G.K. Chesterton was once invited to give an after-dinner speech, but as he stood up to begin, his host passed him a discreet message, asking that he “avoid religion and politics.” He told his hearers what had just happened, then remarked that as far as he was aware, there are no other subjects; and then he promptly sat down again. He had a point. These two topics treat, respectively, of man’s eternal and his temporal life, and we have no third life to live.
It’s not surprising, then, that the relation of politics and religion is one of perennial interest. In recent years, the question of the attitude that laws, or governments, should adopt toward religion has again been keenly, even heatedly, debated, not least in Catholic circles. What are the different attitudes that earthly societies may take toward divine truth? We may summarise them under three headings: Opposition, Neutrality, and Welcome.
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