Chatter from the Vatican: Catholic Support for Secularism

One of the fascinating things about Catholicism is that you never know quite what to expect. Catholics have a strong presence on the uber-conservative and awesome-liberal side of the political and religious spectrum, some allying with the fundamentalist Religious Right and other working toward interfaith collaboration and separation of church and state. While there are exceptions, identifying as, for instance, Episcopalian or Mormon suggest progressives and conservative tendencies, respectively–and if a stranger wouldn’t always be right in making this assumption, they’d have a much higher rate of success than trying betting on which camp either any given unknown Catholic fell into.

Though I’m still a little miffed at the Pope for blaming atheists for global warming, today I’m more interested in his support for “positive secularism.” In its “On Faith” section online, the Washington Post reports that Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who is close to the Vatican, has also recently promoted America’s secular system.

There are plusses and minuses to this secular-friendly talk. For one, the Pope and the Cardinal have spoken about “positive” secularism, and a “new” secularism friendly to religion. As Agnes Poirier pointed out in the New Statesman last year after Pope Benedict XVI talked about positive secularism in France, is that implies the existence of a “negative” secularism. But Poirier writes, “Secularism is neutral”; she sees  the Pope’s phraseology as a mask for the desire for special privileges for religion. While France has been frequently criticized for too much hostility toward religion,  that is not an issue of secularism, positive or negative; if there have been excesses, it would be in deviating from the path of secularism. “From a strictly legal perspective,” she continues, “secularism is extremely positive: it creates a universal freedom to believe or not to believe, and protects individuals from any public interference in their belief, provided that their belief or lack of it does not disturb the peace.”

On the plus side, in a time when a term like “secular progressive” is demonized by the right wing, it’s nice to get even partial support from a religious body as powerful as the Catholic Church. A fact that often gets missed is that “secularism” and “atheism” are vastly different. America is–if the Religious Right is kept at bay–a secular state, but only a small minority of its citizens (and even fewer of its elected officials, openly) are atheist. Separation of church and state organization tend to be staffed by members of minority religions, who are protected by secularism. Catholic support for continuing American secularism fights back against attempts to turn this country into a Protestant nation–though the abortion wars may have pulled many conservative Catholics to the side of the fundamentalist Religious Right, let’s remember that “Protestant Nation” is really what is meant by “Christian Nation,” in a country where John Kerry’s Catholicism was still an issue in the 2004 presidential race.

As the Post article points out, Catholics are a much larger voting block than atheists. In preserving our secular tradition, we need these kinds of religious allies. Let’s just keep in mind that the term “positive secularism” is redundant–secularism is inherently positive for anyone who values tolerance, diversity of beliefs, and not living in a theocracy.

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