Leo XIV now in Rome. From now on analyses can begin that will project the consequences of his trip to Spain. In this image-oriented society we will try to immortalize gestures, messages and moments to understand, in the judgment of some, a historic visit. Each person will be left with what has touched their soul, an inner flutter upon contemplating a simple man, but with determination and clarity that is bomb-proof. At the risk of being mistaken, I will choose two: the speech to Congress and that moment when the pope speaks with the pilot of the F-18 that escorted him to Barcelona. They are intimately intertwined. Let me explain. One can see the pope observing with the gaze of a child, with admiration and innocence, the infinite horizon of the sky. In a similar way, his speech to the Congress of Deputies has opened up an entire horizon on one of the most important issues within a democracy: the relationship between citizenship, religion and democracy. In 2011, Agustín Domingo, professor of Moral and Political Philosophy, published a book titled Active Citizenship and Religion. In the introduction he situated the debate: “The relationships between citizenship and religion are a structural problem in contemporary debate about the meaning, scope and limits of globalization”.
After the pope’s speech we question ourselves whether it is legitimate for a religious leader to speak in the house of national sovereignty when we are a non-denominational State, article 16 of the Spanish Constitution. Therefore, precise distinctions are required in order to understand, as Domingo Moratalla expresses, what we have before us with analysis of a certain maturity of judgment. A secular State is organized without counting on religious denominations because they are a private matter and, therefore, cannot participate in public and positive governance. On the other hand, a denominational State is one in which a specific religion is officially or formally recognized as its own or state religion in its legislation and Constitution.
Now then, a non-denominational State is one that does not identify with any particular denomination, but does not disregard the importance and value of religions for the management of public affairs. The virtue of this model is that it embraces what Habermas, the European enlightened and progressive thinker par excellence, describes as pre-political principles, that is, the assumptions that are not the fruit of democratic deliberation and decision, but rather precede it and make it possible. In other words, Habermas recognizes the incomplete character of democratic reason because it requires spiritual conditions to feed and nourish itself that it does not generate by itself.
In the public dialogue he maintained with Joseph Ratzinger at the Catholic Academy of Bavaria on January 19, 2004, he comes to say that the “motivation for the participation of citizens in an education of public opinion and will is fed in large measure by ethical ideals and cultural aspects of life”. Our non-denominational State has the necessary means to gather the richness of the principles that sustain religious denominations. Democracy needs such energies to constitute an active citizenship committed to justice and to the safeguarding of the dignity of every person. And faith needs reason, as Benedict XVI would say, to heal its radicalisms and excesses. Political life does not live by legality and law alone. Moreover, one of the reasons for political corruption is because principles and truth have been cast to the winds. We have more than enough chest-beating and cries to heaven and we lack analysis and public debate on what is emerging among us and we deny due to prejudices and superficial analysis.
I conclude with Habermas: “Secularized citizens cannot deny religious concepts their potential for truth on principle, nor can they deny their believing fellow citizens their right to make contributions in religious language to public discussions”. Leo XIV’s triumph is that he has set us to thinking and debating, making possible a dialectic of secularization in context and in situation, a task nearly impossible in times when the criminalization of the opponent has become a natural element of our cultural, political and social landscape. Welcome.
José Miguel Martínez Castelló
Doctor of Philosophy and high school teacher at PJO
Religión Digital