Relativism threatens democracy (Vatican).

Catholic Insight, June, 2000

At a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on February 24, 2000, the Holy Father quoted a dictum from the encyclical Populorum progressio (Pope Paul VI, 1963, #39, 8), to the effect that "all social action involves a doctrine." The Church's function, he said, is to enunciate the basic ethical principles governing the functions of society.

Then he quickly turned to a serious question facing democracy--the demand that it welcome all values or none, based on the notion that to give precedence to one set of principles is undemocratic. There is a tendency, he said, to see intellectual relativism as the necessary corollary of democratic life.

In such a view, he pointed out, truth is determined by the majority, and varies in accordance with...

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