Rainbow in the Morning

12 March 2010

Somerset priest Father Bob Rainbow is a regular contributor of a Thought for the Day on 10Radio, the local community radio station for Wiveliscombe and its nine neighbouring villages.
 
Father Bob Rainbow of St John Fisher, Wellington and St Richard’s, Wiveliscombe, is pictured making his contribution to ‘Breakfast with Nigel and Lavinia’ in our image gallery on the right. 

You can read Father Bob’s recent thought below.

Good morning!

We still haven’t heard when the general election is to be held, but that hasn’t stopped the campaigning beginning, and we may be well advised to give some thought to how each of us will use our vote.

Now there is a tendency to always vote for what each of us might call “my” party, but without wishing to give the slightest bias to any of the main political parties, I would like to see if we could be a bit more objective than just voting out of habit!   I appreciate the majority of listeners will not be members of my church, nor even necessarily sympathetic to its views.  But the Catholic bishops of England and Wales have just issued a timely document called ‘Choosing the Common Good’, which I really feel offers some general points from which we could all profit.

And its basis is that the most important thing to use our vote to support, is what the document calls “the Common Good”.  That means those policies and practises that will best help all people to flourish.  Is that obvious?  Well I do fear most people don’t vote for such policies, but for what will be “best for me” or “best for my company” or “best for my country!”

The bishops’ document, based on established Catholic social teaching, cuts right through this.  It points out how narrow self-interest caused the banking crisis; caused the MP’s expenses scandals and leaves poor people and poor countries poor.  Indeed Pope Benedict, in his recent Encyclical letter, ‘Caritas in Veritate’ (which means ‘Charity in Truth’) emphasises that the accountant’s “bottom line” is not enough.  People work because they have some love for the job they do, and that must be part of the equation, too.

The bishops’ document continues on this higher level.  It says “that every human person is a spiritual being with instincts for love and truth, and aspirations for happiness” and developments must always include this spiritual growth.  Without it there is little trust in society, which therefore teeters on the verge of collapse.  But of course, even my own Catholic Church is still struggling after too many breakdowns of trust in Britain and Ireland in recent decades.

The document says leaders need to do more than just avoid breaking rules.  They need a moral character and behaviour which it calls the practise of virtue.  “Virtue” shapes us as people so we act well not through an expansion of regulation, but because of who we are– people of prudence; of courage; of justice and of a certain temperance so that our appetites for the goods of this world are moderated.  It is the opposite of consumerism and the uninhibited pursuit of pleasure.

The principle of the “common good” requires the essential dignity of every life to be equally upheld, whether young or old, friend or stranger; together with the environment in which they live.  The document goes on to consider many areas of social life that these principles need to be applied to, but I do not have time to enlarge here.  Suffice it to say that no part of the fabric of our society is unaffected by the “common good”.

When politics can accept that character and moral standards are important in public life, then it can truly be at the service of the “common good,” and will lift us above self-interest into caring for our neighbours.  When such trust and care become reciprocal, we truly become “community” again, and all find the personal support they need.

In the Bible, the Book of Proverbs says “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  Let’s study the priorities of the parties and candidates that will be set before us when the election comes, and have the vision to cast our vote for “the common good”!