Question 6.104

6.104 Let us set aside the cultural question to address politics in the broad sense of the term. Would you say likewise that democracy is an invention of Christianity?

Indisputably. There is a Christian concept of the equality of man. Christ grants equal dignity to everyone; there is no barrier to his salvation. Only Christ guarantees respect for and protection of the fundamental rights of every human person. He alone imposes on every man and every woman the duty to carry out their responsibilities with regard to individual conscience and society, in order to promote justice, liberty, and the common good. Christ places at the heart of societies the primacy of fraternal love and service to others. These are a few elements that must be taken into account in the constitution of a true democracy.

This form of government is not exactly majority rule, but it approximates it.

Does a majority still deserve the name when it crushes racial, religious, and political minorities with the help of oppressive laws? In Deus caritas est, Benedict XVI recalled that “the just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics. As Augustine once said, a State which is not governed according to justice would be just a bunch of thieves: ‘Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia?’” (DCE 28). Such situations and realities are not uncommon today. It is good for every power to be checked and balanced by other powers. And so democracy, which is an ideal and a practice, is acknowledged as the least bad political system. But if democracy excludes religion, explicitly or not, it is no longer a good for the people; hence the constitutional State no longer is, either.

The Christian message is revolutionary: all men are brothers and have one and the same Father. We are equal in dignity, for we are all created in the image of God. Nevertheless, true democracy cannot be the arbitrary rule of the majority. For is the majority necessarily just? Obviously the answer is no. Sometimes the minorities are the ones who hold the truth. …

I am convinced that a democracy that contributes to the integral development of mankind cannot continue without God. When a head of State knows that God is above him, his conscience more easily appeals to him to be a humble servant. Without a Christian reference, in ignorance of God, a democracy becomes a sort of oligarchy, an elitist, inegalitarian regime. As always, the eclipse of what is divine means the debasement of what is human.