May 15, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Archbishop Agustin Garcia-Gasco of Valencia, Spain, warned this week that “radicalism and the harsh imposition of policies is intolerable” in a democratic society made up of active participants.
In a pastoral letter entitled, “Institutional Loyalty and Democratic Maturity,” the archbishop maintained that the citizens who make up a democratic society “have their own convictions” and they abhor a government that seeks to tell them what they have to believe.
Arbitrary action by government officials, he added, “fosters a serious political contradiction” and constitutes a severe blow to “the good sense of citizens who desire to live in unity and peace.”
In his letter the archbishop recalled that the virtue proper to government officials is that of “loyalty to the community and institutional loyalty,” which demands that “those electoral proposals that conflict with the good of persons and of society be rectified.”