Joseph Ratzinger was a post-World War II Bavarian who believed in constitutional democracy and the project European integration. In his spiritual testament he expressed his heartfelt gratitude to his homeland. But he never placed his hopes in politics. Nor in the exercise of power, as demonstrated by his Withdrawal to the pontificate.

One of the protagonists of the Council, he joined the historical turn of the Church towards the acceptance of the principles of political liberalism, and explicitly rejected the idea of Christian empire. At the same time, he was at pains to point out the need for pre-political moral foundations for the institutions of freedom, whose roots were - in his view - Christian. Since he regarded politics as the realm of common reason, he rejected all forms of political theology, left-wing or right-wing. He sifted liberation theology of any Marxist element, but also repeatedly recognized the closeness of social democracy to the social doctrine of the Church, and criticized the excesses of capitalism.

In his travels as Pope, he praised the love of religious freedom of the Americans; the institutions of British parliamentarism; the references in German fundamental law to God and dignity as the keystones of social order; the attempts at positive secularism in the French Republic, but also the presence of the cross in so many prominent places in Europe; the vitality of Spanish Christian culture throughout history, in its poets and saints (which he saw as threatened by a peculiar anticlericalism). But all this did not translate into a partisan stance, which did not correspond to him.

It is common, however, in conservative Catholic circles, to appeal to the "non-negotiable principles of Benedict XVI": the sacredness of human life; the nature of the family founded on marriage between man and woman; educational freedom; and the other basic requirements of the common good. These would constitute a golden rule for guiding political action and determining the vote. Certainly these are issues core topic. But I think that the expression is imprecise and should not be used. For several reasons.

The first is that it is not frequent in Ratzinger's work. We find it in an important document of the then Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed by Cardinal Ratzinger: grade on the commitment and conduct of Catholics in political life. Since then, he has used it on very few occasions. The most significant occasion was a speech to the European People's Party, in April 2006. But it is absent in his encyclicals. And also in his great speeches as pontiff on these topics (Westminster, Bundestag...). And, as we shall see, it does not make the essence of his thinking transparent either.

For example, in a paperless address to the bishops of Switzerland in November 2006, he observed that, "In our time, in a certain sense, morality has been divided into two parts. Modern society has 'discovered' and claims another part of morality that has perhaps not been sufficiently proposed on the Church's advertisement in recent decades. These are the great themes of peace, non-violence, justice for all, application for the poor and respect for creation. These are truly great moral themes, which also belong to the tradition of the Church, (even if) the means proposed are often unilateral and not always acceptable". And he concluded: "I believe that we must strive to bring these two parts of morality together again".

I think the " non-negotiableprinciple" twist is confusing. It is quite clear that principles as such are non-negotiable. However, the expression casts a rigid shadow on how to translate it into political action, without attention to circumstances. Benedict himself said to the EPP that "today the following can be highlighted..." (then, tomorrow, perhaps others could be highlighted).

The dosage and sequence of the possible good is a contingent and open question, which implies -explicitly or implicitly- that priorities are negotiated . At times it is convenient to be tiresome; at others it is better to remain silent (it is enough to remember Thomas More). At times, intransigence contra mundum is good and effective; at others, it is necessary to be content with partial improvements (John Paul II considered it licit to vote for abortion laws if they were more restrictive or saved more lives than those in force). Sometimes it is necessary to go straight ahead; at other times it is better to proceed obliquely and even to use trickery, as in the abolition of slavery in England. Tensions between the various strategies are inevitable, including on civility in tone and form. In any case, he acknowledged before the Bundestag in 2011: "Naturally, a politician will seek success, without which he would never have the possibility of effective political action. But " - that's right - "success is subordinate to the criterion of justice."

Benedict would be uncomfortable to see his name invoked as an argument of authority, on subject of speech political . "Christianity," he explained in that same speech, "contrary to other great religions, has never imposed on the State and society a revealed law, a juridical order derived from a revelation. Instead, it has referred to nature and reason as the true sources of law". He will qualify: a reason that is not merely instrumental, capable of recognizing absolute imperatives, capable of God.

He did not intend for ecclesiastical authority to interfere in the political process, which ordinarily proceeds by the principle of majorities, within constitutional norms. But it did point to the need to provide a solid foundation for the moral truths that precede any vote. Those that democratic constitutionalism presupposes and formulates in terms of fundamental human rights.

For Ratzinger, the great contribution of religion is not to provide technical solutions, but to purify and broaden reason, making it sensitive to the truth, and to the people that the culture of each time tends to subtly marginalize. And it does this by providing the "culturalreport " of meeting between biblical faith and Greco-Roman moral and juridical reason, on which Western societies have been built.

Ultimately, as he said in Compostela in 2010, the "contribution (of the Church) is centered on a reality as simple and decisive as this: that God exists and that it is He who has given us life" . For this reason, he also asked non-believers, on some occasions, to "live as if God existed" proposal .

It is up to ordinary Christians to commit themselves to civic life, and to contribute the ever-new sap of Christian roots, as a proposal to the freedom of all, with a logical pluralism in choices and strategies (see the grade cited above). A proposal that is not the imposition of a sectarian morality, but a reminder of the basic demands of the dignity of each person and of living together in peace, freedom and justice, even in pluralistic societies.

They do this today - as Ratzinger prophetically pointed out already at the end of the sixties - as a minority; conscious of their identity and purified by the dispossession of their influence. But not a resigned or closed minority, but a creative minority: in search of new points of meeting and formulas to improve the common life of all.