What Happens After Democracy Collapses? The Catholic Perspective

Today, we're diving into a really interesting facet of Catholic social teaching, which is about how governments work.

What's interesting about this is it's not quite as black and white in Catholic social teaching as other things are.

For example, we know black and white that abortion is not okay.

We know black and white that the poor must be treated with dignity and respect.

But the exact way that a government ought to work isn't something that is quite so black and white, except for some critical boundaries.

The Catholic Church emphasizes that it's so important for governments to protect the common good, to make sure that the most vulnerable of us are protected and given the dignity and the care that we deserve, just because of our equal status as equally human.

However, the church doesn't necessarily say, "Yes, having a king is always right.

No, having a democracy is always bad." But like I said, she gives frameworks for how different forms of government ought to operate.

What I find really interesting is this overlap between Catholic teaching on how governments can work and things that the ancient Greek philosopher Plato was literally saying before Jesus was even alive.

About 400 years before Jesus was alive, to be exact.

If you aren't familiar, Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher.

He lived in classical Athens, Greece, and he's known to be one of the foundational thinkers of the Western philosophical tradition.

We have Confucius in the East, we have Plato and Socrates here in the West.

He had a lot to say about philosophy, of course.

He also had a lot to say about governments and how governments ought to work, and he cataloged these ideas in a really long work called The Republic.

What's funny about The Republic, though, is that it's technically a work of fiction.

So like I said, the name character's named Socrates, and yes, it is confusing 'cause there was a real life guy named Socrates, and there's this character named Socrates, and they're not supposed to be the same person.

[laughs] And to be extra precise, we would call this a Socratic dialogue.

So it's not really so much a work that has a really clear plot of beginning, middle, and end, conflict, and resolution.

It's discussions between this main character of Socrates and various people in Athens.

And like I said, he has a lot to say about different political philosophies here, including things that both align and don't align with Catholic Church teaching.

One critical point of agreement, though, is that the government should exist to serve the common good, not the good of just a few, but the good of everyone.

Where Plato gets really creative is in what that could actually look like.

For example, the whole thing ends with him saying that he feels like the very best sense of government that could exist is what he calls a city state Kallipolis.

That's his utopia, and it's not ruled by a democracy.