Anglicanism and Islam were both founded by men who wielded total power. Under Henry VIII, politics swallowed religion. Under Muhammad, religion swallowed politics. Consequently, Anglicans struggle to defend their religious identity against a political agenda and Muslims struggle to defend their political rights against a religious agenda. Roman Catholics believe that the boundary between religion and politics is no less essential than the bridge.

In his first encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI wrote: “The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice. She has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice ... cannot prevail and prosper.”

The State has sovereign authority in the temporal sphere. The Church has sovereign authority in the spiritual sphere. The Church, as a body, realises that she must not identify herself with a political party, or devote herself to any political programme. Christianity cannot be an ideology. But while Church and State are autonomous, they remain interconnected because the most fundamental influence shaping every human culture is its understanding of God.

Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine. Thus in His person, Christ carries the absolute truth about God and Man. The Church's mission is to proclaim Christ, and non-Catholics are mistaken if they think the Church will be silent about intrinsically related issues. Thus the Church must testify on abortion, which is the destruction of a person made in the image of God. And on the sanctity of marriage the Church must also testify, for marriage is an image of the Holy Trinity. On international relations, slavery, war, the Church must testify, as all violence is a lie about Man, the antithesis of truth and of love.

So on what grounds have spiritual Luddites objected to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor's invitation in December last year to some 60 MPs to discuss the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill? And why has the Bishop of Lancaster, the Right Rev Patrick O'Donoghue, been lambasted for ensuring that in his diocese Catholic schools will teach Catholic beliefs? Europe is prey to the same folly. Before its recent re-election, the Spanish Government protested against the right of Catholics to hold rallies. And in January, professors and students of La Sapienza University in Rome blocked the Pope from delivering a speech.

Yet atheists and believers do not have to be locked in destructive political combat. Politicians listen to scientists, to the military, even to economists. If politics is to play its role in overcoming evil, then it must also listen to the Church. For 2,000 years the Church has grown as an “expert in humanity”, notably thanks to her patient listening in the confessional, in her apostolate with the sick and the poor, and in her experience of persecution. Therefore if politics would truly serve Man, and is to be an agent in reaching the common good, then politics has to open its ears to the Church.

This is not a lost cause. We can look to someone with vast political experience: Tony Blair. I do not refer to his personal choice to become a Catholic, about which too much has been said. But his decision to establish a Judaeo-Christian-Islamic foundation for dialogue is a public project about which too little has been said. Peace in the Holy Land is one of the greatest prizes held out to mankind. He understands that the supreme goods in the world, such as peace, cannot be achieved by politics alone, nor by religion alone, but only through a fruitful collaboration of both.

— James Mawdsley is author of The Heart Must Break: the Fight for Democracy and Truth in Burma and edits www.eccematertua.blogspot.com