Voting for the Truth
Catholics and the Scottish parliamentary elections.
Catholics participating in the Scottish Parliamentary elections in May should aim to restore a politics of truth in a culture that has drifted toward symbolism and performative division. This means more than rhetorical clarity: it requires honesty about trade-offs, a refusal to reduce complex moral questions to slogans, and a willingness to speak uncomfortable truths even at political cost. Yet truth alone is insufficient. In an age shaped by social media, where political incentives reward outrage and tribal affirmation, Catholics must resist the temptation to mirror these habits. The task is not to win attention, but to serve the common good. That demands a politics of charity, one that seeks to understand opponents, not caricature them, and that treats disagreement as a condition for dialogue rather than a reason for exclusion.
Over the past decade, Scottish political life has repeatedly failed to confront the serious, long-term structural problems facing the country: addiction to drugs and gambling, a health service struggling to keep pace with technological change, inadequate housing, and the erosion of community cohesion. These are not marginal concerns. They are the conditions under which people live.
Yet within that same period, the Scottish Parliament has found time to pardon those accused of witchcraft in the seventeenth century and to legislate against greyhound racing - an activity that does not, in practice, take place in Scotland. These may be sincerely motivated measures. But sincerity is not the same as priority. At a time of real social strain, it is reasonable to ask whether this is the best use of legislative attention.
The contrast is not abstract. What does such legislation offer to a child growing up in a damp house, or to a family living with the daily reality of addiction? What problem, precisely, is being solved?
This points to a deeper pattern, not only in Scotland but across much of Western politics. Governments are often reluctant to confront difficult truths - whether about policy failure, institutional limits, or past mistakes. The instinct is to reassure, to present a manageable picture of progress, and to avoid the political cost of candour. Opposition parties, by contrast, are tempted in the opposite direction: to present every failure as total, every shortcoming as systemic, and every problem as the sole responsibility of those in power.
Neither approach serves the common good. Constant reassurance erodes credibility when reality intrudes. Constant denunciation dulls public sensitivity, until even serious failures struggle to command attention. In both cases, politics becomes reactive and performative, an endless cycle of signalling and rebuttal, rather than a serious attempt to grapple with underlying problems.
What is missing, in both modes, is a commitment to truth: a willingness to name problems in their full complexity, to admit limits, and to prioritise substance over gesture.
Even in the recent assisted dying debate, widely praised for its civility and lack of overt partisanship, the underlying problem persisted. Much of the contribution, on both sides, leaned heavily on personal experience and emotional appeal, rather than sustained engagement with the substance of the Bill itself. There is a place for such arguments. At Stage 1, where Parliament considers the principle of a proposal, they are not only appropriate but necessary. But at Stage 3, the task is different. Members are no longer weighing sentiment, but responsibility: the legal coherence of the Bill, the adequacy of its safeguards, and the real-world consequences of its provisions.
When that distinction is blurred, something important is lost. Lawmaking becomes an extension of personal testimony rather than an exercise in public judgment. Difficult questions, about implementation, risk, and unintended consequences, are left insufficiently examined, not because they are unimportant, but because they are politically and emotionally harder to address.
This is not a failure of sincerity. It is a failure of discipline. And it reflects a wider tendency within Scottish political life to substitute expression for scrutiny and signalling for substance, precisely where clarity and truth are most required.
Catholic social teaching begins with a clear and demanding claim: every human person possesses an inherent dignity, grounded in their creation in the image of God. But that dignity does not eliminate moral difficulty; it intensifies it. To uphold it in practice requires the disciplined use of reason, careful judgment about how best to act in circumstances that are often constrained, imperfect, and resistant to easy solutions.
Some moral questions admit of clear answers. Others do not. How to respond to the deep structural problems within Scottish society: addiction, failing services, social fragmentation, within the limits of a finite budget is not a question that can be settled by instinct or by appealing to a political base. It requires serious deliberation: an honest reckoning with trade-offs, consequences, and competing goods.
In such circumstances, there are no perfect outcomes. Every decision carries costs; every policy creates both benefits and burdens. Yet this is precisely what contemporary politics often obscures. The language of public life tends to promise resolution without sacrifice, progress without loss.
A politics grounded in truth must resist that temptation. It must be willing to name limits, to acknowledge difficulty, and to speak plainly about the real consequences of political choice, even when that honesty is electorally inconvenient.
As a Catholic still in my twenties, I can recognise the appeal of a more forceful model of faith: the image of St Michael defending the Church, or of martyrs such as St Thomas More and St John Ogilvie, who held firm in the face of persecution. There is courage here, and it should not be dismissed. But it is not the only model we are given, and, in political life, it is often the most easily misunderstood.
The temptation is to translate conviction into aggression, to assume that strength of belief must be expressed through force of rhetoric. Yet the Christian tradition offers a different pattern. Pope Benedict XVI, in Caritas in Veritate, insisted that truth must be accompanied by charity. St Joseph, though entrusted with immense responsibility, leads without recorded words, through fidelity rather than display.
The clearest example, however, is Christ himself. In the garden of Gethsemane, when Peter responds to Jesus’s arrest with violence, Christ rebukes him and heals the wounded man. The moment is decisive: the defence of truth is not advanced through instinctive force, but through disciplined love.
For those seeking to bring truth back into public life, the lesson is uncomfortable but necessary. Aggression is not a sign of seriousness; it is often a substitute for it. Boldness in politics does not consist in volume or confrontation, but in the patient work of judgment, restraint, and service to the common good.
So, what does this mean for Scottish Catholics preparing to cast their vote next month?
First, it means assessing candidates not through the lens of tribal loyalty, but through their capacity to serve the common good. The question is not who best reflects our identity, but who demonstrates the judgment required to govern well.
Second, it means engaging candidates directly. Writing to them, asking how they understand the most serious challenges facing Scotland today, and paying close attention to whether they respond in substantive terms or simply fall back on party lines. The latter should be a warning sign.
Third, it requires discernment when faith is invoked in political campaigning. Faith should illuminate judgment, not function as a tool of persuasion. In politics, actions, and consistency over time, speak more clearly than declarations.
Finally, it means resisting the temptation to vote on familiarity, personality, or surface-level appeal. The question is more demanding: who is best able to scrutinise, amend, and improve the laws that will shape the lives of others?
If these standards were more widely adopted, Scottish political life would not be transformed overnight. But it would begin to recover a measure of seriousness: less shaped by performance, more grounded in judgment; less driven by signalling, more attentive to consequences.
For Catholics, this is ultimately not a call to a different style of politics, but to a different discipline of attention. The question is not whether one is loud or quiet, familiar or contrarian, but whether one is willing to face political reality as it is, with all its limits, costs, and demands.
To vote, then, is not simply to express a preference. It is to participate in the slow work of ordering public life towards truth. And that work, in the end, requires something more demanding than conviction alone: the patience to see clearly, and the courage to choose accordingly.
By James Bundy