Father Dehon, the Sacred Heart, and Democracy

No matter how far removed their views may be from our own, every time violence silences a voice, it causes deep damage to our democracies. The killing of Charlie Kirk undermines the “right to be heard” of every voice and every word, which are fundamental principles of democratic order. A theological reading of the relationship between devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and democracy could be key to rebuilding fraternal citizenship among people on opposite sides of the political spectrum.

For a university dedicated to the Sacred Heart, such as the Catholic University, reflecting on the current state of democratic order in our societies requires examining the historical period at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. During this time, devotion to the Heart of Jesus served as the basis for a project of neo-Christianity with an anti-modern perspective.

Contributing to the democratic ideal is an essential aspect of doing theology within the Catholic University today, as the constitutional state is perhaps the highest expression of modernity. The Italian Constitution is also the result of an important civil theology, achieved by Catholics who participated in the Constituent Assembly that wrote it as a reading into our society.

This intersection speaks to the transdisciplinary character that should define all disciplines at our university, moving away from the separation of knowledge that fragments skills and produces a sectoral approach to personal and social affairs.

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Of the many possible avenues, we address the relationship between the Sacred Heart and democracy, referencing Fr. Dehon, the founder of the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He exemplifies the tensions and unfulfilled potential of that relationship. We will deal with two aspects. The first, more marginal aspect concerns the evolution of his position on whether the French flag should bear Catholic emblems. The second, more crucial aspect concerns the debate within French democratic Catholicism on the meaning and significance of political democracy.

First, let us address the case of the French flag.[1] In an 1896 article,[2] Dehon argued for affixing “the sign of the Sacred Heart” to the French flag. He did so in the spirit of what we might call Catholic nationalism, in which the presence of the religious symbol of the Sacred Heart brings “divine protection” to the destiny of France that would otherwise be impossible.

In short, for Dehon, the secular and political territory of the nation—symbolically expressed by the French flag—should bear explicit evidence of the Catholic religious symbol. More precisely, he meant the Sacred Heart in line with the project of advancing the social kingdom of Christ, which is a Catholic reconquest of the modern political space. In other words, Catholics can recognize themselves within modern political institutions only by bringing the latter under the protection (and control) of the Catholic Church, which is hierarchically constituted with the Roman pontiff at its head.

This dynamic is a sort of religious colonization of political institutions in order to make them malleable to the dictates of Catholic teaching.

Six years later, in 1902,[3] Dehon revisited the subject of the French national flag, “focusing on its colors rather than adding a new symbol. […] Dehon attempts to embrace revolutionary symbolism positively and recover it in a Christian sense.”[4] Through a theological-devotional interpretation, Dehon reverses his previous position in this article.

It is no longer a matter of colonizing political spaces but rather offering French Catholics a way to understand their country’s institutional history. This allows them to feel that it is not foreign, distant, or opposed to Catholic participation in French political life.

Contemporary outcomes of revolutionary dynamics can be embraced by Catholics as they are without further additions—that is, without bending the autonomy of political institutions to the dictates of Catholic teaching. The French flag, as it is, also makes sense to Catholics; they can identify with it without adding a religious symbol, such as the Sacred Heart.

Next, we will discuss the meaning of democracy as a form of government of the people. Among French Catholic democrats—that is, Catholics who accepted democracy and no longer longed for a return to the monarchy—two positions emerged. The first group saw democracy as a temporary instrument to ensure Catholic participation in French politics. The second group saw democracy as an end in itself, bearing political and civil values that only it could achieve.

Dehon, one might say, was born a monarchist and died a democrat. His transition from nostalgia for a monarchy that guaranteed Catholic presence in the French public sphere to staunch support for democracy as a form of government is significant. Nevertheless, his dialogue with democratic political institutions remained essentially functional. The form of government that exists at this moment should be used to achieve Catholic goals, such as opening a new era of Christianity in the heart of Europe at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

According to Dehon, Catholics can (and must) make use of democracy, but there is no need to worry too much about preserving and improving it. Ultimately, the only improvement to democracy would be opening the doors wide to the social reign of the Sacred Heart—a return of politics and public life to the morals and customs of the Catholic faith, for which the pope is the sovereign guarantor.

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A century later, the theology practiced at the Catholic University must urgently respond to questions that engaged devotion to the Sacred Heart at the end of the 19th century. Does contemporary life have theological meaning, or does it need meaning added to it from outside by Catholic and ecclesiastical hands? Should we concern ourselves with the fate of democracy as a commitment of faith, or should we only use it to achieve Catholic goals, no matter how well-intentioned?

Dehon’s theological interpretation of the colors of the French flag is naive, yet brilliant in its cultural value. The contemporary world does not need to be first domesticated and filled with Catholic markers in order for the faithful to move about and collaborate in constructing the city of men and women. The purpose of theology is to provide insight into human history and its events, allowing us to understand it as a theological space that speaks of the God of Jesus today — not as a place to be colonized to recognize it as ours.

In this case, theology cannot access its meaning alone but must collaborate with other disciplines in the academy without claiming supremacy or sovereignty. Theology can only learn about the world and God’s presence in it by listening to other fields of expertise, with which it must collaborate.

Today, we realize that the instrumental use of democracy, as Dehon understood it, can produce the monster of democratic exit from democracy itself (a warning too often ignored by Claude Lefort). If there is a third world war in pieces, then the political and civil framework of democratic human coexistence is also being deconstructed in pieces. In this regard, it seems to me that theology, at least Italian theology, has little or nothing to say. We cannot limit ourselves to generic appeals or invoke fundamental values. Democracy is not merely a matter of formal procedures; it thrives on practices shared by the entire citizenry. Therefore, theology’s contribution to the stability of the fundamental structure of the democratic system must be at the level of shared coexistence and citizenship practices.

The contribution of Catholics in the Italian Constituent Assembly was not only the inclusion of social rights (family, work, education, and health) in our Constitution, but also the Republic’s consequent duty to create equitable conditions that allow all citizens to live a life worth living by providing access to these social rights. The criterion of equity requires not only a fair wage, but also a wage that allows for the effective care of all family members. When a wage, however fair it may be, is insufficient to satisfy a person’s fundamental and social needs, it undermines the aequitas that underlies the fundamental principles of our Constitution (Articles 1-12).

In dialogue with communist and liberal traditions, civil theology of Catholics members into the Constituent Assembly outlined a vision of the constituent power of law drawing on the best of medieval legal tradition. The Church was one of the major protagonists of this tradition. The Italian Constitution is the result of carefully reading into and listening to society. Society is understood as a space that generates the law that orders and organizes it. In this sense, law is not an act of state power imposed on citizens reduced to subjects.

Catholic personalism contributed decisively to developing a broader understanding of citizenship than mere national belonging, one open to the universalism of human rights and therefore not limited by ethnicity, culture, or language.

These were all pieces of a new political form that was being built in Italy and elsewhere in Europe after the totalitarian regimes that took hold of our continent between the two world wars. This new form of democracy is specifically European: constitutional democracy.[5] That of the constitutional state “is no longer a purely parliamentary democracy or a purely popular democracy in the sense of a democracy of the general will, which is essentially constructed according to the rule of the majority. […] Before the people who elect their majority and representatives, there are the people who have established the fundamental rules of their existence in the Constitution. Before the political direction of the majority, there is the constitutional direction. The latter prevails over the former. […] The Constitution therefore precedes all constituted power, including that of the legislature representing the sovereign people. This idea of constitutional supremacy was revived after the war to effect radical change and reassure everyone that a fundamental law would prevent the return of the recent dictatorial past. The primary meaning of the democratic Constitution is guarantee and limitation. Democracy exists to prevent anyone from ever practicing a policy such as Vernichtung, the annihilation of the political opponent.”[6]

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In a constitutional state, democracy is not the rule of the victors over minorities. Rather, it is the recognition by all that they are governed by an authority that unites them, even when elections divide them into partisan positions. Therefore, the European model of constitutional democracy stands or falls with the possibility offered to all not only to speak in the public sphere and within institutional debates but also, and above all, with the fact that this speech is duly listened to by all. This is the constitutional dignity of the person as a citizen.

A plurality of voices that are heard also defines the constitutional quality of political parties. In the constitutional state, these groups representing the citizenry do not take the standardized form of a chorus of assents paid to the leader. Rather, they take the form of a dialectical composition of voices that make up the mosaic of their position. They mediate and negotiate social conflict within the citizenry—that is, the dissonant visions ordered “in the forms and within the limits dictated by the Constitution.”[7]

In contrast, the current state of turmoil of the democratic order of human coexistence is immediately apparent.

The modern liberal economy, now reinforced by the techno-financial empire, has arrived at a relationship with the world characterized by aggression. This growing level of aggressiveness is immediately perceptible, even at the political level, where “the other, the one with a different opinion, who wants different things, who loves and believes differently, is simply an impediment. He must keep his mouth shut. […] Those who think differently politically are no longer seen as partners with whom one must engage in dialogue, but rather as nauseating enemies who must be silenced.”[8]

This lack of listening undermines constitutional democracy at its roots. H. Rosa identifies the need for a heart that knows how to listen and give space to the words of others, which are charged with all their diversity compared to one’s own opinions, vision of life, and way of being in the world. Rosa writes, “Democracy only works if everyone has a voice that is made audible. Recently, however, I have become increasingly convinced that ears are also fundamental to democracy. It is not enough for me to have a voice that is heard. I also need ears that listen to other voices. In fact, more is needed: along with ears, we need a heart that listens and wants to respond to others. Democracy needs a heart that knows how to listen; otherwise, it does not work.”[9]

On the contemporary political scene, at a decisive moment for the future of human coexistence, the image of the heart reappears. However, it is no longer a heart symbolizing the occupation of the public square by a few, but rather, a heart capable of learning from the words and fundamental beliefs of others. Without listening, democracy becomes increasingly ineffective, hiding behind its veil the eclipse of democracy itself. The listening that constitutional democracy needs today, however, is not only a matter of technique (the ear as an apparatus), but also, and above all, a matter of sensitivity (the heart, precisely, as a metaphor for the affective force of social bonds).

Returning briefly to the theme of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, particularly as experienced by Fr. Dehon, I believe it has something original to contribute to educating hearts to listen to every human being, regardless of who they are or where they come from. Of course, much work remains, and its execution is complex and delicate because it must consider the implications of devotion at that time. In my opinion, the challenge lies in giving political form to the entire affective and trusting dimension that characterizes Fr. Dehon’s spiritual experience, that is, belonging and participating in the democratic building of the human city.

Drawing on the strength of this spiritual legacy, we can give shape to the “heart that knows how to listen,” outlining the framework of a right to be heard as an element of constitutional democracy. This right presents itself as the real power that institutes that enlarged citizenship characteristic of the European constitutional state—a power to be exercised before the state’s own political institutions, which remain within the boundaries drawn by democracy only if they listen to the voice of the citizenry without distinction.

The ideal of democracy and the criterion of equity that distinguishes the constitutional state cannot be achieved solely through positive law. As Robert Kennedy recalled in a landmark 1966 speech at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, passing “laws that prohibit discrimination in education, employment, and housing alone cannot overcome the legacy of broken families, stunted children, poverty, degradation, and pain over centuries.”[10] If positive law is not accompanied by cultural processes that transform the nature of citizenship and provide everyone with equal access to it, the institutions of democracy will only appear democratic.

These processes must affect the political institutions that govern democratic coexistence among different people. In Kennedy’s speech, we see the return of the right of all citizens to be heard without distinction of social class, race, religion, or culture. This right is an instituting power that measures the democratic quality of established power: “At the heart of Western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, and states exist for that person’s benefit. Therefore, the expansion of liberty for individuals must be the primary goal and ongoing practice of any Western society. […] Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard—to share in the decisions of government that shape people’s lives. Everything that makes people’s lives worthwhile—family, work, education, a place to rear one’s children, and a place to rest one’s head—depends on the decisions of the government. All of this can be swept away by a government that does not heed the demands of its people—all of its people. Therefore, the essential humanity of man can be protected and preserved only where the government must answer – not just to the wealthy; not just to those of a particular religion, not just to those of a particular race; but to all of the people.”[11]

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The heart of the democratic system is characterized by the inalienable dignity of every human being simply because they are human. “Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.”[12] This dignity, shared by all people, prompts us to create policies of brotherhood and sisterhood as form of mutual interaction between human beings. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”[13]

European constitutional democracy has established the inviolable dignity of the individual as a fundamental principle of the state and an insurmountable limit to state power: “Human dignity is inviolable. Respecting and protecting it is the duty of all state powers. The German people therefore commit themselves to respecting the inalienable and inviolable human rights that form the basis of every human community, peace, and justice in the world.”[14]

Law, including constitutional law, can only formally guarantee and protect the inviolable dignity of every human being—because this is the only way to affirm its universality. For this fundamental right to become an actual experience for people, however, practices of love are necessary. Only when a person feels loved without preconditions can they feel worthy of living and participating in social life and building public institutions as full and effective citizens.[15] “Love and law are the two spheres of recognition. […] It is a matter of showing that the passion for justice originates from the heart and that our civilization and culture have translated this intuition of love into the language of law.”[16]

Only a passion for justice that comes from the heart and is expressed through loving gestures that make others feel “important in themselves, that they matter for the society”[17] has the power to generate “fidelity to the concrete situation” as “situated universalism,”[18] which give a face, name, and story to human dignity.

If the effective recognition of the inviolable dignity of every human being is at the heart of democracy and the heart is at the origin of the passion for justice that constitutional democratic processes have translated into the language of law, thereby building the fundamental cornerstone of human coexistence within the framework of fraternal citizenship, then taking care of the links between the devotions of the heart and the legal order of the constitutional state becomes a necessary practice.

This ensures that the best of democracy does not fall into oblivion. Thus, we can hand it on to future generations as the incipit into an “end in itself” around which to build the democracy to come. This democracy represents its impossible possibility, which we must all take care of in the concrete situations of everyday life.

Speech given at the study seminar “Returning to the heart. For an innovative and generative university” for theology professors and pastoral assistants of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart.

[1] See: D. Neuhold, Missione e Chiesa, denaro e nazione. Quattro prospettive su Léon Dehon fondatore dei Sacerdoti del Sacro Cuore di Gesù, EDB, Bologna 2020, 323-351.

[2] See: L. Dehon, Le drapeau, in https://www.dehondocsoriginals.org/pubblicati/ART/EXT/1896/ART-EXT-1896-0900-8035086.

[3] See: L. Dehon, Bleu, Blanc, Rouge, in https://www.dehondocsoriginals.org/pubblicati/ART/EXT/1902/ART-EXT-1902-1200-8035174.

[4] Neuhold, Missione, 334-335.

[5] See: M. Fioravanti, Pubblico e privato. I principi fondamentali della Costituzione, Editoriale Scientifica, Napoli 2014.

[6] Ibid., 12-14.

[7] Ibid., 14.

[8] H. Rosa, Demokratie braucht Religion, Kösel, München 2024, 42-43.

[9] Ibid., 53-55.

[10] R. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation Address, in https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy/robert-f-kennedy-speeches/day-of-affirmation-address-university-of-capetown-capetown-south-africa-june-6-1966.

[11] Ibid.

[12] General Assembly of the United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Preamble), https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.

[13] Ibid. (Article 1).