Our society is rather hostile to religion playing a role in public life. Perhaps because of a valid concern at how that seems to play out in fundamentalist Muslim societies. Is democracy only secular? Christ’s instructions were to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” after all (Matthew 22:21), which suggests we should respect ruling authorities does it not?

Cardinal George Pell recently released a book entitled God and Caesar: Selected Essays on Religion, Politics and Society. It might be worth a read if you’re interested in what the role of democracy rightfully should be for a Church which puts the dignity of the human person at the centre of things. Especially in light of the recent smacking referendum here in New Zealand, and the debate about how United States’ citizens should vote considering Obama’s anti-life stance on many issues.

The book brings together a selection of his writings on Christianity, politics, and society from the last ten years and raises interesting issues that lead to interesting questions for us. What is the moral heart of democracy? How can the Church work for goodness, truth, community and the common good? Is the dignity of the human person central to New Zealand society, or are we more about productivity and work? Does our society care for the elderly and the young? Do we value disabled people? What makes a person a person? How can we improve things?

Cardinal Pell is a leader of the Catholic Church is Melbourne, and has always been a weighty presence in the Church. Born in Ballarat, he was signed to play Australian Rules football for Richmond. Despite this and his academic success, he decided to join the priesthood, to the initial disappointment of his Anglican father, who told a nun that George might just as well have been “a bloody dill. But you probably don’t want dills, do you?”

Because of his early promise, Pell was sent to complete his training at the Vatican’s elite Pontifical University in Rome. This was followed by a PhD in history at Oxford, where Pell studied how the authority of the popes had been challenged and defended in the early Church.

A reviewer of a biography written about him said “In recent decades a war has been waged within the Catholic Church between traditionalists and those who want to drain its teachings and institutions of much of their meaning. This is the story of that struggle, told through the life of a leading combatant, George Pell, who has spent much of his adult life battling attempts to, in his words, “trivialise Jesus Christ”.”

The Maxim Institute reviews his new book with the following interesting observations and quotes from it:

One of the most helpful of these meditations is found at the start. Cardinal Pell begins by considering the relationship between law and morality, hammering the connection between “the dignity of the human person” and the moral foundations of secular law. “The suggestion that religious views should be silenced, or that believers should be excluded from public debate, cannot be accepted in a democracy. Religious people have as much right as the non-religious to state their views, and argue for them” says the Cardinal. He points out that “the appeal to rights is a moral argument, and it is this appeal to moral authority that gives force to laws enshrining rights.”

It is this “moral truth about the person” which the Cardinal advocates should be at the heart of democracy…”Secular democracy is democracy without transcendence, where the key point of reference is the supremacy of the individual, and his unimpeded will.”