Thursday, September 09, 2010

U.S. Political Season Begins: "Morally Coherent" Catholics Can Change this Nation

Deacon Keith Fournier writes at CatholicOnline:
WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - Along with the hint of fall in the air, the days after the American celebration of Labor Day mark the beginning of the election season. This midterm election in the United States of America could bring a massive sea change in governance. Political pundits troll the media making their prognostications. Polls are becoming as common as commercials in the political media landscape.

Given their numbers, U.S. Catholics could determine the outcome of this election. That is if they learn how to be, in the words of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "morally coherent". That phrase was used in an instruction released in 2002 entitled a "
Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life". It was directed to "the Bishops of the Catholic Church and, in a particular way, to Catholic politicians and all lay members of the faithful called to participate in the political life of democratic societies."

The teaching in the instruction informs the
"Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church" sections pertaining to the political participation of Catholics. (See, e.g. #565-574) Anyone who thinks the teachers of the Church are not clear on the duty to vote in a manner which is morally coherent have not read Catholic teaching.

[...]

Sunday, September 12, 2010 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of John F Kennedy's address to the Houston Ministerial alliance. In that speech he opened the door to moral incoherence by "privatizing" the truths informed by faith and failing to acknowledge the existence of a Natural Law which can be known by all men and women through the exercise of reason. In the wake of his catastrophic mistake too many Catholics in public life, like Esau of the Old Testament, have sold their birthrights for a bowl of porridge and helped to construct the current culture of death. Morally coherent Catholics are the ones who must now expose their errors and replace them in office.

[...]

Catholics are not one more "interest group" which can be polled, pandered to and bought. Our social obligation is to promote the true common good, not just use the slogan to sound "catholic" as happened in the last political cycle. We need to promote the truth as taught by the Church no matter what it is labeled in the political parlance of the hour. Our political participation must be committed to human life and dignity, marriage and the family, authentic human freedom, and solidarity directed by the application of the principle of subsidiarity. The U.S. Political Season has begun in earnest. 'Morally Coherent' Catholics can change this Nation.
Read the whole thing.

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