Every self-assured emphasis on “I don’t care about politics” is either hypocrisy or a lack of perspective, a lack of knowledge of that person. In this mentality lies one of the reasons why so many people have become estranged from the Church in past centuries and decades. They had the impression that the Church does not respond to what weighs most heavily on them.
The most apolitical and uncompromising people towards regimes and governments that do not suit their taste can be completely enthralled by opposite regimes and can absolutely shamelessly turn a blind eye to their crimes and the most terrible atrocities.
Ultimately, the problem culminates in the fact that the core of Christianity is humble love. From it flows concern for people and their specific worries, from it comes ingenuity in getting to know them better, in serving them better, in reconciling them, in practicing true Christian politics among them.
(Adolf Kajpr SJ /1902–1959/;
excerpt from the article Is it better to be apolitical?, published in “Catholic”, April 20, 1947;
quoted according to the book The Present is God's Own Time. Refugium 2021)
