40
YEARS
SINCE THE COUNCIL
by Pascual Chávez Villanueva
REJUVENATING
THE FACE
COMMANDING
MEANS SERVING
You have enormous responsibilities which require from you great clarity, tenacity, openness and respect for the fundamenrtal needs of man. (Gordon Hinkley). The profile of a Christian head of state.
There are heads of state who have become saints by carrying out their mission well. Saint Paul says that someone who governs must do so aware that he is exercising an authority that has been delegated to him. In practice, a Christian head of state will act while finding inspiration for his own personal life and for his political activities in the faith he professes. According to Saint Francis of Sales, everyone should seek his own perfection in the state of life and in the profession he has chosen. Thus, the qualities most needed by a Christian head of state are a profound faith, the fear of God, and love for one’s neighbour, naturally in addition to human qualities such as sincerity, discretion, tenacity, a spirit of self-sacrifice, and an abilty to be self-critical. It is no surprise then that many Popes have been raised to the altars. It might come as a surprise, however, to find among kings, princes, the great ones of the world, men and women who made the Gospels their criterion for government and the following of Christ their life’s aim. There have been such and in some considerable numbers.
Constantine was the first to recognise Christianity as the religion of his empire, trying to base his government on Gospel teachings. Theodosius the Great was a vigorous defender of Christian orthodoxy and discouraged the practice of the ancient pagan religion, even with excessive violence. Charlemagne, in his turn, was a persistent defender of the faith and mounted various campaigns to evangelise the Saxons, even though his personal life was not very consistent with the faith he professed.. Saint Stephen of Hungary distinguished himself by his great love for Our Lady and his generosity towards the poor: “Better than anyone else they represent Jesus Christ who I want to serve in a special way.” To get to know the condition of those most in need he dressed up as a brick-layer went out at night and begged for alms. His people used to say: “King Stephen converts more people by his example than by his laws.” The same can be said of Saint Henry the emperor who freed Pope Benedict VIII and restored him to his see in Rome. He used to say: “God has not given me authority to make the people suffer, but to try to do the greatest possible good.” Saint Louis (Louis IX) of France was very influential. His mother, Blanche of Castille, used to tell him that she would rather see him dead than at odds with God, and he declared that he remembered her remark all his life.
Perhaps even greater is the number of queens who are noted for their Christian piety, the education of their children, their love and generosity towards the poor. We might mention Saint Matilda mother of the emperor Otto, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and her cousin Elizabeth of Portugal. No less impact was made by political figures ready to give their lives for their Christian principles: Saint Thomas More, Lord Chancellor, a man of great prestige at the court of Henry VIII, preferred to die rather than recognise the monarch as Head of the Church, a title he had given himself, after Rome failed to approve his divorce from his first wife. A few moments before his execution he said: “I die as the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” The same could be said of his friend the bishop Saint John Fisher, put to death a few days earlier for the same reason. A strong faith is the guarantee of honesty and generosity in the service of others. The Christian, aware of the transience of material goods and temporal honours, knows that everything is directed to the Kingdom of God which one begins to build on earth through consistency of life and love for one’s neighbour, As Calderòn de la Barca teaches, what matters is not so much the role one is called upon to play as the quality of the performance.
Today there is talk about building the European Union, about new political and social issues, about new culture. At the same time the secular nature of the state is proclaimed as the supreme rule of freedom. As a principle that could be a positive idea: “in a pluralist society, secularism is one basis for communication between different spiritual traditions and the state,” John Paul II said. But ever more frequently one sees an aggressive and anticlerical secularism which has its roots in the enlightenment and “pervades” civil institutions. It is well to recall that the fathers of this new Europe, K. Adenauer, A. De Gasperi, R. Schuman, were men with profound Christian convictions who found in the Gospel the inspiration for their best political intuitions, in order to give their people just emerging from the second world war, a future of peace, democracy and prosperity. The radical secularism we are experiencing wants to prescind from every reference to God in public life, on the pretext of respect for all, but in reality because it has disappeared from the private lives of those in goverment and their ideologies. It is maintained that man is able to understand history in the sole light of reason, but from the time he became man God wanted to make man’s history his own.
