Does God want us to be engaged in politics?

[anhphan]

I’m not interested in politics and ignorant of it, of which I wonder if I commit a sin. And what do I do to raise awareness of politics? There is too much information on the Internet and I don’t know what is true or false.

 

[YourNameHere]

I believe God wants us engaged in every part of life, politics included.
It is up to us to approach politics, like everything else in life, is a Jesus Christ-like manner…strong, but civil.
We know what is the correct thing to do. But knowing what is correct and doing what is correct, that is the challenge for all of us.
It is not what we want in life. It is what God wants and what God wants for us.

 

[LittleFlower378]

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20021124_politica_en.html

 

[Genesis315]

In general, we should be a leaven in all aspects of the world, permeating it with the spirit of Christ. All individuals and societies are bound to obey Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords, and it is specifically the job of us lay people to make it so (primarily through evangelization and how we exercise any power, influence, or authority we might have).

From the CCC:

898 "By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will. . . . It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be effected and grow according to Christ and may be to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer."431

899 The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church:

From Vatican II:

Decree on Laity

The apostolate in the social milieu, that is, the effort to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws, and structures of the community in which one lives, is so much the duty and responsibility of the laity that it can never be performed properly by others.

Pastoral Constitution

Laymen should also know that it is generally the function of their well-formed Christian conscience to see that the divine law is inscribed in the life of the earthly city;

 

[Hodos]

Great question. My thought goes like this: Christ called us to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Paul says that the authorities are ministers of God, and servants of God. We are to pay to all what is owed to them, and to owe no one anything. Peter says that we are to be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, that we are called to do good, and to live as servants of God.

All that being said, when these things were written the normal government structure of the day was a monarchy or dictatorial republic. We now live in a republican government wherein the authority of the government supposedly rests with the people. If that is the case, that the people are the ultimate authority from whom our government derives its power to dispense justice in the land, then yes, we are duty-bound to be involved to at least some degree in politics and to ensure that our government officials who derive their power to legislate and execute justice do so in accordance with God’s will. How you do that is for you to figure out, but I think that since this office has been bestowed upon us by our government structure, then we have an obligation to God and our neighbor to be actively involved in politics.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

As the Catechism teaches in its Part 3, Section 1, Chapter 2 sections on “The Human Communion” and “The Person in Society”, God expects us to participate in society as responsible citizens striving for the common good. There can be different ways of doing this. If we look at the examples of the saints, we see different ways to go about this.

We have the example of St. Thomas More, who went into politics and ended up defending the Church against a political ruler. There were also a number of bishops who advocated for the Church in political arenas, or pushed political leaders to help the poor or grant more righs/ less burdens/ less taxation for their flock.

We have various saints and martyrs who spoke out against politicians who were not acting according to Christian teaching. Sometimes they were martyred, sometimes they were actually able to convert the politician.

We have a number of saints who just focused on helping people who were sometimes caught up in political regimes, such as ransoming Christians captured in war, helping to restore social order after the French Revolution, helping to bring the sacraments to people or to hide priests when the Church was outlawed by some political regime (which has happened a number of times).

We have other saints who became hermits and fled the world to either pray on their own, or create better communities away from politics.

All these people were somehow “involved in politics” but in a different way.

At minimum we should be responsibly voting for candidates who we think will best promote Christian values, and we should also do things on our own to improve society, whether that’s donate to charities or sign petitions or speak out on social justice issues, etc.

If you mean "does God expect us to go join some political party, go to rallies, be active in the party, march around, go to a lot of meetings etc. " then the answer is no, only if you feel called to get that involved. We don’t all have to do that.

And in some cases, a person getting too involved in politics can actually be a distraction from God, like if they get so caught up in who wins an election that they sin, perhaps by becoming violent or angry or hateful towards the other side, or by ignoring all the other things we’re supposed to do like pray, worship and spend family time because they’re too busy having political arguments on the Internet.

 

[LateranBasilica]

Catholic means universal.
Politics is region and country specific.
Jesus gave a sermon where He gave us the Beatitudes.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus speaks of hunger and thirst for righteousness.
And for standing up for Jesus even when persecuted