Democracy — the regime in which the people share in the exercise of power and peacefully choose those who govern them — holds a singular place in Catholic thought. The Church long regarded it with prudence only; in the twentieth century she came to recognize, value and defend it — but on precise conditions, which make this anything but a naive endorsement.[1][2]
This position can be summed up in one formula: democracy is a means, not an end; an instrument at the service of the common good, not an autonomous source of truth and law. John Paul II said it plainly: democracy is "a system and as such it is a means and not an end"; its moral character "is not automatic, but depends on conformity to the moral law".[3] A democracy can therefore be good or bad, just or unjust, depending on what it recognizes and what it protects.
To understand this doctrine, two claims that modern opinion readily opposes must be held together. On the one hand, the Church teaches that the choice of political regime belongs to the free decision of peoples: neither monarchy, nor aristocracy, nor democracy is sacred in itself.[4] On the other hand, she affirms that no procedure, even a majoritarian one, creates good and right: there is an objective moral law, prior to any vote, to which democracy itself is subject.[5] Democracy according to the Church is therefore legitimate only insofar as it remains ordered to the common good and to the dignity of the human person — otherwise it turns against the very man it claims to serve.
What does "democracy" mean for the Church?
A regime, not a political religion
The first concern of Catholic doctrine is to disambiguate the word. "Democracy" can denote two very different things: on the one hand a form of government — a set of procedures by which the people share in power and designate their rulers; on the other a comprehensive philosophy, a vision of man and truth that would make consent the measure of all things.
The Church welcomes the first and combats the second. As a form of government, democracy is an estimable instrument, often the best suited to protecting freedom and participation. As a political religion — that is, as the dogma that "truth is whatever the majority decides" — it becomes an ideology that dissolves morality into power relations. This distinction governs all the rest: the Church never "canonized" democracy, any more than she sacralized any regime; she judges democracy by its fruits and its foundations, not by its name.[6]
The Church canonizes no form of government
Catholic tradition has always taught that authority itself comes from God, but that the form of the regime belongs to the free decision of men. The Catechism is explicit:
"If authority belongs to the order established by God, 'the choice of the political regime and the appointment of rulers are left to the free decision of the citizens.'" — Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1901[7]
It follows that monarchy, aristocracy and democracy can each be legitimate regimes, "provided they contribute to the good of the community".[8] Leo XIII had already stated it clearly: none of the forms of government is condemnable in itself, provided it is just and ordered to the common good.[9] This principle protects democracy from a double misunderstanding: it is neither a shameful concession wrung from a Church secretly dreaming of monarchy, nor an untouchable absolute. It is one political form among others, judged by its capacity to serve man.
| Form of government | Principle | Judgment of the Church |
|---|---|---|
| Monarchy | Power in the hands of one | Legitimate if ordered to the common good and limited by law |
| Aristocracy | Power in the hands of a few (the "best") | Legitimate under the same conditions |
| Democracy | The people share in power and choose their rulers | Legitimate and valued, provided it respects the moral law and inviolable rights |
| Any corrupt regime | Power diverted toward the private interest of the ruler | Illegitimate — tyranny, whatever its form |
"Formal" democracy and "substantive" democracy
Social doctrine readily distinguishes formal democracy — procedures alone: elections, majorities, alternation in office — from substantive democracy — the whole set of goods these procedures are meant to protect: justice, human rights, the truth of the common good. A democracy may scrupulously observe the forms and wholly betray the substance, if it votes injustice, oppresses minorities or denies fundamental rights. That is why the Church refuses to reduce democracy to the mere counting of votes: numbers do not manufacture the just. Democratic procedure has value only because it is at the service of a content — the dignity of each person and the good of all — which transcends and measures it.[10]
"People" and "mass": the distinction of Pius XII
The founding text of modern Catholic reflection on democracy is the 1944 Christmas radiomessage of Pius XII, delivered as the war was finishing off the totalitarian dictatorships. There the pope draws a decisive distinction between the people and the mass:
"People and an amorphous multitude, or, as it is commonly called, the 'mass', are two different concepts." — Pius XII, 1944 Christmas radiomessage[11]
The people, he explains, is made of living persons, conscious of their responsibilities and convictions; the mass is a passive aggregation, easily manipulated, which "awaits impulse from outside":
"The people live by the fullness of life of the men who compose it, each of whom [...] is a person conscious of his own responsibilities and convictions. The mass, on the contrary, awaits impulse from outside, an easy plaything in the hands of anyone who exploits its instincts and impressions." — Pius XII, 1944 Christmas radiomessage[12]
This analysis already contains the whole doctrine: a democracy is healthy only if it rests on a people of responsible persons, not on a mass shaped at will by demagogues. Mass democracy, surrendered to propaganda and emotion, can produce the worst tyrannies — the history of the twentieth century had just proved it. Pius XII then clearly recognizes the legitimacy of the democratic choice, provided the doctrine on the divine origin of power remains intact:
"It is not forbidden to prefer governments of a moderate popular form, provided Catholic doctrine on the origin and exercise of public power remains intact." — Pius XII, 1944 Christmas radiomessage[13]
The doctrinal foundations of the Catholic position
Authority comes from God; its form comes from men
The cornerstone is the Catholic doctrine of authority. All legitimate authority comes from God, not as a blank check given to rulers, but as an order that obliges power to serve.[14] Far from contradicting democracy, this claim both founds and limits it: it founds it, because it forbids making power the private property of the leader; it limits it, because it places above the popular will an authority — God and his law — that no vote can repeal. This is precisely what Marc Sangnier's Sillon had lost sight of by deriving authority from the people alone: the Church would remind it that authority comes from God through the people, not from the people alone.[15] The detailed doctrine of this point is treated in the article Political Authority according to the Church.
The common good, the end and criterion of all power
If the form of the regime is free, its end is not: all power, democratic or not, exists only for the common good.[16] The Catechism states it plainly:
"Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it uses morally licit means to attain it." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1903[17]
Democracy is no exception to this criterion: a majority pursuing its own interest at the expense of a minority, or sacrificing the weakest, would betray the common good as surely as a tyrant. The common good is not "the good of the majority" but the good of all and of each: it is the objective measure to which even universal suffrage is subject. This connection is developed in the article The Common Good.
The dignity of the person, root of participation
Why does the people have the right to share in power? Not by a concession granted from above, but because each person, created in the image of God, possesses a dignity that makes him responsible for the city. Political participation flows directly from the dignity of the human person: a being endowed with reason and freedom is not made to be governed like a flock, but to take part, each in his measure, in the conduct of the community.[18] Gaudium et spes makes this participation a true right and duty:
"It is fully consonant with human nature that juridical-political structures should increasingly and without discrimination offer all citizens an effective opportunity to take part freely and actively in public life." — Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, 75[19]
Subsidiarity and participation
Authentic democracy is not reduced to the act of voting every few years: it presupposes a living participation at every level of society. This is where the principle of subsidiarity comes in: the common good is built from the bottom up, through families, associations, municipalities and intermediate bodies, not by a State absorbing all initiative.[20] A democracy that emptied society of its intermediate bodies, leaving face to face only the isolated individual and the all-powerful State, would prepare its own corruption. Democratic vitality is measured less by the frequency of ballots than by the density of the social fabric and the solidarity that sustains it.
History: how the Church came to "value" democracy
Saint Thomas Aquinas and the "mixed regime"
The idea that the people should have a share in government is no modern invention. Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), following Aristotle, already recommended a mixed regime combining the advantages of monarchy (unity), aristocracy (competence) and democracy (participation of all).[21] In his view, the best government is one in which "all have some share" in power, for this secures peace, elicits consent and prevents tyranny.
"All should have some share in government: this is what secures the peace of the people, and all love and preserve such an order." — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 105, a. 1[22]
This intuition — participation of all as a remedy against tyranny — foreshadows the contemporary doctrine from afar, while remaining distant from the modern dogma of absolute popular sovereignty.
The French Revolution and the distrust of the nineteenth century
The modern Church's distrust of democracy does not come from popular participation in itself, but from the revolutionary philosophy that carried it from 1789 onward: absolute sovereignty of the people, refusal of any law higher than the general will, declared hostility to religion. The democracy of the radical Enlightenment claimed to found law on the human will alone, cut off from God and the natural law. It is this ideology, not democracy as a regime, that the nineteenth-century popes — Gregory XVI, Pius IX and his Syllabus (1864) — condemn when they refuse to subject "good and truth" to the vote.[23] The distinction is crucial: the Church does not combat the fact that the people share in power, but the claim to make this participation the source of moral truth.
Leo XIII: the ralliement and "Christian democracy"
It is Leo XIII (pope from 1878 to 1903) who begins the rapprochement. In Immortale Dei (1885), he teaches that all forms of government are legitimate in themselves; in Au milieu des sollicitudes (1892), he invites French Catholics to "rally" to the Republic, distinguishing the established regime — which must be accepted and made to serve the good — from unjust laws, which must be fought by legal means.[24] Finally, in Graves de communi re (1901), he uses the expression "Christian democracy" — while carefully emptying it of any partisan meaning: he sees in it not a political program but a beneficent Christian action on behalf of the people, in keeping with the social doctrine inaugurated by Rerum novarum (1891).[25]
"Let no one [...] turn this word 'Christian democracy' toward politics. For [...] it must signify only this beneficent Christian action on behalf of the people." — Leo XIII, Graves de communi re, 1901[26]
The condemnation of the Sillon (1910)
The Sillon movement, founded by Marc Sangnier, wanted to go further and intimately bind Catholicism to the democratic ideal. Pius X condemned it in 1910 through the letter Notre charge apostolique, not because it defended the people, but because it fell into a doctrinal error on the origin of authority: the Sillon taught that power emanates from the people alone, and tended to dissolve the Church into a vast humanitarian movement mixing believers and unbelievers.[27] Pius X recalled that authority comes from God, and that the equal dignity of men abolishes neither social hierarchy nor the order willed by the Creator. The condemnation of the Sillon is therefore not a rejection of democracy, but a refusal to make of it a political mystique substituted for the faith.
The turning point of Pius XII: the 1944 Christmas radiomessage
The true turning point comes with Pius XII and his wartime anti-totalitarianism. In the wake of the Nazi and Fascist regimes, which had so often claimed to speak for the people, the pope understands that the best barrier against tyranny is a substantive democracy, rooted in the conscience of persons. The 1944 Christmas radiomessage positively recognizes, for the first time on this scale, the aspiration of peoples to share in their government — while subordinating it to the truth about man and about the origin of power (see above, "People and mass"). From then on, the Church no longer merely tolerates democracy: she begins to promote it as a rampart of human dignity.
| Stage | Author, date | Contribution on democracy |
|---|---|---|
| Immortale Dei | Leo XIII, 1885 | All forms of government are legitimate in themselves if they serve the common good[28] |
| Au milieu des sollicitudes | Leo XIII, 1892 | Ralliement: accept the established regime, distinguish regime from laws[29] |
| Graves de communi re | Leo XIII, 1901 | "Christian democracy" = social action, not a political program[30] |
| Notre charge apostolique | Pius X, 1910 | Condemnation of the Sillon: authority comes from God, not from the people alone[31] |
| 1944 Christmas radiomessage | Pius XII, 1944 | Recognition of democracy; people / mass distinction[32] |
| Gaudium et spes | Vatican II, 1965 | Right and duty of all to share in public life[33] |
| Centesimus annus | John Paul II, 1991 | "The Church values the democratic system"; warning about democracy without values[34] |
| Evangelium vitae | John Paul II, 1995 | Democracy stands or falls with its values; objective moral law[35] |
The contemporary magisterium
Vatican II: the participation of all in public life
The Second Vatican Council, in Gaudium et spes (1965), establishes political participation as consonant with human nature (see above) and calls for institutions guaranteeing to all, "without discrimination", an effective share in public life.[36] The council praises regimes in which citizens can take part in government "in freedom", while recalling that this participation is inseparable from the sense of the common good and respect for rights.[37] Vatican II does not "baptize" democracy, but it makes responsible participation an ideal toward which societies must tend.
Centesimus annus: "The Church values the democratic system"
It is John Paul II who gives the doctrine its most positive — and most demanding — formulation. In Centesimus annus (1991), in the aftermath of the fall of communism, he writes:
"The Church values the democratic system, inasmuch as it ensures the participation of citizens in making political choices, guarantees to the governed the possibility both of electing and holding accountable those who govern them, and of replacing them through peaceful means when appropriate." — John Paul II, Centesimus annus, 46[38]
But on the same page he issues the now-famous warning, born of the experience of the twentieth century and of his native Poland:
"As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism." — John Paul II, Centesimus annus, 46[39]
The "valuing" of democracy is therefore never unconditional: it holds for a democracy rooted in truth, and turns into a warning as soon as that rootedness fails.
Evangelium vitae: democracy stands or falls with its values
The encyclical Evangelium vitae (1995) pushes the analysis to its decisive point, regarding laws authorizing abortion and euthanasia voted by democratic parliaments. John Paul II refuses the idea that democratic legality suffices to found the morality of a law:
"The value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes." — John Paul II, Evangelium vitae, 70[40]
And he designates its ultimate foundation, which cannot be numbers:
"The basis of these values cannot be provisional and changeable 'majority' opinions, but only the acknowledgment of an objective moral law which, as the 'natural law' written in the human heart, is the obligatory point of reference for civil law itself." — John Paul II, Evangelium vitae, 70[41]
A formidable consequence: a law voted in full democratic form but contrary to the right to life is not a true law but violence cloaked in legality.[42] Democracy, cut off from the moral law, can thus legalize injustice — and it is then conscience that must resist, through conscientious objection.
The Compendium: the conditions of an authentic democracy
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (2004) systematizes this teaching. It states that "an authentic democracy is possible only in a State ruled by law and on the basis of a correct conception of the human person".[43] It lists the conditions of this authenticity — participation, representation, respect for rights, separation and balance of powers — and warns, following John Paul II, against the ethical relativism which, by denying all objective truth, deprives democracy of its compass and delivers it to the powerful.[44]
| Condition | What it requires | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Rule of law | Laws, not men, govern; separation and balance of powers | Compendium 406-408 |
| Acknowledgment of the moral law | Objective values (life, dignity, justice) that no vote can abolish | EV 70; Compendium 407 |
| Respect for inviolable rights | Protection of the weakest and of minorities against the will of numbers | CCC 1907; EV 71 |
| Pursuit of the common good | The end of power, superior to the interest of the majority | CCC 1903; Compendium 168 |
| Real participation | Subsidiarity, intermediate bodies, responsible citizens | GS 75; Compendium 417 |
The conditions of an authentic democracy
A State ruled by law and inviolable rights
The first condition is the State ruled by law: an order in which law — not arbitrariness, even majoritarian — governs. A democracy is authentic only if it binds itself by rights that no ballot can abolish: the right to life from conception to natural death, religious freedom, freedom of conscience, the right to found a family, the rights of minorities.[45] Without this self-limitation, the power of the people would become as absolute as that of a despot — and one would fall back into tyranny under electoral appearances.
Rootedness in truth and the moral law
The second condition is rootedness in truth. John Paul II affirms it: a democracy without objective truth is defenseless against those who manipulate it.
"If there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which man achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people. [...] The root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person." — John Paul II, Centesimus annus, 44[46]
Far from threatening democracy, the acknowledgment of an objective moral law is what protects it: it forbids the majority to do everything, and gives minorities and the weak a rampart against numbers.
The moral formation of citizens
The third condition is the moral quality of the people itself. A democracy is only worth what the consciences composing it are worth. If the people becomes a "mass" — passive, manipulable, ignorant of the common good — no procedure will save it. Hence the importance of education, the family, culture, and that formation in responsibility for which Pius XII called. Democracy is therefore inseparable from a project of moral elevation: it presupposes virtuous citizens as much as just institutions.[47]
The diseases of democracy
Because it is a means and not an absolute, democracy is exposed to characteristic corruptions which Catholic doctrine names and combats.
Democracy without values: the totalitarian slope
The gravest disease is democracy without values. Deprived of all objective foundation, democratic procedure comes to permit everything: by perfectly legal means it can oppress a minority, eliminate the weakest, and finally concentrate power in the hands of those who know how to manipulate opinion. This is the meaning of the warning of Centesimus annus 46: democracy without values "easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism".[48] Totalitarianism is not the opposite of a corrupted democracy: it is often its outcome, when numbers free themselves from the moral law.
The dictatorship of relativism
On the eve of his election, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Benedict XVI) gave this deviation its most famous name. In the homily of the Mass Pro eligendo Romano Pontifice, on 18 April 2005, he denounces a tyranny of a new kind:
"We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires." — Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, homily of 18 April 2005[49]
The paradox is striking: it is in the name of tolerance and the refusal of all truth that a new constraint settles in, forbidding anything to be affirmed as true. A democracy governed by this relativism no longer has any criterion to distinguish just from unjust: it knows only the power relations of desires.
The tyranny of the majority and "legislative positivism"
A third disease is legislative positivism: the idea that what is legal is, by that very fact, just. This confusion makes the parliamentary majority the ultimate source of law, and reduces justice to procedure. Yet the Church, following the whole tradition of natural law, maintains that "an unjust law is no law at all" but a corruption of law.[50] Suffrage does not create the good: it is meant to recognize and serve it. When the majority claims to decree truth and good, it exercises over consciences and the weak a tyranny of numbers which the very fathers of democracy feared.
Populism, technocracy, abstention
Democracy suffers finally from more diffuse corruptions, noted by the recent magisterium: populism, which flatters the "mass" instead of elevating the "people"; technocracy, which confiscates decisions for the benefit of unelected experts and of a "technocratic paradigm" indifferent to the common good;[51] and abstention, that disinterest in public affairs which delivers the city to the most determined. All these diseases share a common root: the dissolution of the people of responsible persons into a mass without convictions — exactly what Pius XII warned against as early as 1944.
The Catholic in democratic life
A duty of participation and voting
For the Christian, taking part in democratic life is not an option but a duty of justice and charity. The Catechism ranks participation in public life among moral obligations: "submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to pay taxes, to exercise the right to vote, and to defend one's country".[52] Voting in conscience, staying informed, supporting just laws, defending the weakest: so many ways of loving one's neighbor "at the scale of the city". To disengage from politics out of comfort or disgust is, for a Catholic, a dereliction.
Conscientious objection in the face of unjust laws
Democratic participation has, however, an absolute limit: no one may, under pretext of legality, cooperate with evil. When a law, even democratically voted, contradicts the moral law — by authorizing, for example, the killing of the innocent — the citizen has the duty not to submit to it:
"The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2242[53]
Conscientious objection is thus democracy's ultimate safeguard against itself: it recalls that above suffrage remains a law that no one has the power to repeal. Far from being a refusal of democracy, it is its highest service — the one that prevents legality from becoming the mask of injustice.
Political charity
Finally, the Catholic's engagement in the city is not a mere calculation of interests but an eminent form of love of neighbor: political charity. Building just institutions, defending the truth of the common good, keeping alive a democracy rooted in the dignity of each person, is to love concretely all those whom these structures protect. Pius XI saw in politics "the field of the broadest charity"; as such, the defense of a substantive democracy, ordered to God and to the person, is for the Christian a true act of faith and charity.[54]
"To desire the common good and to strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity." — Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate, 7[55]
Further reading
On the kindred principles of social doctrine:
- The Common Good
- Political Authority according to the Church
- The Dignity of the Human Person
- Subsidiarity
- Solidarity
On freedoms and conscience:
On counterfeits and adverse regimes:
Notes and References
John Paul II, encyclical Centesimus annus, 1 May 1991, § 46: "The Church values the democratic system, inasmuch as it ensures the participation of citizens in making political choices, guarantees to the governed the possibility both of electing and holding accountable those who govern them, and of replacing them through peaceful means when appropriate"; "As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism". Official text on Vatican.va.
1 34 38 39 48Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 2004, § 406: "An authentic democracy is possible only in a State ruled by law and on the basis of a correct conception of the human person" (citing Centesimus annus 46); conditions of participation and representation.
2 43 47John Paul II, encyclical Evangelium vitae, 25 March 1995, § 70: democracy is "a system and as such it is a means and not an end"; its moral character "is not automatic, but depends on conformity to the moral law to which, like every other human activity, it must submit". Official text on Vatican.va.
3Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1901: "If authority belongs to the order established by God, 'the choice of the political regime and the appointment of rulers are left to the free decision of the citizens'" (citing Gaudium et spes 74, § 3).
4 7John Paul II, encyclical Evangelium vitae, 25 March 1995, § 70: "The value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes"; "The basis of these values cannot be provisional and changeable 'majority' opinions, but only the acknowledgment of an objective moral law which, as the 'natural law' written in the human heart, is the obligatory point of reference for civil law itself". Official text on Vatican.va.
5 10 35 40 41Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, § 407: democracy must rest on objective values; skepticism and relativism erected into political philosophy deprive democracy of foundation and open the way to arbitrariness. Cf. §§ 408-416 on institutions and information.
6 44Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1922: "The diversity of political regimes is legitimate, provided they contribute to the good of the community."
8Leo XIII, encyclical Immortale Dei, 1 November 1885: none of the forms of government (monarchical, aristocratic, democratic) is condemnable in itself, provided it is just and ordered to the common good. Official text on Vatican.va.
9 28Pius XII, 1944 Christmas radiomessage ("Benignitas et humanitas", 24 December 1944): "People and an amorphous multitude, or, as it is commonly called, the 'mass', are two different concepts." Text in the Acts and Documents of Pius XII.
11 32Pius XII, 1944 Christmas radiomessage: "The people live by the fullness of life of the men who compose it, each of whom [...] is a person conscious of his own responsibilities and convictions. The mass, on the contrary, awaits impulse from outside, an easy plaything in the hands of anyone who exploits its instincts and impressions."
12Pius XII, 1944 Christmas radiomessage: "It is not forbidden to prefer governments of a moderate popular form, provided Catholic doctrine on the origin and exercise of public power remains intact." The first broad magisterial recognition of the legitimacy of the democratic choice.
13Epistle to the Romans, 13:1: "There is no authority except from God." Cf. Catechism, § 1899; Leo XIII, encyclical Diuturnum illud, 29 June 1881, on the divine origin of power and the legitimacy of the various ways of designating rulers.
14Pius X, letter Notre charge apostolique, 25 August 1910: condemnation of the doctrinal errors of Marc Sangnier's Sillon — notably the thesis that authority emanates from the people alone, and the dissolution of Catholic action into an interconfessional humanitarian movement. Official text on Vatican.va.
15 27 31Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1903: "Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it uses morally licit means to attain it."
16 17Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, § 75: "It is fully consonant with human nature that juridical-political structures should increasingly and without discrimination offer all citizens an effective opportunity to take part freely and actively in public life." Official text on Vatican.va.
18 19 33 36Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, §§ 417-420 and §§ 185-188: principle of subsidiarity, participation, role of intermediate bodies in a living democracy. See the article Subsidiarity.
20Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 105, a. 1: praise of the mixed regime combining kingship, aristocracy and popular participation; "all should have some share in government", a pledge of peace and stability. Cf. De regno, I, on government ordered to the common good.
21 22Pius IX, Syllabus appended to the encyclical Quanta cura, 8 December 1864: condemnation of radical liberal theses subjecting truth and right to the human will alone; a critique of revolutionary ideology, not of popular participation as such. Cf. Denzinger-Hünermann, nos. 2901-2980.
23Leo XIII, encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes, 16 February 1892: invitation to French Catholics to "rally" to the Republic; distinction between accepting the established regime and the legal struggle against unjust laws. Official text on Vatican.va.
24 29Leo XIII, encyclical Graves de communi re, 18 January 1901: the expression "Christian democracy" must denote "this beneficent Christian action on behalf of the people", not a partisan political program; link with the social doctrine of Rerum novarum. Official text on Vatican.va.
25 26 30Second Vatican Council, pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes, 7 December 1965, §§ 73-74: the life of the political community, the foundation and end of authority in the common good, the legitimate aspiration of peoples toward structures of participation and guarantees of rights. Official text on Vatican.va.
37John Paul II, encyclical Evangelium vitae, 25 March 1995, §§ 71-73: a civil law contrary to the right to life has no binding force in conscience; distinction between legality and morality; duty not to cooperate formally in such laws. Official text on Vatican.va.
42Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1907: first element of the common good — respect for the person and for his fundamental and inalienable rights, which public authority is bound to protect.
45John Paul II, encyclical Centesimus annus, 1 May 1991, § 44: without acknowledgment of transcendent truth, force triumphs; the roots of modern totalitarianism lie in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the person. Official text on Vatican.va.
46Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (future Benedict XVI), homily of the Mass Pro eligendo Romano Pontifice, Saint Peter's Basilica, 18 April 2005: "We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires." Official text on Vatican.va.
49Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1902: authority does not derive its moral legitimacy from itself; a prescription contrary to the moral order does not bind in conscience — "such a law ceases to oblige". On the "lex iniusta non est lex" tradition, cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 96, a. 4.
50Pope Francis, encyclical Laudato si', 24 May 2015, §§ 106-114 and 189-198: critique of the "technocratic paradigm" and of the confiscation of decisions to the detriment of the common good and real democratic participation. Official text on Vatican.va.
51Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2240: co-responsibility for the common good makes morally obligatory the payment of taxes, the exercise of the right to vote and the defense of one's country.
52Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2242: "The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel" (cf. Acts 5:29).
53Benedict XVI, encyclical Caritas in veritate, 29 June 2009, § 7: "To desire the common good and to strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity"; engagement for the city as a form of charity ("political charity"). Cf. the maxim attributed to Pius XI on "politics, the field of the broadest charity". Official text on Vatican.va.
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