Cardinal George Pell recently spoke to the Acton Society on the limits of liberal democracy. His speech was wide-ranging and interesting, but critics focused on a point marginal to his argument: his comparison between those in the West who now convert to Islam and those who had earlier turned to Communism.
His arguing partner was secular democracy, which he describes as an identification of democratic process with the belief in unlimited individual autonomy. This leads to unquestioned acceptance of abortion, euthanasia and genetic experimentation, and to the claim that opposition to such things is undemocratic.
Cardinal Pell argues that democracy is neither a value-free mechanism for regulating interests, nor a good in itself. Its value is to serve a moral vision.
To the individualist values espoused by secular democracy, he opposes ‘democratic personalism’. By this he means a vision of human beings as centres of transcendent dignity whose existence and happiness are bound to mutual relationships. Democracy serves the flourishing of human dignity and of mutual relationships. He argues that to implement this vision we would need to change culture. That calls primarily for persuasion and not political activism.
He introduces Islam into his argument in order to illustrate the emptiness within secular democracy. Last century, the Western cultural emphasis on individual choice attracted people to communism because it was built on solidarity. Recent conversions to Islam in the West suggest that it might prove as attractive in our century for the same reason.
Cardinal Pell is right to identify the radical individualism of Western culture and to insist that any political system must be built on a strong respect for human dignity. That said, I doubt that our political system can be described as a pure form of secular democracy.
I disagree, however, with his claim that democracy is not a good in itself. Democracy is a good because it uniquely allows for human beings to take responsibility for the shape of their common life and makes them morally accountable for what governments do in their name.
This means that governments and citizens are judged by the values that Cardinal Pell commends—the transcendent dignity of the human beings affected by national policy and actions. For that reason, election success never justifies a government’s policy. It does not render morally justifiable, for example, the destruction of Iraq or of the humanity of asylum seekers. What elections do is to make governments accountable