The Political Theology of a Potestas Indirecta

In this paper I confront the social doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, especially its attitude towards politics, with Thomas Hobbes' criticism of a so-called Potestas Indirecta. A political theology of an indirect power claims to represent a higher legal order, God's law, to which political order with its positive laws is subjected. Hobbes rejects this doctrine because it will divide power and it may lead to civil war. Although the social doctrine of the Church is critical about the basic tendency of modern liberal and democratic thought, it accepts liberal democracy because of a special affinity, precisely the basic attitude that politics has to account for its actions before a forum representing fundamental values.