In a world aching for peace, Christians worldwide searching for the best method of finding liberty and justice, truth and charity require only one thing: love.
This is the opinion of Associate Professor at the Pontifical University of Salamanca Reverend Stuart P. Chalmers, who, in a lecture at the University of Notre Dame Australia in Sydney on 28 August, titled ‘Guarding a Wasteland or Constructing a Forum’, also believes this love can be applied to modern democracy and politics.
“Truth and justice are necessary to provide modern society and democracy with a sense of conscience, but they can become blunt instruments that inflict great damage if they’re not clothed in love or charity,” he said.
“Without love, all that is best in us turns in our hands to an unhappy use.”
Reverend Chalmers began his talk by explaining the ‘battle-scarred wasteland’ at the heart of modern democracy, which has caused a nation’s citizens to become confused by the presence of polarising ideas and opinions presented in modern politics.
“Parts of academia have recognised a redolence of ideas, akin to TS Eliot’s The Wasteland, which have contributed to somewhat of a political and cultural failure,” he said.
“If this wasteland is an essential part of democracy, then we, and the church, should consider how they can use their faith and conscience to cultivate and contribute to a political debate necessary to keep democratic society alive.”
Reverend Chalmers also made various references to St Augustine throughout to offer a few reasons why the world requires political leaders who possess conscience to ensure the democratic state remains orderly.
“St Augustine, in his City of God, sums up the importance of justice and strong leadership in any state when he says, ‘Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but a gang of criminals on a large scale,’” he said.
“Justice is a presupposition for truth, which is also a presupposed requirement for human life to truly be lived.
“Justice in democracy orients us as citizens towards the common good.”
In a Q@A following the lecture, Reverend Chalmers said all citizens, whether in a position of leadership or not, require moral virtue to help orient the democratic society towards a state of prosperity.
“Truth in the modern world has become about perception, whether we can grasp something to be true or not,” he said.
“So if we as Catholics see the situation as it is, and believe there is a gross injustice in society, then we need our moral virtue and our faith to push us to have the strength to push back.
“Otherwise, we’re paralysed.”
Dr Martin Drum, Executive Dean of the School of Arts of Sciences at Notre Dame, said Reverend Chalmers had taken us “on a journey.”
“I think what Reverend Chalmers articulated brilliantly was that there is a tension between freedom and equality, because one underpins democracy but the other underpins our move towards the good,” he said.
“Having been around during the 1990s after the Cold War when relativism was all the rage, I think this lecture flipped that idea on its head and showed why truth and faith is important to developing a society oriented towards the good.”
