Values and democracy

Abstract

Almost all people coming from Christian cultural and civilisational background agree that democracy is the most optimal political system and the most respectful way of exercising power. St. John Paul II has repeatedly reminded that democracy is not only about decision-making rules and other procedures for exercising power, but also and above all, about the values that make it possible to form mature citizens who use democratic institutions in a conscious and responsible way and who critically observe how law is passed and power is exercised by those politicians who at a given moment perform their functions based on the results of democratic elections. Both the past and the present confirm that a democracy deprived of such values as truth, honesty, justice and responsibility turns into an overt or hidden dictatorship.