Bishop Doran's Column for May 6...

Vote your principles and hopes for the future
I want to say this early on, so that if it has to be said again later, this issue of The Observer will be proof that I did not wait until a tactically crucial point in the 2004 campaign to speak up, but said my piece at the very beginning.

We have been, for some months, involved in the quadrennial exercise whereby we are hypnotized into the belief that our ballots in November count for everything. In reality, the supine negligence of our legislators and the arrogance of our unelected federal judiciary have brought it about that our votes count for almost nothing. But the emphasis that I wish to place is on the almost, the small difference that our choices do make.

As followers of Christ and faithful members of his Church, it is our obligation to form our consciences after consulting the teachings of the Church and then to follow our consciences to the extent we are allowed a choice in choosing our leaders. It is not within the province of bishops, priests or deacons to tell anyone how he or she should vote, but it is within the power of God to do so, through the judgments of our properly formed consciences.

For some time, young people have adorned bracelets and necklaces with the letters WWJD – What Would Jesus Do? It is difficult to say what Jesus would do in this 21st century because we have, from the accounts of his life in the Gospels, only what he did in the first century. Nevertheless, through the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to us in Confirmation – wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and reverence — we can discern with confidence the principles of life that Jesus taught us and wishes us to follow.

Thus, by the use of a properly formed Catholic conscience, we can determine what Almighty God calls us to do and what leaders He calls us to choose if we are to preserve for ourselves and our children the blessings of equal liberty and, more importantly, to pass on the Catholic faith to our posterity, together with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Does your conscience tell you that God calls us to national suicide? If it does, then by all means choose leaders who will promote contraception, abortion, euthanasia and the gay lifestyle. We need only to look around us, among the erstwhile nations of the world, to see which ones have perished and why. Those nations have perished which despised children, disrespected the elderly and demeaned the holy state of marriage.

Does your conscience tell you that your children should live under the threat of terror for all their natural lives? If it does, vote for those who appease terrorists, who despise strength of character and purpose, who believe in faulty education and the coarsening of public morals.

Does your conscience tell you that public institutions are not bound by the moral law? Does it tell you that slackening standards of education will produce a more capable population for the future? Does it say that the poor have no claim on us for help in problems of housing, nutrition and health care? If these are the dictates of your conscience, then vote for the people who support these things and vote against those who hold the opposite. Make a choice and then live with it. It has been said more than once: we Americans get the government we deserve, and deserve the government we get, because we choose it.

We have in our country long since lost the ideal of republican representative government. But it is not yet totally beyond our power to choose from among those who contend for our votes those candidates who, by their private lives of sobriety and upright conduct, have shown in small matters that they can be put in charge of greater affairs.

The point, I suppose, of this column is to suggest that you ought to choose people who will act in accord with your convictions and not merely be swept into the polling place by mere partisan concerns, by a desire only to come out and say, “I voted for the winner,” or worse, to make your choice based upon the puerile presentations sometimes made in campaign commercial announcements. Moreover, the so-called debates we see are not particularly helpful since they are not, strictly speaking, debates. Instead, they are oratorical contests in which rhetoric substitutes for logic, and spin for substance.

It requires a Herculean effort of voters to seek out the truth since we have hardly any reliable sources of news available to us.
Nevertheless, we must do our best against the odds. It is easy to say we are at a crossroads. That may or may not be true, but what is true is that those we choose for public office will, whether we want them to or not, make decisions for us in the coming months and years that will affect our lives and our children’s lives for ages.

Do not complain afterwards that, despite our best efforts, the pagans won. Of old, the pagans actually conquered few countries by battle. They often simply overwhelmed their adversaries after the inhabitants let them in.

It is a lesson for us that we must be vigilant in not letting those who would destroy our Catholic Christian way of life take office and dismantle that which has made this nation the envy of the ages.

As always, Bishop Doran asks the questions that NEED to be asked of Catholics...and, indeed, of all God-fearing people.

The Link to the Bishop's column is here but I'm not certain if they are achived or not.