THE TABLET
June 21, 2008

Demands of Faithful Citizenship

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

I have just returned from the Spring meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and with the agenda fresh in my mind, I wish to report to the faithful, clergy and Religious in the Diocese the concerns of the Bishops at this time.  There were many individual items discussed during this meeting, but perhaps the most significant was a discussion of the translations of the new Roman Missal. 

Over the past several years a new translation of the Eucharistic prayers and all parts of the missal has been undertaken.  The first translation, immediately after the Second Vatican Council, was done with great speed because of the necessity to produce an English missal.  Now, forty years later, we have the opportunity to look more carefully at the translations to make sure they express the spirit of the original Latin prayers.  This work is tedious and painstaking, but I am sure in a few years we will have a new Roman Missal that will make the proclamation of our prayers and the celebration of the Eucharist even more meaningful and reverent.

Other important matters discussed by the Bishops were two recent studies that reflected on the religious state of Catholics in the United States.  One I already reported on, which was the Pew study entitled “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.”  One of the principal researchers spoke directly to the Bishops regarding the analysis of the Catholic population and the curious fact that many who were born Catholics have since changed their religious affiliation.  There are many reasons for this change and trying to understand it will perhaps give the Church a better opportunity to reach out to those who now only intermittently practice their faith, or practice another faith altogether.

Another study, done by the CARA organization, discussed the sacramental participation of Catholics.  It was no great surprise to the Bishops, but the hard facts give us cause to reflect and to plan more intensely for the New Evangelization.  This is a critical task of the Church today, to evangelize those who have already accepted the faith and have yet to hear the clear preaching of Jesus from our Catholic perspective.  Both of these studies and the presentations by the researchers who developed them gave much food for thought and will be subjects in future planning and programs.

Perhaps most interesting for me was following up on the document “The Challenge of Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.”  This past year, I chaired the Domestic Policy Committee, which was charged with developing a new statement, which is normally issued a year before the national elections, as an obligation of the Church to form consciences, not to endorse candidates, as is done by certain religious bodies.  This is a delicate task, however, and one that demands participation not only by the Bishops, but also by the Catholic faithful in an effort to form a conscience that enables the voter to cast a vote based on moral principles.  The Church, as a moral teacher, cannot neglect the responsibility to teach what we believe as objectively right and wrong.  We also believe in certain methods for attaining the best that we can in our imperfect society.  As the Bishops taught, conscience is “a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act.” 

Our actions do have implications both in time and eternity.  We are charged to be the best we can, to do our utmost to form our consciences in relationship to the objective truth.  As we make moral choices, we must exercise what is known as the virtue of prudence.  Prudence is not caution, but rather it enables us “to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it” (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1806).  How important it is in our complicated world to understand the issues and to choose the best means for achieving a just and moral society. 

Perhaps the most important principle for many moral implications in political life is the preservation of life itself.  There is a certain inherent hierarchy in our view of moral issues.  Logic tells us that without life all the other possible moral choices have no effect since there is no life to which they can be applied.  This is certainly true of the issues that threaten life itself today, principally abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia and assisted suicide.  These principal threats to the dignity of human life place a special demand on our consciences.  Other issues of importance also must be considered, for example, the death penalty, lack of health care, housing, human trafficking, all of which have moral implications, but as I said are in a certain sense secondary to the principal life issues.  Our choices very well should reflect this hierarchy of life values.

The primary campaign this year has been one of the longest and drawn out in my memory.  We now have two presumptive party candidates that will be confirmed at party conventions and supported by party platforms in the coming months.  It is our responsibility, and distasteful as it is, to follow the campaigns so that we can make informed choices knowing the issues before us.

In order to implement the challenge of forming consciences for faithful citizenship, the Bishops have approved several strategies to assist the faithful in using their voices to vote for the good, namely, the distribution of the document, “The Challenge of Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” which is available free on the Web site entitled www.faithfulcitizenship.org.  Bulletin announcements are available at reasonable cost from the USCCB, and an order form was sent to all parishes in the United States.  My hope is that many parishes will use the summary of Faithful Citizenship for general distribution. 

Bishop William Murphy of the Rockville Centre Diocese and I will be providing a workshop for the priests of the Rockville Centre and Brooklyn Dioceses in the fall, two days of teaching and discussion on the document, half the priests on one day and the other half on the second day.  This is the first effort since I have been Bishop here in Brooklyn to join these presbyterates together, since they are well known to one another, many of them having studied at the same seminary.  This gives us the opportunity for priestly fraternity, while at the same time accomplishes an important task of informing ourselves on how we can assist in the formation of conscience.

Other important action steps developed by the Bishops include meeting with the candidates before the conventions in order to form their consciences according to Catholic teaching.  This is a first-time effort on the part of the Bishops’ Conference, to have Conference leadership responsible for policy development, namely Bishops themselves, meet with the candidates.  Secondly, a national press conference launching Catholics and leadership closer to the national election and after the party conventions will be attempted for the first time also.  Finally, something that I believe can be of great assistance to voters is the comparison of the three platforms in the elections, namely, the challenge of forming conscience for faithful citizenship, which is the platform of the USCCB, and also the Democratic and Republican platforms in a side-by-side analysis, giving some indication of which party platform comes closest to the moral judgments of the Church. Most probably, no party will exactly mirror the moral judgments of our  Catholic social teaching, and here is where we must use the virtue of prudence in judging which candidate deserves our vote, which candidate will further the cause of a  moral and just society.

Every election campaign is certainly an exercise of “putting out into the deep.”  The candidates will, I hope, try to influence the voters not just with sound bites and promises, but with sincere reflection on their part of their positions and how they hope to earn the confidence of those who vote for them.  Please keep this election process in your prayers that it might produce good results for our country, so badly in need of good moral judgment.