"If people really believe something..."

Archbishop Chaput agrees with Rick Warren about the absurdity of attempting to separate faith from politics:

In the name of being good citizens, a lot of Catholics have bought into a very mistaken idea of the "separation of Church and state." American Catholics have always supported the principle of keeping religious and civil authority distinct.

Nobody wants a theocracy, and much of the media hand-wringing about the specter of "Christian fundamentalism" is really just a particularly offensive scare tactic. The Church doesn’t presume to run the state. We also don’t want the state interfering with our religious beliefs and practices - which, candidly, is a much bigger problem today.

Separating Church and state does not mean separating faith and political issues. Real pluralism requires a healthy conflict of ideas. In fact, the best way to kill a democracy is for people to remove their religious and moral convictions from their political decision-making. If people really believe something, they’ll always act on it as a matter of conscience. Otherwise they’re just lying to themselves. So the idea of forcing religion out of public policy debates is not only unwise, it’s anti-democratic.

First Things » Blog Archive » Nobody wants a theocracy.