Faithful Citizenship

By Don Clemmer | U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Nowhere do the issues of Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the U.S. bishops’ call to political responsibility, get more delicate than when the document tackles questions of voting.

In the document, the bishops describe at length a Catholic moral framework that encompasses their priority issues for 2012 — abortion and threats to human life and dignity, religious freedom concerns, efforts to redefine marriage, immigration reform, international peace, domestic poverty, and unemployment and the economic crisis.

They describe the nature of these issues and why each is a concern for the church, essentially why Catholics should care about them.

But then comes the inevitable question: how should Catholics put the pieces together when they vote? On this question, it’s best to let the document speak for itself: “The consistent ethic of life provides a moral framework for principled Catholic engagement in political life and, rightly understood, neither treats all issues as morally equivalent nor reduces Catholic teaching to one or two issues.”

Read more: Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Temptations and voting

By Don Clemmer | US Conference of Catholic Bishops

The poor you will always have with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them,” Jesus says in Mark’s Gospel.

This would, at face value, seem like a fairly open-ended statement. But it gets a pretty heavy degree of specificity from the U.S. bishops in the introductory note to the reissued Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, when the bishops cite “an economic crisis ..., increasing national and global unemployment, poverty, and hunger; increasing deficits and debt and the duty to respond in ways which protect those who are poor and vulnerable as well as future generations” as one of their six areas of concern going into the 2012 elections.

If these are issues that are supposed to matter to Catholics, the bishops have certainly led by example in this area. For the church, political engagement isn’t just about what happens in a voting booth in November; it’s about consistently bringing one’s values and perspective to the public discussion. The U.S. bishops have brought their values to the issues of debt, poverty, unemployment and hunger in numerous letters to leaders in Congress. The Vatican has even tackled the more overarching challenge of financial reform.

Read more: Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Poverty and helping people to flourish

By Bethany Meola | US Conference of Catholic Bishops

Marriage is clearly a big deal for Catholics.

Even many non-Catholics know that, for instance, the Catholic Church doesn’t recognize divorce and that being married in the church is important to Catholics.

Delving into Catholic teaching, Scripture is filled with references to marriage, and the church presents it as a vocation and as one of the sacraments, a visible sign of God’s gift of grace.

What might be more surprising is that, for Catholics, marriage is also a key public policy issue, in fact one of six raised by the U.S. bishops when they reissued Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, their call to political responsibility.

This means marriage is not only something that matters to the doctrine of the Church and the private lives of the people entering into it. It matters to all society.

Read more: Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Defending marriage is a matter of justice

By Don Clemmer | U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Religious freedom is the odd duck among the issues.

In Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the bishops hold up six areas of concern for voting Catholics to weigh while forming their consciences, including abortion and other threats to human life, a broken immigration system, efforts to redefine marriage, domestic poverty and international peace. While all these issues certainly affect Catholics, these involve a dynamic in which the Church addresses what’s going on in the rest of society.

Religious freedom, on the other hand, deals with the Church itself and its role in society. Placing this issue alongside such foundational Catholic values speaks to its importance, as does the newly-issued statement, “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty.” In it, the bishops celebrate the value of living in a country founded on respect for the rights of people of all faiths. They also address emerging threats to religious freedom in the United States.

Some of these have garnered media attention in recent years, such as the Health and Human Service mandate that forces religiously affiliated hospitals, charities and others to cover contraceptives in their employee health plans, or Catholic Charities in Boston, San Francisco and elsewhere being driven out of adoption services because they refuse to place children with unmarried couples, either same-sex or opposite-sex.

Read more: Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Religious freedom and ugly assumptions

by Don Clemmer
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

A funny thing happened on the way to Mexico.

As John Allen reported, while speaking to the media aboard the papal plane at the start of his visit to Mexico, Pope Benedict XVI had some strong words for certain Catholics:

“Personally, in the individual square, they’re Catholics, believers,” the pope said. “But in public life they follow other paths that don’t correspond to the great values of the Gospel which are necessary for the foundation of a just society. It’s essential to educate people in order to overcome this schizophrenia, educating not only about individual morality but also public morality.”

Read more: Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Human life and dignity

By Don Clemmer
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

"We don’t tell them who to vote for. We don’t want to tell them who to vote for!”

That’s what one Midwestern bishop said following the USCCB’s November 2007 meeting in Baltimore, where the bishops had overwhelmingly approved the document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship on political responsibility.

His comment reflected the fact that the document, at its heart, is a call for Catholics to get involved in the political process, not a voting guide. It also reflected the church’s practice of not endorsing political parties or candidates.

Read more: Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: The question of conscience

By Don Clemmer  
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

When uttered aloud, the gut-level revulsion is clearly audible in that question.

It’s a fair question, one that comes up frequently. It’s grounded in history. People ask, “Didn’t the Church get burned time and again through the centuries when it got too cozy with various medieval kings and secular powers? Isn’t that how, at one time, it became so corrupt that it sparked the Protestant Reformation?”

Read more: Introducing ‘Catholics Care. Catholics Vote.’