Anthony Egan speaks to Father Peter-John Pearson of the Catholic parliamentary liaison office.
Amid apparent tensions between church and state over a number of moral and political issues, there is sustained and reasoned dialogue. At the heart of this little-known and unsung process there is the Catholic parliamentary liaison office (CPLO) of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference, and central to this is Father Peter-John Pearson.
Trained as a lawyer before entering the seminary, Pearson was ordained in 1987. His ministry on the Cape Flats brought him into the ambit of both Catholic Justice and Peace efforts and wider community organisations during the dying days of apartheid and the transition to democracy in 1994.
When the decision was made to set up the CPLO, he was the obvious choice to lead it.
How did the CPLO come about?
A: Well, even before the transition, many of the bishops realised that the church would need some kind of organ for engagement with the new government. A few of them were German and had had experience of the Catholic Bureau that was set up in post-war Germany, as well as similar groups working with the European Union. So, in a sense, the idea of the CPLO was nothing new to the church. Then there was the experience of justice and peace (J&P) work during the struggle to draw on. Our J&P commissions were deeply involved in exposing apartheid injustice and calling for democratic change. With democracy we needed to realign ourselves, to be a voice for justice in a new situation.
In addition we were driven on by the sense that South Africa is a people’s Parliament, one that is open to the people and ready to dialogue with the people over policy. Since the church had been deeply involved in the struggle against apartheid, it was essential that we continued to be part of the democratic process.
What does the CPLO bring to Parliament?
We bring to parliamentary debate the insights of Catholic Social Thought (CST), a series of evolving moral values about politics, the economy, justice and so forth that offer general principles that can guide specific policy-making. As you know, Catholic moral theology is heavily influenced by ideas like natural law — principles rooted in human reasoning and the observation of the world. This helps when you are talking to people of different faiths, or none for that matter.
How did Parliament take to this engagement?
They were generally welcoming. Some MPs were openly asking for this engagement, particularly in helping to formulate policy. Given the credibility we [the church] had in the struggle, our engagement with Parliament was seen as part of a continuing process of what might be called “critical solidarity”. For us it was also about keeping open the “public space”, the space where civil society can engage with government.
So how does the CPLO keep up this engagement, this “critical solidarity”?
There are a number of ways. The first is that we make interventions in parliamentary committees set up to develop policy and legislation. Drawing on the rich tradition of Catholic Social Thought — themes such as human dignity, economic justice, particularly for the poorest of the poor, subsidiarity (the principle that wherever possible power should be devolved rather than centralised: interviewer) and human rights — we sit down with the committees and present our perspectives on possible legislation. We’ve been involved with committees on economic issues, refugees and forced migration, human development and human trafficking, to name just a few.
And do the committees listen?
Generally, yes. We’ve found that they are open to what we say — even when they may disagree with us on some things. A sign of this has been that at times we’ve read some comments and phrases in the draft Bills that have come out of the committees.
Are there other ways in which you engage?
Well, another thing we do is set up what we call Round Tables. Here we bring together a range of people — government, civil society, experts and people from the wider religious sector — to examine important issues. Sometimes this might be around a new proposed piece of legislation or around something we think needs thought with a view to future legislation. We find that the best way to do this is to have these Round Tables by invitation, based upon the particular expertise or role in public life our guests have.
… To prevent them being hijacked by “single issue” types?
Ja, but more than that. When we have a Round Table we want participants who have done their homework and thought through the issue carefully, so that we can get some productive and useful ideas on the table.
So the CPLO is really about exchanging ideas?
Precisely. And to do this we also produce a range of publications. We publish briefing papers on public policy matters — sometimes the fruits of our Round Tables, often the result of the work of our researchers. We also produce brief responses, based on CST, to new legislation or current events, like the annual budget. Sometimes we do this in collaboration with our colleagues at the South African Council of Churches (SACC) or the Dutch Reformed and Anglican Church liaison offices.
So the CPLO works ecumenically?
Yes. We work with our colleagues from SACC, the Anglican Church and the Dutch Reformed Church. There’s also a Muslim group that is setting up a liaison office and we work with them too.
Is there a pastoral dimension to your work?
With the MPs?
Yes.
Very limited, I suppose. We are not chiefly a chaplaincy, nor are we a lobby in the strict sense of the word. Inevitably there are times when individual MPs may come to us with pastoral questions and for spiritual guidance. We have taken part in various services in Parliament. But it’s not our focus, let alone our raison d’être. As you know, some MPs recently expressed an interest in having some kind of spiritual input during Lent, which the Jesuit Institute took up. That came from the MPs, not us.
How does this fit into the wider Catholic Church set-up?
A: We are a part of the church, first and foremost. We were set up by the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) after all, and report back to it all the time. You may or may not know that the SACBC has a range of “desks” that engage with various parts of society — so you have justice and peace, the Aids Desk, the Catholic Institute for Education, the desk for migrants and refugees etc. We tell them what’s happening in Parliament and they feed us information about what’s happening on the ground in various sectors, and their concerns, which we take back to the MPs.
How successful have you been?
It’s a question of how you measure success. It’s not primarily/narrowly a matter of how far Parliament follows the Catholic “line” on matters. That is not our purpose. Nor should it be in a secular, pluralist society — Vatican II’s statement on religious freedom is clear on that and more recently Pope Benedict XVI has made the same point in his first encyclical. While we have had a few successes in having a few of our ideas taken up into legislation, I think our greatest success has been the way in which we have been able to engage with MPs. We have demonstrated that there is space for intelligent and constructive dialogue between politics and the religious sector, one that can be intellectually rigorous and not religiously sectarian. We’ve taken the insights of CST — including the recent encyclical of Pope Benedict, Caritas in Veritate — and shown how these ideas have something to say to politics today.
I hope that in the process we’ve been able to build up trust, good faith you may say, between ourselves and the parliamentarians. One hopes that our relationship with them has helped them see the value of theology — faith seeking understanding [the definition of the theologian Anselm of Canterbury: interviewer] — in public life. As you know there is a growing interest in theology and politics today, even among secular scholars. By bringing in this dimension to the debate in a reasoned way, hopefully we have been of help to them.
And for society as a whole?
Well, I hope we have contributed to keeping open the public space, a space that is essential to growing a healthy democracy.
Anthony Egan, SJ, is a Jesuit priest currently based at the Jesuit Institute South Africa in Johannesburg.