Key Upcoming Culture-of-Life Gatherings/Projects

This issue's advocacy request is to simply vote.  Please report back on what this profound act of citizenship meant to you.

For Catholics, the defense of human life and  dignity is not a narrow cause, but a way of life and a framework for action. . . . Decisions about candidates and choices about public policies require clear commitment to moral principles, careful discernment and prudential judgments based on the values of our faith.

—USCCB Administrative Committee, Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility, p. 12

Vote Tuesday, November 2nd!
 

e-link Advocacy REPORTBACK

Here are reports from three e-link members describing their action in opposition to Proposition 71.  Thanks to all for joining in this fight to protect the smallest and most vulnerable members of our human community!  Vote NO on Prop. 71!

1) As requested, I sent out copies of the Catholic Bishops' Statement on Prop 71 and a wonderful thing happened.  My daughter is principal of a diocesan parochial school and she displayed the material.  Then her pastor came in with a Prop 71 handout (unsure what it was but it came from a parent concerned that no one knew anything about this) and asked her to put it in
her weekly parents' newsletter.  She asked him if she could also enclose the bishops' statement and he said yes!  My pastor has already enclosed in our bulletin the Questions and Answers  about Stem Cell and Cloning put out by the Catholic Common Good Foundation as well as publicizing your Stem Cell presentation with an insert.  I have given him the bishops' statement and will ask if it can be put in the bulletin right before the election.  I think it is the best piece out there.

Diane Parente,
 

2) We have been doing the best we can to defeat Prop. 71 here at St. Rose of Lima.  We have distributed printed literature to parishioners, held an informational table before and after Sunday Masses, and had a speaker on the topic.  Our priests explained the issue at the Sunday Masses, put info on both our parish website and bulletin, and have put up large posters on the church bulletin boards.  The word is definitely getting out about this proposition and how we should vote. I know this because I hear parishioners talking about it, and I have received calls from those who were still a bit confused.

Evangely Aliangan, St. Rose of Lima, Chula Vista


3) This note is to inform you that I passed out five letters to family and friends and it was very well received.

Patty Schwabe, St. Margaret's Catholic Church, Oceanside

Web and e-mail-based Resources

Following are web links to three important documents, Faithful Citizenship (USCCB), the Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics (Catholic Answers updated version), and Guidelines for Catholic Voters from Our Sunday Visitor.  They can become valuable tools as you prepare to vote on November 2nd, 2004.

New Local/Regional Events and Gatherings 

If you are planning an event that falls within the mission of social ministry, send the particulars four to five weeks in advance to the Office for Social Ministry via e-mail, osmelink@diocese-sdiego.org.  The OSM reserves the right to publish or not to publish any proposed event information.  We hope this will assist your local efforts to re-build a culture of life.

1. Third Annual Interfaith Candlelight Memorial Vigil for the homeless who have died during the past year to be held on November first.

The Third Annual Interfaith Candlelight Vigil will be held on November 1, 2004 from 5:30-6:30 p.m. at the Community Concourse of City Hall, 202 'C' Street, San Diego.

This annual memorial service will be for the 213 homeless men and women who died alone on our streets in the last three years. These 213 men and women were buried and forgotten. They have not been mourned or remembered.  Now is the time to do so.  Please come to this event to help pay respect to 'the least of these' in our midst.  The San Diego Rescue Mission is the sponsor of this event.  For information, call 619.687.3720.

Watch for OSM e-link bulletin #29 around Tuesday, November 23, 2004  

Article/Statement for October 29, 2004

A Tough Election Season for Catholics
By Cyril Jones-Kellett
 

So how’s a Catholic to vote?

It has been a bitter and bruising campaign season, and for Catholics the bruising seems to have been especially intense this year.
 
Among the reasons:

· George W. Bush led the United States into a war in Iraq that was openly opposed by senior Vatican officials, and drew disappointed comments from the pope.

· John Kerry, a Catholic, was nominated by his party on a resume that includes repeated public support for abortion, even in its most extreme forms.

· Add to that the fact that Kerry, on the campaign trail, says that those who oppose the destruction of embryonic humans for research purposes are motivated by “right-wing ideology.”

· And Bush is a noted supporter of the death penalty.

· And Kerry’s position on homosexual marriage is unclear, at best.
· And Bush kept the United States out of the International Criminal Court.

And on and on...

All of this comes in the context of ongoing Catholic humiliation around the issue of sexual abuse.

So American Catholics come into the election already hurting from scandal, and now have to choose between one of their own who doesn’t seem to share basic moral positions on prenatal life and another who does not share the views of many Catholic leaders, probably including the pope, on executions and war.

And there is an even deeper Catholic divide in America — between those who regularly attend Mass and those who do not. In fact, the largest religious group in the United States is Catholics, the second largest is non-practicing Catholics.

According to surveys, Catholics who attend Mass at least once each week are, by a wide margin, more likely to vote for pro-life candidates and propositions. Those who do not attend Mass regularly are far less likely to place heavy emphasis on abortion when voting.

To Deny Communion?

Because Senator Kerry is Catholic, pro-life Catholics have been particularly animated this election cycle. There have been widespread calls for bishops to deny the senator and other “pro-choice” candidates Communion. There have been calls for bishops to demand that their flocks not vote for anyone who is publicly in support of the abortion license.

At times, bishops have seemed to display as much public division as the rest of the voting public. But lost in much of the talk of what bishops should do has been the remarkable and steady clarity of virtually all of the U.S. bishops that abortion is a grave evil that every public official, especially Catholics, is obligated to resist. Most bishops have also said that Catholic public officials who espouse the abortion license should refrain from reception of Communion.

What they have not agreed upon is whether such people should be actively denied Communion. This controversy is likely to go on long after this election, but is sure to become particularly intense if Kerry wins and becomes president.

So, How Do I Vote?

What many people seem to want is a succinct statement from Church authorities about how a Catholic should vote.

The National Catholic Reporter, and other liberal-leaning Catholic publications, to the degree that they want any statement from Church authorities at all, seem to want something like: “Catholics should consider all the issues and vote for who is right on most of them.”

More conservative publications have tended to want that statement to be something more like: “No Catholic should ever vote for anyone who is pro-abortion.”
The problem with such approaches is that they inevitably flatten out what is a rich and complex tradition of Catholic teaching on social responsibility, including voting.

This teaching differentiates between things that

· are always and everywhere wrong (abortion, euthanasia, ethnic cleansing),
· are to be avoided but may sometimes be necessary (death penalty, war),
· are moral goods but open to various prudential judgments about how to accomplish
  them (fighting poverty, providing healthcare),
· and are more or less morally neutral (traffic laws, some public works).

Catholic social teaching also recognizes that in a representative democracy the voter might use strategy to work toward the common good. For example, all things being equal, a voter must prefer a pro-life candidate. This is an issue of such basic moral clarity that it must always and everywhere be opposed.

But what if a pro-choice candidate belonged to a pro-life party and electing this person would keep that party in power?  The voter is free to use whatever strategy seems best here, so long as that strategy does not include actively working against protection of human life.  Or what if two candidates were running — one of whom favored abortion and another of whom favored euthanasia?  The variations on this theme are endless, and the voter cannot simply be given the answer to complex situations from the pulpit.

Conversion Is the Key

In this life, as St. Paul says, we see as if through a glass, darkly.  Looking though a glass darkly means that we will often make wrong choices, even when we are trying to do right.

Especially in times of such great division, we need to be careful not to poison our Christian fellowship with others.  Friends, family, parishioners may do what looks exactly wrong to us in their approach to voting. They are looking through the same dark glass we are, just not seeing the same things.

But, we must also remember that St. Paul doesn’t say we can’t see at all.  Even through dark glass, some things can be deciphered — if we are willing to make the effort.  Part of the genius of the democratic process is that it can clarify murky issues over time, so long as people keep talking to one another.

Democracy replaces violence with debate. We don’t shoot at one another, we gripe at one another, until some workable arrangement can be arrived at.

But, because we spend so much energy on this public debate, we can sometimes reach the erroneous conclusion that everything is up for debate.

For this reason Christians must be particularly clear when dealing with those moral truths that, even through dark glass, can be seen if the will is there.

Abortion, euthanasia and homosexual “marriage,” for example, are always and everywhere wrong.  It is not correct for a Catholic to collapse moral distinctions so that they might agree with a candidate on trade issues, for example, but the candidate is in favor of euthanasia, so let’s call it a draw.

Grave moral matters must be given priority, even when our affections lead us in another direction.

No voter guide or Vatican statement in the world will bring us moral clarity if we are not prepared to let go of our own will and follow God.

People might want bishops to instruct the faithful never to vote for a “pro-choice” candidate, and this might make everything simpler for everyone, but if the voters themselves are not adequately horrified by abortion, they will not be moved.  And if we are adequately horrified, the statements that are already there are enough.

The way we become adequately horrified by evil, and adequately attracted to the good is to become more like God.  This process is called conversion, the constantly expanding opening of oneself to the Father.

In the end there is simply no all-encompassing formula for voting as a Catholic, but if one tries sincerely to put off pettiness and sinfulness in making the voting decision, and then trusts God to know what is best, it may go a long way toward clearing away obstacles to doing what is right.

The Southern Cross.