Carlos Soler, professor of Church-State relations PHOTO: Manuel Castells

Joseph Ratzinger has treated with breadth and depth questions concerning the relationship between Faith and Politics, although his contributions in this field are scattered throughout his work and it is not easy to bring them together.

Professor Carlos Soler, professor of Church-State relations at School of Canon Law, stressed that Ratzinger's vision of the relationship between Faith and Reason has a decisive influence on his vision of the relationship between Faith and Politics and between Church and State. Ratzinger affirms, with many others, that Christ introduced the separation between the political and the religious in a world in which the two spheres were united and confused. This separation was a revolutionary contribution at the time, and a seed of freedom; it is part of the essence of Christianity.

It is also part of the essence of Christianity that the Church should know how to remain faithful to her mission statement as her master knew how to remain faithful to his; this mission statement is not political, but religious, even if it has consequences on the political level. There are no fixed rules for this fidelity: the Church will always have the temptation to deviate, and the financial aid of the Holy Spirit to be faithful; this fidelity translates into a difficult balance that must be reinvented at each new status; for this we do not lack a guide: we have the fundamental testimonies of the faith, the permanent orientations found in the Word of God.