Before we move on to other things

Fr. John Neuhaus in his book "American Babylon" has a chapter on whether or not an athiest can be a good citizen.

He offers the following quote from Pope Benedict XVI in his 2007 encyclical Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope).

"The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is-in its origins and aims--a type of moralism. It is a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested."

Neuhaus offers another quote.

Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, takes our question from a different angle:

The world of today knows a new category of people: the atheists in good faith, those who live painfully the situ­ation of the silence of God, who do not believe in God but do not boast about it; rather they experience the ex­istential anguish and the lack of meaning of everything: They too, in their own way, live in the dark night of the spirit. Albert Camus called them "the saints without God." The mystics exist above all for them; they are their travel and table companions. Like Jesus, they "sat down at the table of sinners and ate with them" (see Luke 15:2). This explains the passion with which cer­tain atheists, once converted, pore over the writings of the mystics: Claudel, Bernanos, the two Maritains, L. Bloy, the writer J. K. Huysmans and so many others over the writings of Angela of Foligno; T. S. Eliot over those of Julian of Norwich. There they find again the same scenery that they had left, but this time illumi­nated by the sun.... The word "atheist" can have an ac­tive and a passive meaning. It can indicate someone who rejects God, but also one who-at least so it seems to him-is rejected by God. In the first case, it is a blameworthy atheism (when it is not in good faith), in the second an atheism of sorrow or of expiation.

Neuhaus offers evidence of the fact that our country's founding priciples rely on a certain belief that there is a God whose divine hand must be reflected in the way we govern ourselves.

His answer to the question of whether or not an athiest can be a good citizen is offered in the following quote from the last pages of this chapter.

"In such a nation, an atheist can be a citizen, but he cannot be a good citizen. A good citizen does more than abide by the laws. A good citizen is able to give an ac­count, a morally compelling account, of the regime of which he is part-and to do so in continuity with the constituting moment and subsequent history of that regime. He is able to justify its defense against its ene­mies, and to convincingly recommend its virtues to citi­zens of the next generation so that they, in turn, can transmit the order of government to citizens yet unborn. This regime of liberal democracy, of republican self­governance, is not self-evidently good and just. An ac­count must be given. Reasons must be given. They must be reasons that draw authority from that which is higher than ourselves, from that which transcends us, from that to which we are precedently, ultimately, obliged."