Faithful citizenship: pray, judge, act
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In 1751, the Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania voted to order the casting of a bell that would be suspended from the tower of the statehouse in Philadelphia where the elected body of representatives met to govern that commonwealth. The Assembly ordered that the bell be inscribed with the following quotation from the Book of Leviticus: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all inhabitants thereof.” This bell became known as the Liberty Bell. It is important to note that the Liberty Bell was never intended to be a church bell; it was intended to ring out the reminder that political governance was based in liberty and equality of all human beings in the gift of their creation by God in His image and likeness. It serves as a metaphor that our faithful citizenship as Americans essentially requires prayer and the practice of our religious faith in public spheres of our life beyond simply the worship of God. Our responsibility as Catholic citizens is to exercise a prophetic but not revolutionary voice in our country.
I have recently found myself involved in conversations regarding the responsibility of Catholics to vote with a good and well-formed conscience. Some people have expressed troubled consciences because they find repellent the extremist tenor and substance of the candidates, who are at odds with the Gospel and the authentic teaching of the Church. Others have dismissed trouble from their consciences with the disclaimer that “sometimes one must choose the lesser evil.”
What troubles me is many people do not believe that what they judge to be the “lesser evil” is truly evil. This frequently concerns those inherently evil actions that directly harm human beings and can never be justified and are not simply one issue among many: abortion, racism, crime, euthanasia, terrorism, anti-religious bigotry, the vindictive use of capital punishment, the waging of unjust wars, the redefinition of marriage, and gender ideology imposed upon our children. Conscience formation also includes an array of social issues that are matters of the judgment of prudence about which honorable people may disagree. Yet, “prudential issues” should never imply that we can be indifferent to them because they lack the imperative to reject unjustifiable actions. A well-formed conscience can never become comfortable with evil. Although it might have to tolerate lesser evils, it can never be reconciled with evil.
We are called to do what is good just as much as we are called to reject evil. While voting is essential in fulfilling my responsibility as a faithful citizen, my citizenship does not end at the ballot box but requires me to collaborate with others in the promotion of good and the mitigation of evil. When our vote contributes to the establishment of policies that our well-formed conscience judges to be evil, we must work intentionally in other ways to promote and to defend the good that the particular evil undermines. Refusal to do so is to sin seriously by omission. We are always obliged to care about our neighbor. In the words of St. Alberto Hurtado, “It is good to do no evil, but it is evil to do no good.”
We cannot simply consider the guidance of the Gospel and teaching of the Church as having the status of just one voice among many and subordinate to a partisan ideology that permits no exceptions. Humble prayer to Christ as guided by the Holy Spirit saves us from adopting either a stance of moral relativism or one of extreme rigorism. We pray, listen, and then we judge in light of the example of Jesus Christ and His Gospel. We examine the facts and act in light of Sacred Scripture and the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church. Finally, we conclude again with prayer. As Vatican II taught in Gaudium et Spes, “Always summoning one to love good and to avoid evil, the voice of conscience can, when necessary, speak to one’s heart more specifically: do this, shun that.”
Please pray for guidance, visit the USCCB website on Faithful Citizenship, and vote.