If there is one thing on which all pundits agree, it’s this: that life is becoming polarised.
Politicians are shriller. The media is more aggressive. Social media is fuelled by algorithms which fuel conflict and confrontation. Dialogue becomes harder with every passing year.
Enter Pope Leo XIV. His motto as bishop and pope is a phrase taken from one of St Augustine’s sermons: “In Illo uno unum – in the One (Christ) we are one.”
Unity is the key theme of his pontificate. In an interview that he gave as a cardinal, he explained: “as an Augustinian, for me promoting unity and communion is fundamental.”
Depolarisation is emerging as a constant theme of his speeches.
This was evident in his address to members of the Spanish Parliament last week.
It was a masterful blend of conciliatory words and sharp-edged analysis which brought the deputies to their feet in a seven-minute standing ovation.
In Spain, that was no mean achievement. The Anglosphere may still picture Spain as a Catholic nation, but that’s only half the story.
The other half is bitterly, sometimes fanatically, secular. And the two halves are divided into acrimonious factions. The United States is routinely described as polarised but it has nothing to teach Spain.
So it’s worth taking a closer look at the pope’s speech. One professor of canon law described it to me as “a speech for the ages, in its content and in its delivery”.
Those seven minutes of unity were surprising, because Leo defended the Catholic Church’s traditional stand on abortion, euthanasia, parental rights in education, religious freedom, and protecting the seal of confession – all issues which are rabidly debated in Spain.
Perhaps it had something to do with how Pope Leo framed the Catholic approach.
First, he praised Spain’s rich intellectual tradition, from Cervantes to St Teresa of Avila to the 20th century philosopher Unamuno.
“Spain has known how to view the human being as more than just a cog in the social, economic or political order,” he said.
It has recognised the human being as a creature open to truth, endowed with freedom, and driven by a thirst for eternity that no temporal reality can quench – in a word, as someone whose dignity takes precedence over all utility and to whose service legislative action is subject.”
This human dignity, he suggested, is a point on which we can all agree, whether left or right, secular or religious.
But what is the source of that dignity?
Here, he pointed out, Spain has played a particularly important role in the history of Western thought.
Confronted with the discovery of the “New World” of the Americas, the Spanish conquistadores asked whether these heathens should be treated as human beings.
A 16th century Dominican theologian named Francisco de Vitoria was perhaps the first to declare that the American Indians did have the same rights as their conquerors.
“That aspiration continues to resonate today: that dignity, justice and the common good should be the measure of social relations, both at the national and international levels.”
Fundamental in this approach to human rights was the conviction that it is possible to reason about conflicting moral positions.
Leo praised Spain as a pioneer: “This is one of Spain’s great legacies: having united historical action with the clarity of moral reason,” he said.
“That legacy also lives on in this parliament, every time lawmakers ask themselves how to ensure that what is possible is just, that what is legal is truly humane, and that the will of the majority safeguards those goods that belong to all and respects that which no majority can legitimately violate.”
It was a softly-spoken but obvious rebuke to the dehumanising, contemptuous, humiliating jeers which gush from the social media channels of the world’s most powerful politician.
Leo suggested that the secret sauce for depolarisation – in Spain, in the US, in Australia – is reasoned argument.
He used a brilliant image in his concluding remarks: “In this chamber, natural light streams in through the skylight that crowns the room. That light coming from above may remind us that politics, too, must acknowledge a force that precedes and transcends it.”
This modest but lucid defence of negotiation instead of bombs, of dialogue instead of taunting, ought to be required reading for all politicians.
