In 2010, Benedict XVI gave an address at Westminster Hall on what he called “the real challenge for democracy”. He told the assembled political leaders: “If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident.”
Benedict’s point was that moral relativism cannot sustain a healthy politics. Time and again, he has been proved right. Western societies are reluctant to discuss objective morality – or objective truth, with which morality is inextricably linked. But unless we can find common ground in some objective principles, then we are left open to manipulation by ideologues, who, whether they are scientists, political campaigners or journalists, will all try to insist that they are the real source of objectivity.
