P. George Elsbett, L.C., director of the John Paul II Center in Vienna (Austria), recalls and explains the Christian principles in the face of the tension that arises between religion and politics.

Recently, the state parliaments of Germany were elected in Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg, and Austria will elect its National Council this year. The debates, sometimes very emotional, and the opposing viewpoints are an opportunity for P. George Elsbett, L.C., director of the John Paul II Center in Vienna (Austria), to recall and explain the Christian principles amid the tension that arises between religion and politics.

Once again, elections are around the corner in Austria. But let’s start from the beginning. Karl Marx believed that religion was the opium of the people; that it lulled us to sleep, made us accept power and oppression structures; that it blinded us and made us weak in our true mission and destiny to break with these structures or destroy them. A typically neo-Gnostic phenomenon.

The dominant religion that has replaced Christianity in the Western world is neo-Gnostic in its basic orientation. This is the theme of the series of lectures “New gods, old questions” at the John Paul II Center.

The gnosis of our days is not a firmly forged belief, but rather a collection of different schools of thought, which share a basic narrative that is of a religious nature, dogmatically defended and unquestioned, even if presented as scientific and critical. And since what is denied is precisely the basic dogmatic religious structure, there is no critical self-examination to protect against certain fanaticism or ideological severity.

«Gnosis can very well undermine the Christian faith, even camouflage itself in Christian vocabulary and external manifestations. We are all shaped by the world we live in, which no longer thinks Christianly, but Gnostically».

Ancient Gnosis, for example, the more than 20 Gnostic sects cataloged by St. Irenaeus of Lyon in his books “Against Heresies” in the 2nd century, saw the material world as the cause of all evil. We must get out of there, from the motto: body bad, mind good. The neo-Gnostic of our time does not see the material world as the fundamental problem, but rather the nature of the world and the different structures of power—whether sociological, political, economic, or psychological—must be destroyed. Thus, the imbalance of the world definitely has nothing to do with me, with my participation in worldly affairs.

P. George Elsbett, L.C., director of the John Paul II Center in Vienna (Austria).

The Gnosis of then and now is, in essence, a denial of sin and guilt for the offense committed. It sees no intrinsic limit in people that would stand in the way of constant progress. It assumes that progress we see in technology, of course, will also occur in morality, politics, sociology, etc. Gnosis is also atheistic in essence because it is a religion of self-redemption and, disguised as Christian, does not always deny heaven, but directs all its power toward this world. With it, we solve ALL the problems of humanity and even, as in some forms of transhumanism, the “problem” of mortality. That is why it also has strong utopian tendencies.

Gnosis can very well undermine the Christian faith, even camouflage itself in Christian vocabulary and external manifestations. We are all shaped by the world we live in, which no longer thinks Christianly, but Gnostically.

For example, we can simply assume that we should always improve. And we feel shocked, discouraged, and frustrated when that doesn’t happen. We can have utopian expectations about ourselves, our children, or our family, and be completely anguished because we did the same thing again five minutes after our last confession.

And in the field of politics, the Christian affected by Gnosis can see it as the panacea. As explained by Mons. James P. Shea in   “The religion of the day”  , this is a necessary consequence of Gnosis, since according to it salvation consists precisely in the transformation of external power structures. Politics then

“We must let the Gospel permeate the political preferences instead of the political preferences permeating the Gospel”

The Christian, on the other hand, is very committed to the social improvement of our world and to political causes. The Christian will fight for a society where justice and love prevail. But what Christians will not do, or should not do, as Monsignor Shea reminds us, is “to place their hope in repairing the world solely through human means” or in changing the world as it is through a “better replacement of a working model”. The Christian must be very careful with this. He must know that moral progress can also very quickly turn into regression (for example, last century).

The Christian knows that politics cannot reach the root of human evil, that the sources of salvation from these evils must be sought in completely different spheres, and that ultimately, politics will neither bring us decadence nor salvation. He is aware that “the final destiny of the visible world depends on much higher invisible realities.”

When religion is fermented by politics, it becomes toxic. “Marx said that religion is the opium of the people, I say that politics is heroin for religion” (Mons. Fulton Sheen). An example is the United States. The early Church, for example, had great clarity on four issues:

• No abortion, no euthanasia.
• Sex belongs to a relationship between a man and a woman within marriage.
• Equality for all people, regardless of race or whether they are men or women.
• The preferential option to care for the poor and marginalized.

The first two topics sound very “Republican”. The other two sound much like “Democrats”. And that becomes a real problem in ecclesial communities and in families when members allow themselves to be divided according to political preferences instead of knowing that first they are Christians and brothers and sisters, and only afterward do they belong to a political party; when they let the Gospel permeate their political preferences instead of their political preferences permeating the Gospel.

I will always react very nervously if a political event is announced in our media or if there is the impression that the community is close to one party or another.

I truly hope that among us there are people who are politically active and committed to the common good. As an important sign of the lay faithful aware of their responsibility before the world and of their call to permeate the world with the Spirit of the Gospel. At the same time, I hope that we, as a community, understand that politics, no matter how important, is not the main arena of religious struggle; that our goals as a community are not and do not want to be political at all; that it is good that the salvation we aspire to and long for cannot be expected from politics, but rather from the Lord who truly saves, heals, and redeems us; and that the greatest impact and true turns of history are to be expected and introduced by saints, regardless of whether someone is a street sweeper or a federal chancellor.

This article is a Spanish translation of “Die Politik und der Christ”.

About the John Paul II Institute (IJPII)

The institute is a local ecclesial community under the responsibility of the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ and the apostolic movement Regnum Christi.

The center aims to inspire those distant from faith in Christ, equip them for missionary discipleship, and help other churches do the same: “Forming apostles to transform the world”.

It is about discipleship and mission, as well as structures that enable and support that discipleship and mission, inviting people far from the faith to a path of discipleship and allowing them to do so, so that they become — to use Pope Francis’ words in his fundamental document (Evangelii Gaudium) — “missionary disciples”. By “discipleship” it refers to the effort to implement the good news of Jesus Christ in one’s own life — in 5 areas:

• In relation to God
• In community life
• In ongoing faith formation
• In service to others
• In transmitting the faith

With “missionary discipleship,” one revisits one of Pope Francis’ core ideas: that discipleship is always “missionary” in the sense that the effort to implement the good news in one’s own life always brings with it the “light of the world and salt of the earth,” being a joyful testimony of one’s faith and allowing others to do the same.

To achieve this, we seek to establish our structures as a church so that both discipleship and mission are possible and supported through these structures. Pope Francis does not separate the terms discipleship and mission because sooner or later every disciple also becomes “missionary”. This means that enthusiasm for