Suchergebnisse

Both Catholics and non-Catholics attempt to enlist the Pope as a partisan of one or another political cause: disarmament, socialization, civil rights, aid for underdeveloped nations, the condemnation of a Hitler. The relationship between morality and politics, however, is ambiguous. Good men may well disagree about which long-range or short-range political programs are best calculated to serve man's moral interests. What, then, is the present position of the Catholic—liberal or conservative—when the Pope makes a moral-political statement about the issues of our time?In its general lines, the traditional answer to this question is simple enough. There are three elements to distinguish: (1) moral principles; (2) political programs; (3) concrete decisions. The Pope's moral competence extends most clearly to declarations about principles. In proportion as judgments about historical facts, present trends, and the yet uncertain future are involved in political programs, the Pope's competence becomes increasingly ambiguous; his is increasingly but one of many prophetic voices "crying in the wilderness."

There are two principal elements in Christian faith which underwrite and require the attention of Christian ethics to problems of foreign policy. First, the Christian is convinced that God is sovereign over all the world and therefore over all the areas of the common life—not the least of which is political society. On these terms no political engagement is ever a mere power struggle and no Christian in politics is ever merely or even primarily political man, for the engagement is understood through faith to be a locus of divine activity and the politically-involved Christian is above all a man seeking to make his action correspond faithfully to the action of God. Divine sovereignty imposes a qualification on political sovereignty and thereby requires the recognition of limits to the exercise of political power and to the exaltation of national existence. But it also strengthens legitimate political authority by means of the explicit declaration that the powers that be are ordained of God. Second, the vocation of the Christian in the world is to serve the neighbor in love.

It is crucial for social workers to develop and support practice principles that will instill trust in the helping relationships associated with their services