with several political leaders and with Prime Minister David Cameron, who in his farewell address emphasized the positive contribution of religion to the public debate.

At the end of a State Visit which also because of the friendship with Archbishop Rowan Williams proved very important for the development of relations with the Anglicans, with representatives of other Christian denominations and with other religions. And above all Benedict XVI made the Visit shine with the kindly light that leads every human person, just as it led Newman.

How many Catholics are there?

Andrew Brown wonders.

CV debates Protestant Truth Society

CV Peter Williams debated Duncan Boyd of the Protestant Truth Society on Revelation TV on 9 September. Here is the clip -- on the subject: "We believe the Papal Visit will be good for this country".

Chief Rabbi to Pope: what faith offers Britain

From the speech of Dr Jonathan Sacks to Pope Benedict at the meeting with faith leaders at Twickenham.

Britain has been so enriched by its minorities, by every group represented here today and the intricate harmonies of our several voices. And one of our commonalities is that we surely all believe that faith has a major role in strengthening civil society.

In the face of a deeply individualistic culture, we offer community. Against consumerism, we talk about the things that have value but not a price. Against cynicism we dare to admire and respect. In the face of fragmenting families, we believe in consecrating relationships. We believe in marriage as a commitment, parenthood as a responsibility, and the poetry of everyday life when it is etched, in homes and schools, with the charisma of holinessand grace.

In our communities we value people not for what they earn or what they buy or how they vote but for what they are, every one of them a fragment of the Divine presence. We hold life holy. And each of us is lifted by the knowledge that we are part of something greater than all of us, that created us in forgiveness and love, and asks us to create in forgiveness and love. Each of us in our own way is a guardian of values that are in danger of being lost, in our short-attention-span, hyperactive, information-saturated, wisdom-starved age.

And though our faiths are profoundly different, yet we recognize in one another the presence of faith itself, that habit of the heart that listens to the music beneath the noise, and knows that God is the point at which soul touches soul and is enlarged by the presence of otherness.

Labour must learn again to 'do God'

CV coordinator Austen Ivereigh in the Guardian's 'Comment is Free' argues that Labour under Ed Miliband (photo) now needs to recover some of Tony Blair's ability to tune into the concerns of  churches, lost under Gordon Brown.

Most people are not in churches and mosques. But millions are. And in political terms those millions are dynamite. Fired by strong values, believers in a better world, members of organisations built on strong bonds of trust, and willing to turn out to demonstrate and build power – churches were, and for Labour can be again, potent sources of political renewal. True, there are plenty of secular people with ideals, but they are less organised; or, if they are organised, they tend to know better what they oppose than what they stand for. Contrast the 10,000 who protested Pope Benedict with the 200,000 lining Whitehall to welcome him.

Ed-led Labour needs to know that you can't have the fruits without the roots. If what the party must now do is galvanise people where they gather – and especially where those who gather are hardest hit by joblessness and cuts – it must first remove the single biggest obstacle in the way of the party reconnecting with communities: its dogmatic, sneering secularism.

Pope on UK visit: 'all just wonderful'

Richard Owen, The Times's shortly-to-retire Rome correspondent, was granted a brief audience with Pope Benedict on the flight back from his UK visit. 

I was curious to know how he really felt his tour of England and Scotland had gone; not just the official communiques, but his personal reaction. I asked him what had been the highlight of his trip. Meeting the Queen, perhaps? The service at Westminster Abbey? The turnout of crowds, despite the protests over birth control and child abuse?

Benedict shook his head. "Everything," he said in Italian. "Everything."

Then he added in English: "It was all wonderful."

He looked out of the aircraft window at the coast of England sliding beneath us as we headed across the Channel. "It was all just wonderful," he repeated.