Why Political Parties Need Catholicism

I am sure I am not the only Catholic, not the only British citizen, who looks at the moral wasteland of the British political scene wondering just how it is that with so much experience under our collective belt, of left, of right, we British are incapable of producing a political party with balanced, compassionate and reasonable policies that uphold natural law and natural justice. I think I am right in saying that at the time of writing, in truth, Christianity has been expunged from the major political parties and it has to be said that it is showing with disastrous results.

You don't have to be a Catholic (but it helps) to have felt bewildered and depressed, 'dismayed', by the electoral choices on display during this election but going by the evidence of my social media feed, like me, many Catholics walked into this election feeling that there was nobody to vote for yet again. Yes, Catholics now operate in a society so paganised that when the "Christian" leader of the Liberal Democrats is questioned about the non-negotiables of same-sex marriage and abortion, he collapses and concedes victory to the secular culture that lauds both. Just how are people to trust someone whose principles can be altered according to the fashions of the age so easily?

For as long as I can remember, the Conservative Party has been marred by its determination to neglect some pretty basic prerequisites for a civilised society. Without wishing to sound utopian, can it really be that difficult to produce a Conservative manifesto that doesn't make it appear that its leadership believe that the most poor and vulnerable members of society can go jump off a bridge? It wasn't difficult for Jeremy Corbyn to claim the moral high ground in an election in which the moral low ground was deliberately occupied by the Conservative Party, unable to shake off the label 'nasty party' because, quite frankly, it is. Even the family values once cherished and protected by the Tories, infested, as it is, by sexual libertines, are now nowhere to be seen. No wonder their political base is disappearing. What is left for Conservatives to vote for? David Cameron, we recall, jettisoned the vestiges of Christianity in the Conservative Party when he introduced same-sex marriage into the United Kingdom. Unable to present itself as a party of traditional morality, all the Conservative Party has left is its indomitable and well-earned reputation for screwing over poor people and protecting rich people's assets.

While in principle the proposals of the rabidly left-wing candidate were fiscally absurd, the Conservative Party's mantra that a government would have to borrow and get into debt in order to achieve these aims overlooks that a well-financed health system and a well-financed education system for a country's citizens are not inherently bad things, but social goods. It is easy to make a Marxist look noble, if you are determined to be seen as uncaring and lacking in human compassion. All the 'unelectable' Jeremy Corbyn, who in a sane world would be teaching Marxist political philosophy in a former polytechnic, had to do was smile his friendly uncle smile, promise the Earth and look like the man of principles that he is, even if those principles are the principles of the man who sells the Socialist Worker outside the train station, a man who thinks the answer to every human problem is the State and for whom the institutions of marriage and the family, the two primary social goods that are the building block of every society, mean nothing.

Some may say that a post-Christian society deserves all it gets, even if what it gets is chaos, yet chaos is the hallmark of the pagan world, a world in which nascent human life can be exterminated legally and no political party will raise even a finger to protest it and a world in which unnatural sexual relationships are celebrated and crowned with the title of 'marriage' and no political party will raise even a whimper of defiance while the Cross is trampled upon by its foes. One British political party needs to embrace that Cross and hold it aloft for all of the United Kingdom to see, even if that political party is roundly defeated, publicly scorned and ridiculed with derision and contempt. At the time of writing, that party is not the Conservative Party, it is not the Labour Party, it is not the Liberal Democrat and it is not UKIP or the liturgically appropriate Green Party either. It may never achieve political success, but at least that party would give Catholics and many others, even if we and they comprise a minority, someone to vote for with conscience clean, knowing that we had voted for a political party that cares about the elderly, the poor, the sick, infirm and homeless, the unborn, marriage and the family. Why should it be so difficult, or impossible, to find that party?