Since taking on my shoulders the burden of pastoral care, I have been unable to keep steadily recollected because my mind is distracted by many responsibilities. I am forced to consider questions affecting churches and monasteries and often I must judge the lives and actions of individuals; at one moment I am forced to take part in certain civil affairs, next I must worry over the incursions of barbarians and fear the wolves who menace the flock entrusted to my care; now I must accept political responsibility in order to give support to those who preserve the rule of law; now I must bear patiently the villainies of brigands, and then I must confront them, yet in all charity.
Pope Gregory the Great recognized he had to preserve the rule of law because of barbarians and wolves who would menace ordinary folk.
He didn't have to bow to political correctness.
background here.and HERE:
Rome, his birthplace, was sacked by barbarians when he was only six years old, and barbarian raids around the Italian countryside brought throngs of dirt-poor refugees flooding into Rome, carrying with them a plague that wiped out a third of the region’s ..population.....
It was Gregory who first conceived of a global plan of spreading the Gospel to the empire’s barbarian conquerors, sending St. Augustine of Canterbury, the prior of his former monastery, to England as the head of a mission team.
He organized the first universal system of relief for the poor in Rome, harvesting produce from the Church’s lands and sending teams patrolling the streets to distribute prepared food to the indigent refugees.
