A September 2016 homily by our former pastor, Fr. Dave Gutmann, focuses on the idea of Faithful Citizenship and the key themes of the Church's social teaching. We encourage you to listen again to his homily and read the text of his column from that weekend (below).
Faithful Citizenship! With the elections only 8 weeks away, I am speaking this week about our Catholic understanding of the responsibility we have to vote, and the underlying moral issues that need to be a part of our formation of conscience. The Catholic Church will never tell us for whom we should vote, but does have an obligation to assist in pointing out the values that we seek to uphold as followers of Jesus Christ.
No one candidate typically aligns fully with our moral framework, and as Catholics we are not encouraged to be “single issue” voters. Instead we seek to be well informed at the whole range of positions held by each candidate and vote for the person we believe will best serve. Here are key themes to be considering:
The right to life and dignity of each person, from conception to natural death.
Family and marriage as the fundamental unit of society.
Protection of human rights for each person, especially those on the margins.
The dignity of work, and the proper balance of free enterprise/capitalism.
Solidarity with global human family.
Free expression of religion.
Caring for God’s creation.
Here's the action plan I encourage you all to do:
Register to vote if you are eligible, or re-register if you have recently moved.
Pray!
Vote. No excuses for avoiding this responsibility that is ours living in a democracy.
Avoid negativity. Commit yourself to not becoming one more agent of negativity.
Crucial to all of this is to be as informed as possible, which admittedly is a challenge. Being well-informed means we have to dig deeper than campaign ads and sound bites.
Pray for the wisdom to make a carefully thought out decision — about the candidate and about the political party they represent.