Catholics in Political Life

In order to assist Catholic voters of Pennsylvania to make informed decisions at the polls this November, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the public affairs agency of Pennsylvania’s Catholic bishops, will publish a survey of statewide candidates. The survey will indicate candidates’ positions on a variety of issues, most particularly those that affect the sanctity of human life. The Catholic Light will publish that survey in its Oct. 19 edition, along with a similar report on local candidates for state offices. 

To assist our readers in evaluating the positions of the various candidates, the Light is publishing a series of three articles. The first, presented below, offers a brief summary of Catholic teaching regarding the responsibility of Catholics in political life and appears below. The second, which will outline Church teaching on the life issues, including abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, war and capital punishment, will appear in the Sept. 28 edition. The third article will deal with biomedical questions, including embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and emergency contraception, and will appear in the Oct. 19 edition. 

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In 2002, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a statement briefly explaining the responsibility of Catholics in political life. Faithful Citizenship, published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2003, said of this responsibility, “Faithful citizenship calls Catholics to see civic and political responsibilities through the eyes of faith and to bring our moral convictions to public life. People of good will and sound faith can disagree about specific applications of sound principles. However, Catholics in public life have a particular responsibility to bring together consistently their faith, moral principles, and public responsibilities . . . The Catholic community’s participation in public affairs does not undermine, but enriches the political process and affirms genuine pluralism. Leaders of the Church have the right and duty to share Catholic teaching and to educate Catholics on the moral dimensions of public life, so that they may form their consciences in light of their faith.” 

The same statement by the bishops, remarking on that faith and our Catholic morality, observed, “A Catholic moral framework does not easily fit the ideologies of ‘right’ or ‘left,’ nor the platforms of any party. Our values are often not ‘politically correct.’ Believers are called to be a community of conscience within the larger society and to test public life by the values of Scripture and the principles of Catholic social teaching. Our responsibility is to measure all candidates, policies, parties, and platforms by how they protect or undermine the life, dignity, and rights of the human person – whether they protect the poor and vulnerable and advance the common good.”

In a document issued in 2004, the bishops spoke of the obligation of lawmakers,
especially Catholic politicians, to form their own consciences properly and to work toward correcting morally defective laws. All Catholics, it says, should examine carefully the positions of candidates and “make choices based on Catholic moral and social teaching.” The faithful should not honor with political support or public accolades candidates who are vague or unclear about the sanctity of life or who act in defiance of fundamental moral norms (Catholics in Political Life).

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in a 1987 Instruction on Respect for Human Life observed that “Promoting human dignity implies above all affirming the inviolability of the right to life, from conception to natural death, the first among all rights and the condition for all other rights of the person.”

Catholics have a responsibility, in fact, to live out the gospel of life in their private lives and to work diligently in all public venues – politics, law, medicine, business – to oppose attacks on human dignity. Failure to do this on the part of many Catholics has led to a split between the faith that many profess and what they do in their personal and professional lives. Vatican II called this tendency “one of the more serious errors of our age” (Pastoral Constitution in the Church in the Modern World, no. 43, 1966).