Today is World Mission Sunday. The theme is: “Go and invite everyone to the banquet.” (Matthew 22:9) World Mission Sunday “serves as a clarion call to mobilize faith, resources and action in support of the Mission Church in places where the faith is young, growing, or facing particular challenges.” Your generous donation helps to educate children, assist catechists, and educate seminarians. Additionally, the Pontifical Mission Societies manage shelters, provide healthcare clinics, and for the needs of Religious Sisters serving the impoverished throughout the world. An envelope for World Mission Sunday has been included in your October / November envelope packet. Thank you for your generous support.
Election Day is Tuesday, 5 November, only sixteen more days. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops offers guidance regarding elections on their website – https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/faithful-citizenship/forming-consciences-for-faithful-citizenship-title The following is from the Faithful Citizenship introductory statement.
As Catholics and Americans, we are blessed to be able to participate in our nation’s political and public life. Our freedoms respect the dignity of individuals and their consciences and allow us to come together for the common good. Election seasons, therefore, should contain a sense of gratitude and hope. Our love for this country, our patriotism, properly impels us to vote.
We propose once more the moral framework of Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship precisely as pastors, inspired by the Good Samaritan, with the hope of binding these wounds and healing bitter divisions. This document reflects the perennial role of the Church in public life in proclaiming timeless principles: the infinite worth and dignity of every human life, the common good, solidarity, and subsidiarity.
Allowing your conscience to be stretched and formed can give you peace! They point to Jesus’ challenge to show mercy to those in need, just as the Good Samaritan. As Pope Francis writes, “Here, all our distinctions, labels and masks fall away: it is the moment of truth. Will we bend down to touch and heal the wounds of others?” (Fratelli Tutti, no. 70.) Let this be in our hearts when we talk about politics and make political choices.
Thus, Pope Francis exhorts us to “genuine dialogue and openness to others,” by which we may “be frank and open about our beliefs, while continuing to discuss, to seek points of contact, and above all, to work and struggle together” (Fratelli tutti, no. 203). This applies to the faithful both as voters and as candidates—we must consider not only candidates’ positions on these issues, but their character and integrity as well.
Participation in political life also requires judgments about concrete circumstances. On these often-complex matters, it is the laity’s responsibility to form their consciences and grow in the virtue of prudence to approach the many and varied issues of the day with the mind of Christ. Conscience is “a judgment of reason” by which one determines whether an action is right or wrong It does not allow us to justify doing whatever we want, nor is it a mere “feeling.” Conscience—properly formed according to God’s revelation and the teaching of the Church—is a means by which one listens to God and discerns how to act in accordance with the truth. The truth is something we receive, not something we make. We can only judge using the conscience we have, but our judgments do not make things true.
It is our responsibility to learn more of Catholic teaching and tradition, to participate in Church life, to learn from trustworthy sources about the issues facing our communities, and to do our best to make wise judgments about candidates and government actions.
The teachings of the Church, moreover, offer a vision of hope, where justice and mercy abound, because God is the infinite source of all goodness and love. With this wisdom and hope, we can find a way to bend down as the Good Samaritan did, through the fear and divisions, to touch and heal the wounds.
May God bless you as you consider and pray over these challenging decisions. May God bless our nation with true wisdom, peace, and mutual forgiveness, that we may decide together, through our democratic processes, to uphold the dignity of life and the common good.