| 明報 (發行量 / 接觸人次: 95,578) | 2010-10-26 | |
| A29 | 觀點 | By 彭定康 | 標示關鍵字 | |
| 字數: 1331 字 | ||
| ||
| 教宗的勝利 |
令全世界許多媒體驚奇的是，教宗本篤十六世對英國的訪問取得了顯著的成功。作為一個天主教徒，我受卡梅倫首相之命，監督政府對此行的安排，自然感到高興。 媒體總是變化莫測， 我們此前被告知，最好的情况是英國公眾漠不關心，最壞則是他們將充滿敵意，但從教宗抵達蘇格蘭那一刻起，他就被大批熱情的民眾包圍了，其中有天主教徒也有非天主教徒。 媒體嚴重誤讀公眾情緒 教宗來到愛丁堡會見了女王，又到了格拉斯哥主持了一場露天彌撒，沿途都是大量的人群。從第一天起，媒體就明白自己嚴重誤讀了公眾情緒。 有人認為公眾只對sound bite 有興趣，較長及複雜的東西公眾都不會明白，但教宗和他會見的宗教領袖所傳達的信息，使這說法不攻自破。已故美國政治家Adlai Stevenson 曾說，普通人比所謂的平均水平要高很多。政治家不應居高臨下，應該平等看待選民。 我們已經受夠政治家那些過分簡單的口號了。闡明一個條理清楚、論據充分的道理， 才是獲取長期支持的最好方式。深刻闡明一個理念，不止是對理念的尊重，也是對聽眾的尊重。 本篤教宗就是這麼做的，還有與他對話的英國聖公會坎特伯雷大主教RowanWilliams（威廉斯）。兩人都富有智慧，在回答困難問題時都先深思熟慮。這也導致了威廉斯和媒體的幾次口角。例如，他由於2008 年的一次演講而飽受批評，那次演講中他談論了伊斯蘭教法和英國法律制度的聯繫。演講的內容有趣而且真實，但卻被斷章取義，結果威廉斯受到了不公平的嘲弄。 教宗的主要演講是在西敏寺大廳中，對一群顯要人物發表的，在這座中世紀建築中，發生過一些英國歷史上最戲劇性的事件。就在這裏，死後被奉為聖徒的Thomas More（托馬斯．莫爾）因違抗亨利八世受審。莫爾拒絕承認亨利八世是教會的首領。他的良知讓他不能屈從，他在倫敦塔中被處死刑，為自己的良知而殉道。 聖托馬斯．莫爾被看作是政治家的守護神，可是不是每個政治家都以遵從良心著稱。但莫爾的故事，以及早年英國法律系統在西敏寺大廳中的發展與進步，為本篤教宗的布道——倫理和宗教在公眾生活中的重要性，提供了很好的素材。 教宗：信念理性法制同樣重要 許多世俗主義者認為， 啓蒙運動以來，理性分析已經可以很好的引導統治和決策，良好的社會還有法制保障其實施。但本篤教宗稱，保護文明的存續，信念、理性和法制同樣重要。 歐洲的基礎不止是亞里士多德、理性和古希臘， 也不止是羅馬對法律的重視，還有耶路撒冷和基督教、猶太教和穆斯林。缺乏倫理的理性難以支持文明生存，教宗的故鄉德國1930 年代的事例足以證明這點。 為闡明自己的觀點，教宗提到了國際金融危機部分是由於一些人慾壑難填導致的，這次金融危機引起了是否需要以倫理作為經濟行為基礎的辯論。背信棄義和揮霍無道曾經毁掉西方文明繁榮，我們曾經深惡痛絕，難道如今就忘記了嗎？ 倫理和政策之間的關係的另一個例子，就是富裕國家對全球社會不平等的消極響應，這是對每個有良知和情感的人類的極度侮辱。即使陷入政府開支危機，英國政府仍然堅守諾言，投入0.7%的GDP 致力於貧窮國家的發展。可惜其他國家並非如此，富有的意大利只願以0.15%的GDP 進行海外援助。 本篤教宗在英國乃至世界引起了一場激烈的辯論。在我們的政治體系中，倫理和宗教能夠發揮多大作用？應該發揮多大作用？這是一個核心問題，不止是對歐洲而言。 作者是最後一任香港總督、前歐盟對外事務專員，現在是牛津大學校監Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.www.project-syndicate.org |
A Papal Success
Chris Patten
LONDON – To the surprise of many in the media – at home and abroad – Pope Benedict XVI’s just completed visit to Britain was an outstanding success. As a Roman Catholic and as the person asked by Prime Minister David Cameron to supervise government arrangements for the visit, I was naturally delighted. But, I was also pleased from the point of view of a citizen, with a strong dislike of the herd mentality.
I drove in the papal cavalcade along the motorway from Edinburgh, where Benedict met Queen Elizabeth, to Glasgow, where he celebrated an open-air mass. All along the road were throngs of people. From the first day, the media understood that they had badly misread the public mood. The visit went from incipient disaster to huge success overnight. The public had poked a sharp stick into the eye of metropolitan cynicism and know-all journalism.
The message conveyed by the pope and by the religious leaders with whom he met defied the contemporary assumption that the public cannot understand anything longer or more complicated than a sound bite. The late American politician Adlai Stevenson once said that the average man (or woman) was a great deal better than average. Voters should be treated as equals, and politicians should not talk down to them.
Mind you, this was not enough to win Stevenson the presidency in the 1950’s. “All the intelligent people in the country are supporting you,” he was told. “That’s not enough,” he replied. “In order to win, I need a majority.”
Nevertheless, I think we have suffered too much from politics by simplistic slogans. Making a coherent, well-argued case is surely the best way in the long-term of trying to mobilize consent for any course of action. It dignifies an argument – and those to whom it is addressed – to set it out thoughtfully.
This is what Benedict does, as does his interlocutor in Britain, the head of the Anglican Communion, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. Both are intellectuals and address difficult questions in a quiet, carefully considered way. This has led Williams, in particular, into several run-ins with the media. For example, he was widely criticized for a lecture in 2008 in which he spoke about the relationship between Islamic Sharia law and the British legal system. What he said was both interesting and correct, but it was ripped out of context, and he was unfairly pilloried as a result.
The pope’s main speech was delivered to an audience of the great and the good in Westminster Hall, a medieval building whose use over the centuries has been intimately tied up with some of the greatest dramas in British history. It was here that Thomas More, later canonized, was put on trial for defying his master, King Henry VIII. More would not accept the king’s assertion of supremacy over the church. His conscience would not allow him to bend to Henry’s will. He was executed in the Tower of London, martyred because of his conscience.
St. Thomas More is regarded as the patron saint of politicians, which is rather flattering to many of those over whose spiritual interests he presumably presides. After all, not every politician is widely commended for following his conscience. But the story of More, and the fact that the British legal system in its early years evolved under the high wooden beams of Westminster Hall, gave Benedict a good hook on which to hang a sermon about the importance of ethics and religion in public life.
Many secularists argue that ever since the Enlightenment, reason has been enough to guide governance and policymaking, buttressed by the rule of law if a community is lucky. But Benedict asserted the importance of faith alongside reason and law in safeguarding our civilization.
Europe’s foundations lie not just in Aristotle, reason, and classical Greece, and not just in Rome with its understanding of the importance of the law, but also in Jerusalem and the Abrahamic faith groups – Christian, Jewish, and Muslim. Reason devoid of ethics can prove insufficient to support the survival of civilization, a point that the pope’s own homeland, Germany, discovered in the 1930’s.
To illustrate his argument, Benedict noted that the international financial crash, partly a consequence of insatiable greed, had provoked debate about the need for an ethical basis for economic behavior. Have we forgotten so readily the repugnance with which we discovered the dishonesty and extravagance that helped to wreck our prosperity in the West?
Another example of the relationship between ethics and policy is the response that rich countries have made to global social inequity, a deep moral affront to everyone with even a modicum of conscience and sensibility. In the midst of a gloomy crisis for public spending in Britain, the government has committed itself to sticking to its pledge of spending 0.7% of GDP on development assistance in poor countries. If only others would do the same, like rich Italy, which spends only 0.15% of its GDP on overseas aid.
So Benedict set off a serious debate in Britain and beyond. Where can and should religion and ethics contribute to our political discourse? That is a central issue, and not just for Europe.
Chris Patten, the last British Governor of Hong Kong and a former EU Commissioner for External Affairs, is Chancellor of the University of Oxford.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org
1 則留言:
看到大家都留言，我也來留個言支持!!!加油囉
張貼留言