Politician Calls New Generation To Defend Christianity
August 05, 2011: One of Europe's foremost Catholic political thinkers has called
for a new generation of politicians to defend and promote orthodox Christian ideals."We
need people with conscience in politics," said Rocco Buttiglione, the vice-president
of the Italian Parliament's Chamber of Deputies. He added "I think the great reservoir
of values today is in the Christian people and we must tell them, you must make politics,
you must enter into politics, you must make with your hands the future of the land."
"Good things have a high price, but they are worth it, of course. If you want to be
Catholic in politics, sometimes you have to make sacrifices and value your conscience
more than your position, more than your seat in politics. But, would you trust a man
that put his political career higher than his conscience?"Already several young Catholic
politicians in Italy are responding to the challenge laid down by Buttiglione and
others. As well as being a frontline politician, Rocco Buttiglione is also a renowned
academic. In fact, he is a professor of political science at Saint Pius V University
in Rome as well as a member of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
And it is from this standpoint that he observes worrying historical parallels for
contemporary politics. "And, what is the reason that Greek democracy died? Because
of moral relativism, corruption," he said adding that the moral relativists of today
are, in fact, the intellectual descendents of the sophists of ancient Greece. "Western
democracies run the danger of dying because political activity is not based on principals."
Despite the dire predictions, the 63-year-old academic and politician is not without
hope for the future. The key to success, he said, lies with a five-letter word - truth. "We
must bring truth to politics again. We must be able to tell the truth to the people.
Very often politicians don't tell the truth. Very often politicians tell the people
what they want to hear. And, what the people very often want to hear is not the truth."