Zaia’s secularism

In a recent interview with La Repubblica, Luca Zaia, President of the Veneto Regional Council, stated – in reference to the passing of the law on medically assisted suicide – that “the state must be secular”. Anyone, on either side of the Tiber, in diocesan curias or town halls, would today endorse this indisputable assertion. But what notion of ‘secularism’ do the sparse words gathered by the journalist reveal? It seems that Zaia is not referring solely to the indispensable separation between state and Church that characterises the modern, liberal conception of a democratic state, enshrining the autonomy of the political sphere from the ecclesiastical one – a heritage of civilisation acquired and recognised by the Church. Confessionalism and religious intolerance no longer have a place in a historically and culturally pluralistic society such as ours.

The interviewee seems to go a step further when he argues that ‘Catholics in institutions must concern themselves not with souls, but with bodies’. Here, the dividing line no longer runs along the Tiber, but splits the person – the foundation of society and all its expressions, right down to politics – in their ontological structure, which is unitary (Corpore et anima unus, says the Second Vatican Council; Gaudium et spes, 14) and in the experience each of us has of our own life, in which what we are, think and do is an expression, at the same time, of our physicality and our spirituality. Can such a marked and unrealistic anthropological dualism serve as the guiding principle of a political and administrative programme that aims to address, at regional level, sensitive and complex issues concerning people’s everyday lives, illness and suffering (which is not merely pain perceived through the body’s peripheral and central nervous systems), forms of care (for the body, mind and soul) and the experiences of those who care for the sick (healthcare staff, relatives, friends and volunteers)?

Secularism, in keeping the spheres of state and regional institutions separate from those that are an expression of the ecclesial life of believers, does not require nor presuppose an impossible division of responsibilities in serving the individual and society based on a mutual separation between the health of the body and that of the soul, between medicine and pastoral care, between science and faith, and between politics and morality – a division that risks sliding into opposition, as Zaia’s words suggest: “The difference between me and a priest is that I have to enforce the law, and the priest does not.”

On closer inspection, everyone – believers and non-believers, laypeople and clergy, government officials, priests and bishops – must come to terms with the law, which is twofold: human law (positive law) and divine law (eternal law). Secularism is the autonomy of the civil and political sphere from the religious and ecclesiastical spheres, but not from the ethical sphere, to which the legal sphere is linked. It is rational ethics, and not moral theology, that cannot be expunged from the thoughts and actions of the men and women who serve society through public office, whatever their beliefs or agnosticism.

In the case of the approval of a new regional law, the reference to the ‘application of the law’ is unfortunate. For Zaia and the Veneto regional councillors, the aim was to incorporate the Constitutional Court’s rulings on medically assisted suicide and, on that basis, to draft a law (with various decision-making and organisational options left open by the Constitutional Court), rather than to issue an implementing decree mandating the application of a national law already in force – which does not currently exist.

Last but not least is the concept of ‘freedom of conscience’ in politics expressed by the former governor of Veneto, which could be summarised as the idea that every member of parliament or councillor is free to vote as they see fit in a secret ballot. It should not be forgotten, however, that the prerequisite for this is the ‘conscience of freedom’ to always choose the good and reject the evil, which secularism is called upon to safeguard and promote. Secularism is not indifference, but an open and welcoming space for the right and duty of Catholic citizens – as well as all other citizens – to contribute to the common good and to promote and defend it by lawful means, thereby serving social life, justice, freedom, respect for life and other human rights.