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Source: http://www.archden.org/dcr/news.php?e=454&s=2&a=9553
by Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput, Archbischop of Denver

Personal witness is always the best proof of what we claim to believe. And this year, like every other year, with or without an election, we need to apply the idea of Catholic witness in a special way to our public life as citizens. We might find it useful to remember 10 simple points as we move toward November.

1. George Orwell said that one of the biggest dangers for modern democratic life is dishonest political language. Dishonest language leads to dishonest politics — which then leads to bad public policy and bad law. So we need to speak and act in a spirit of truth.

2. “Catholic” is a word that has real meaning. We don’t control or invent that meaning as individuals. We inherit it from the Gospel and the experience of the Church over the centuries. We can choose to be something else, but if we choose to call ourselves Catholic, than that word has consequences for what we believe and how we act. We can’t truthfully claim to be Catholic and then act like we’re not.

3. Being a Catholic is a bit like being married. We have a relationship with the Church and with Jesus Christ that’s very similar to being a spouse. And that has consequences. If a man says he loves his wife, his wife will want to see the evidence in his love and fidelity. The same applies to our relationship with God. If we say we’re Catholic, we need to show that by our love for the Church and our fidelity to what she teaches and believes. Otherwise we’re just fooling ourselves, because God certainly won’t be fooled.

4. The Church is not a political organism. She has no interest in partisanship because getting power or running governments is not what she’s about, and the more closely she identifies herself with any single party, the fewer people she can effectively reach.

5. However, Scripture and Catholic teaching do have public consequences because they guide us in how we should act in relation to one another. Loving God requires that we also love the people He created, which means we need to treat them with justice, charity and mercy. Being a Catholic involves solidarity with other people. The Catholic faith has social justice implications — and that means it also has cultural, economic and political implications. The Catholic faith is never primarily about politics; but Catholic social action — including political action — is a natural byproduct of the Church’s moral message. We can’t call ourselves Catholic, and then simply stand by while immigrants get mistreated, or the poor get robbed, or unborn children get killed. The Catholic faith is always personal, but never private. If our faith is real, then it will bear fruit in our public decisions and behaviors, including our political choices.

6. Each of us needs to follow his or her own properly formed conscience. But conscience doesn’t emerge from a vacuum. It’s not a matter of personal opinion or preference. If our conscience has the habit of telling us what we want to hear on difficult issues, then it’s probably badly formed. A healthy conscience is the voice of God’s truth in our hearts, and it should usually make us uncomfortable, because none of us is yet a saint. The way we get a healthy conscience is by submitting it and shaping it to the will of God; and the way we find God’s will is by opening our hearts to the counsel and guidance of the Church that Jesus left us. If we find ourselves disagreeing as Catholics with the Catholic teaching of our Church on a serious matter, it’s probably not the Church that’s wrong. The problem is much more likely with us.

7. But how do we make good political choices when so many different issues are so important and complex? The first principle of Christian social thought is: Don’t deliberately kill the innocent, and don’t collude in allowing somebody else to do it. The right to life is the foundation of every other human right. The reason the abortion issue is so foundational is not because Catholics love little babies — although we certainly do — but because revoking the personhood of unborn children makes every other definition of personhood and human rights politically contingent.

8. So can a Catholic in good conscience support a “pro-choice” candidate? The answer is: I can’t and I won’t. But I do know some serious Catholics — people whom I admire — who will. I think their reasoning is mistaken. But at the very least they do sincerely struggle with the abortion issue, and it causes them real pain. And even more importantly: They don’t keep quiet about it; they don’t give up their efforts to end permissive abortion; they keep lobbying their party and their elected representatives to change their pro-abortion views and protect the unborn. Catholics can support “pro-choice” candidates if they support them despite — not because of — their “pro-choice” views. But they also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it.

9. What is a “proportionate” reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life — which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.

10. Lastly, the heart of truly “faithful” citizenship is this: We’re better citizens when we’re more faithful Catholics. The more authentically Catholic we are in our lives, choices, actions and convictions, the more truly we will contribute to the moral and political life of our nation.

Archbishop Chaput’s forthcoming book on American Catholics and public life, “Render Unto Caesar,” will be published by Doubleday later this year.

13 “Woe to you, Chora’zin! woe to you, Beth-sa’ida! for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
14 But it shall be more tolerable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you.
15 And you, Caper’na-um, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades.
16 “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

The love of talk distracts all the powers of our soul from God, and fills them with earthly objects and impressions, like a vessel of water that cannot be settled while you are continualy stirring the earthly particles from the bottom.
– St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

1 One sabbath when he went to dine at the house of a ruler who belonged to the Pharisees, they were watching him.
2 And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy.
3 And Jesus spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath, or not?”
4 But they were silent. Then he took him and healed him, and let him go.
5 And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on a sabbath day?”
6 And they could not reply to this.

If Hope goes it alone, it ought to be called presumption, which is the highway to ruin.

– St. Jerome

What direction does a person choose for his existence if he has decided to tune the instrument of his life to the keynote of “faith”?  This question is not an easy one to answer because it obviously reaches down to the deeper levels of human nature, to attributes that are not always visible on the surface but that penetrate and leave their imprint on the whole, yet without being anywhere measureable.  All the important fundamental decisions of human existence that go beyond our ordinary concern about the details of everyday living can be understood if we ourselves make some small effort to enter into the movement from which they flow - whether it is a question of a great love, of the passion of the inventor, or of a renunciation required of those who devote their lives to a revolutionary idea; whether it is a question of the attitude expressed in the smile of a Buddha or the faith of a Christian…We can explain what faith really means for an individual only by pointing to the lives of those who have lived it in its fullness: Francis of Assisi, Francis Xavier, IGnatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Vincent de Paul, John XXIII; in such persons, and basically only in them, can we come to know what kind of decision faith is.  As we can see in the lives of such individuals, faith is a kind of passion, or, more correctly, a love that seizes an individual and shows him the direction he must go, however fatiguing it may be - the spiritual equivalent, perhaps, of a mountain to climb, which to the ordinary Christian would seem foolish indeed but to one who has committed himself to the venture is clearly the only direction to take - a direction he would not exchange for any conceivably more comfortable one.

From: Glaube und Zukunft, pp.39-40

31 At that very hour some Pharisees came, and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”
32 And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, `Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.
33 Nevertheless I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’
34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!
35 Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, `Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

But now, my poor son, the hurricane has come, and you feel you are being shaken by a force that could uproot century-old trees. But you must remain confident, for your Faith and your love cannot be uprooted, nor can you be blown from your way, if you remain in unity with the “Head”

– St. Josemaria Escriva

Voice out your concerns and opposition to the Reproductive Health Bill being proposed in the Philippines by sending an email to the members of the congress.  Not only it will mandate sex-education that promotes artificial contraception to 10yr olds but would also force all citizens to be responsible in education, promotion, and distribution of artificial method of contraception.  It is against our constitution.   -Reynor

To our Honorable Members of the Congress:

Given our position on The Reproductive Health Bill authored by Representatives Edcel Lagman, Janette Garin, Narciso Santiago III and Ana Theresa Hontiveros-Baraquiel, we, as citizens of the Philippines, hereby affix our signatures to register strong opposition to its passage.

• We stand by the Church as she respectfully signified her strong objection to the contraceptive program the Bill promotes, considering the practices which it shall engender.
• We call the attention of lawmakers to the knowledge about the abortifacient nature and effects of contraceptives that violate the provisions in the Philippine Constitution on the protection of the life of the unborn from the first moment of fertilization/conception.
• Moreover, the Church also poses serious objections, in that this contraceptive program, while supposedly championing the cause of women, ignores the proven harmful side effects of contraceptives and the instances where woman’s rights are violated.
• We fault the Department of Health for the disregard of, and mere “lip service” it pays to, Natural Family Planning (NFP).  Greater promotion of the more scientific and unarguable morally superior option for the NFP must be done.  Both Sacred Scripture and Reason propose that the best form of birth regulation is self-discipline.
• The six years of value-free sex education that the Bill proposes violate the rights of the parents to keep watchful guard over the moral education of their children.  The modules are not an education to sexuality, which is what is needed, but are information on how to have sex and use contraceptives.
• The Church also strongly opposes the use of the term Reproductive Health as defined in the proposed Bill, as the bottom line is that Reproductive Health is made synonymous with abortion packaged as a method of family planning.
• Finally, the proposed Bill as well as the Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009 is setting aside more than 2 Billion Pesos of tax payer’s money for the purchase of contraceptives.  This is money that could instead be used to provide education, livelihood and basic public services.

In view we commit:

1. to pray for the lawmakers who champion life, as we pray even more for those who  we ask not to look upon the rational being that is the human person as a mere being;
2. to engage ourselves in intensive catecheses on the family, enshrined in Paul VI’s “Humanae Vitae” and John Paul II’s “Evangelium Vitae”; and
3. to appreciate “the discipline of the desert” that we may be strengthened to withstand the fleeting attraction offered by a materialistic-oriented lifestyle.

We reiterate that we are against the passage of the Reproductive Health Bill.

CATHOLICS CANNOT SUPPORT THE RH BILL IN GOOD CONSCIENCE

A response to the position paper Catholics Can Support the RH Bill in Good Conscience

To the community of the Ateneo de Manila University:

We, alumni of our alma mater, wish to respond to the position paper authored by 14 members of our faculty. We laud our professors for a wide-ranging presentation on the Philippine social situation, most especially the undesirable effects of an unmanaged population growth to women, the poor and our young people. We commend their dedication to the integral human development of the Filipino people in these troubling times. However, with respect and fraternal charity towards them, we respond that Catholics cannot support the RH Bill in good conscience.

Continue reading here.

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