According to the 2001 census, there are around 4.2 million Roman Catholics in England and Wales, just over 800,000 in Scotland and nearly 680,000 in Northern Ireland. Notwithstanding the limitations of the census for establishing levels of serious religious belief or practice, it would therefore be a very significant thing if the Catholic Church were to swing this considerable weight behind the Conservative Party in the coming General Election. That is exactly how some commentators have spun the publication of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference’s pre-election document, Choosing the Common Good.
In reality, it is a more nuanced intervention than that, and would not readily ‘baptise’ either platform. On key issues, the document has a light touch (a more focused policy document will be released with the announcement of the Election). Where it does deliberate on policy areas, it is nothing more than a succinct restatement of existing Roman Catholic social teaching: pro-life in the broadest and biggest sense, where a commitment to alleviate child poverty is as much centre stage as opposition to abortion, unashamedly green, pro-family and sympathetic to migrant communities. No surprises there, and a helpful reminder that Christian political commitments often reject – or at least scramble – the distinction between issues which are thought to be the property of the left or the right.
Rather, it is constituted mainly of reflections on the broad themes of the common good, defined as “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more easily”. But by ‘sum’, the document does not mean a “utilitarian addition” of highest total benefit, but a multiplication sum, “where if any one number is zero then the total is always zero… if anyone is left out and deprived of what is essential, then the common good has been betrayed”.
Of course, it is not without some clear implications for all Parties. In the light of recent debates on the employment provisions of the Equality Bill, one can read some irritation beneath lines like “care must be taken not to put obstacles in the way of religious belief and practice which reduce it to devotional acts”. But we knew in advance of the 2005 General Election that the century-long affaire de coeur between the Roman Catholic Church and the Labour Party had come to a bitter end. Yet the Roman Catholic Church is not yet in courtship with the Conservatives – on the question of migration, for example, Choosing the Common Good offers a reflection on the way parties have campaigned: “Politicians have a responsibility… to appeal to the best and most decent instincts of the electorate rather than to whip up fears, prejudices and anxieties.”
The other key theme of the document is the limited capacity of the state to achieve the common good. We have allowed ourselves to be “seduced by the myth that all social problems are for the Government to deal with”. It makes the related case for building a strong civil society, and juxtaposes this, and the kind of action it motivates, with “the growth of regulations, targets and league tables”, i.e., the bureaucratic state.
Gordon Brown once said that that charity was the “sad and seedy competition for public pity”, decrying the Victorian attitude to welfare which would see it flowing to and fro according to sentiment alone.[1] His position has changed radically and, rhetorically at least, he now rejects ‘statism’, never missing an opportunity to praise ‘intermediary institutions’. In his 2004 lecture on Britishness, he acknowledged that “aspects of post-war centralisation fell short of our vision of empowered individuals and vibrant communities. The man in Whitehall never knew best; the woman in the WRVS and local community service usually knew much more”. We are left with something of a contradiction: the Third Sector is increasingly integrated into the delivery of public services, but only in the context of copious red tape, complex Government procurement procedures and contracts and heavy handed bureaucratic forms of accountability.
In this regard Choosing the Common Good will be grist to Cameron’s mill. For him, the bureaucratic state has created expectations that it can not realistically hope to deliver, while it has simultaneously failed to encourage individuals to be empowered and responsible. Therefore, while the state may tackle problems in the short term (for example, lifting people out of poverty through tax credits) it will store up more serious problems for the future (for example, discouraging work). His project has become synonymous with the Big Society and the prospect of a crowd of Burkean little platoons that will take over when the failing state readjusts its ambitions. Here, the state still exists, but it is for “Galvanising, catalysing, prompting, encouraging and agitating for community engagement and social renewal. It must help families, individuals, charities and communities come together to solve problems. We must use the state to remake society”.[2] This is not dissimilar to Blair’s concept of an ‘enabling state’.
Here is another contradiction. If the state has proved itself incompetent in so many regards, then how will it be competent to create civil society or generate social capital? By definition, civil society is organic – it grows and evolves. It isn’t implemented or legislated and, in fact it is ‘not beholden to government’. For the state to do what Cameron wants it to do, or what Blair wanted it to do, it must develop an entirely new competency. It must expand its power in order to contract it.
The Catholic vision of civil society is therefore subtly different from the Conservative vision. One is of the state reduced, and civil society expanded to meet public need. The other is of an active state, committed to ensuring that no-one is left at zero in the multiplication sum of the common good, but where the civil society undergirds, overarches and permeates, playing a part but a part that is of a very different order. We need a more mature conversation about how these ‘estates’ interrelate, otherwise the longstanding and ultimately damaging over-expectation about what the state is capable of will be followed by an equally unhelpful understanding of civil society.
[1] The Times, 3 May 1988
[2] The Big Society, 10 November 2009
Paul Bickley is Senior Researcher at Theos.
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