It’s that time of year again, when the November elections are on the horizon. Inevitably, we are faced with some difficult decisions. It seems that the pool of candidates with good values gets smaller every year. What is a faithful Catholic, or for that matter any person of good will and right conscience, to do?
Fortunately, we can look to the wisdom of the Church for guidance on how to develop a rightly formed conscience, and to discover the truth about the most fundamental issues and principles that govern our voting decisions.
Participation in Political Life
As Catholic citizens, making good decisions in the voting booth is a serious obligation. Our participation is important, and perhaps now even more so, as we are faced with an increasingly Godless and relativistic culture. The time is upon us to work more vigorously in upholding the dignity of the human person, without which society crumbles.
St. Thomas More, martyr and patron of statesmen and politicians, laid down his life in service of God and Truth. He taught by his life and death that “man cannot be separated from God, nor politics from morality” (John Paul II, 2001).
As advocates for God and Truth, we too must be willing to be counter-cultural; for indeed it is the Truth that will set us free. Archbishop of Philadelphia Charles J. Chaput, who has written extensively about the role of Catholics in the public square, said, “For Catholics to be leaven in society, we need to offer our culture the whole truth about the dignity of the human person, even when the message is unpopular.”
Rightly Formed Conscience
So how do we know how to make good decisions when voting? The Church’s Magisterium offers us a treasure of teaching to make our growth in and practice of moral virtue easier. Among the many sources are the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a document from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) called “The Participation of Catholics in Political Life”, and the U.S. Bishops’ “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” and “Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics”.
The Catechism reminds us that a well-formed conscience is upright and truthful and that the education of our conscience is a life-long task. Faced with a moral choice, conscience can make either a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law, or, on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them. No matter the difficulty of the situation, we are called to seriously seek out what is right and good and discern God’s will. (CCC 1783, 1784, 1786-87)
Today our sensibilities are assaulted by what Pope Benedict XVI often referred to as a “dictatorship of relativism”, where reason and the principles of natural law, once common to all people of good will, have largely disintegrated.
Nonetheless, we must remember that the good of society depends on the family, it’s most basic cell. The family is where life begins, and faith, virtue, and good moral character are fostered and nurtured. Clearly though, the family is under attack, and we must work unceasingly to rebuild it. Yet another reason why our voting decisions matter. Life, marriage, and religious liberty are fundamental in this battle. If we lose these most basic God-given pillars of society, we lose everything.
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