VATICAN (CNS): “Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others. In this craven exchange of charges and countercharges, debate degenerates into a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation,” Pope Francis writes in his new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship.
“Today, in many countries, hyperbole, extremism and polarisation have become political tools,” the pope says.
“Employing a strategy of ridicule, suspicion and relentless criticism, in a variety of ways, one denies the right of others to exist or to have an opinion,” he added.
The “social aggression” often found on social media has spilled over into mainstream political discourse, the pope notes. “Things that until a few years ago could not be said by anyone without risking the loss of universal respect can now be said with impunity and in the crudest of terms, even by some political figures.”
Pope Francis has particularly harsh words for politicians who have “fomented and exploited” fear over immigration, ignoring the fact that migrants and refugees “possess the same intrinsic dignity as any person.”
The pope writes, “No one will ever openly deny that they are human beings, yet in practice, by our decisions and the way we treat them, we can show that we consider them less worthy, less important, less human. For Christians, this way of thinking and acting is unacceptable, since it sets certain political preferences above deep convictions of our faith: the inalienable dignity of each human person regardless of origin, race or religion.”
Pope Francis often that he is not calling for open borders and unregulated migration and he again insists on the right of people not to be forced to migrate.
The pope sad that international aid to help people overcome extreme poverty in their homelands is essential, but if such development takes too long, people do have the right to migrate to ensure the good of their families.
“Certain populist political regimes, as well as certain liberal economic approaches, maintain that an influx of migrants is to be prevented at all costs,” he writes. “One fails to realise that behind such statements, abstract and hard to support, great numbers of lives are at stake.”
He said the answer cannot be to simply bow out of political engagement. Instead, they must act at a local level to build relationships of trust and assistance and support politicians and political platforms that promote the common good.
“Whereas individuals can help others in need, when they join together in initiating social processes of fraternity and justice for all, they enter the ‘field of charity at its most vast, namely political charity,’” he said.
