The US Bishops have requested that on this labor day weekend, preachers. speak about something they call Faithful Citizenship. What is that term?

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Laurel Terry
5 years ago
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1 Homily on Faithful Citizenship September 1-2, 2012 Fr John S Grimm The US Bishops have requested that on this labor day weekend, preachers speak about something they call Faithful Citizenship. What is that term? It means that Christians from the earliest times have tried to be both 1. People of faith who practice what they believe, and 2. Good citizens of whatever country they find themselves in. even in the New Testament letters of St Peter and St Paul, you find the apostles exhorting the faithful to be law abiding, loyal citizens of the empire, paying their taxes, praying for the emperor and contributing to the social order around them. At times during the history of the church, this dual role has been impossible to fulfill, as was the case in the intermittent persecutions of Christians by the Roman authorities, when they tried to force Christians to sacrifice to the cult of the Emperor. As a result, many of the faithful were martyred because they refused to commit idolatry and sacrilege, just to please the emperor. Hundreds of years later, in England, St Thomas More suffered martyrdom at the hands of Henry VIII likewise for not bowing to pressure to violate his conscience, and he got the order of our two duties, one to God and one to country right, when he said: I die the king s good servant, but God s first. So being a faithful citizen means fulfilling our civic duties and roles in our nation, while staying true to our beliefs and values as Catholics. We are talking therefore about making conscientious decisions, about allowing what we know to 1

2 be true from our catholic faith to inform how we behave in society; what we support and oppose politically, even who we vote for. Yes, as someone said, we must not take our catholic faith with us into the voting booth. Whatever your party affiliation, whether you lean right or left or see yourself as red or blue, it doesn t matter, the church is saying we must allow our catholic faith to inform our attitudes, preferences and choices. Now the church and common sense teaches that every person has a right and a duty to follow their own conscience. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, conscience is a judgment of practical reason that helps us to recognize and seek what is good, and to reject what is evil. (Catechism Catholic Church, no. 1796). Do good and reject evil, that the moral law. I remember there was a movie in the 80s called Do the Right Thing, I never bothered to see the movie, but that title stuck in my mind. Conscience is not just a feeling we have that is an excuse for doing whatever we feel ; rather, it is a gift that God gives us which must be continually formed and renewed. Just that subtle shift to asking yourself: what do I want to do, to what should I do, or better, what does God want me to do? There s a saying I like to tell young men: boys do what they want, men do what they have to do (needs to be done). Another way of saying it is to say to be a mature responsible person, we must make choices that we honestly believed to be good ones, or at least just or reasonable choices. Put simply, we must do the right thing, what we believe to be the right thing, even if it means denying ourselves something we want or doing something we don t want to do. 2

3 Sometimes what is right and what is wrong is not so clear. Like in politics, there often seems to be good reasons for supporting or opposing some policy or new law. Now its part of what makes America great that we are pragmatic, often we first ask, what will work?, and we support that. But we also have to ask if we are to be faithful citizens, is this right? Is it just, is it consistent with God s moral law or opposed to it? I teach bioethics in seminary, and one of the maddening things is dealing with people, often scientists or clinicians, who say, we can clone human beings in the lab, so they start to do it without asking is this right? Is it ethical or moral? How do we then know what is right and what is wrong? Well our conscience is supposed to tell us, and as I said, every person has a right from God to follow their own conscience. Sometimes people who disagree with church teaching will remind me of that, that they say they just disagree with the teaching and how can they be blamed since they are following their conscience? But with the right to follow your conscience comes the duty to inform your conscience. Your conscience is like the hardware of a computer, and the moral and ethical teachings of our faith is like the software. The computer won t work unless you download the software, the operating system that makes the machine work. Thus in order to practice faithful citizenship, we must really know church teaching, not just the conclusions but the reasons for the conclusions. And we must allow the truths of our catholic faith to inform our consciences so that when we are faced with a choice to support this or that candidate, or initiative, we can make the 3

4 right choice. So this sermon has nothing to do with telling you how to vote, it really doesn t, its about encouraging you to inform your consciences about what is right and what is wrong so that you can decide for yourselves well how to vote. Today s readings give us some indication how we should inform our consciences. The first reading from Deuteronomy asks, Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe, that you may live. These statutes and decrees are God s Law, especially the Ten Commandments, which are perennially valid because they are part of the law of our human nature. If the atheists would ever stop running amuck and we could teach the children the ten commandments in public school, the world would be a much better place. God s law is not given us to take away our freedom but to preserve it by making us love goodness and choose rightly. We should remember God s laws as interpreted by the church when we select candidates in November. And in the Gospel today we hear: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. We do that when we toss God s word behind our back in the practice of our daily lives, including our political choices. We must honor God in all we think say and do, keep in mind his words when we make even choices who to vote for. I do hope that you all own a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and that you look things up in it from time to time. It is a reliable source for what the church actually teaches and why. 4

5 Finally, In their statement, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the bishops name a number of issues about which we should form our consciences. Some of these include: Continuing destruction of unborn children through abortion and other threats to the lives and dignity of others who are vulnerable, sick, or unwanted; Renewed efforts to force Catholic ministries in health care, education, and social services to violate their consciences or stop serving those in need; Efforts to redefine marriage and enact measures which undermine marriage as between one man and one woman and an institution essential to the common good; An economic crisis which has devastated lives and livelihoods, increasing unemployment, poverty, hunger, deficits and debt, and the duty to respond in ways that protect the poor and future generations; The failure to repair a broken immigration system with comprehensive measures that promote respect for law, human rights and the dignity of immigrants and refugees, and which keep families together, and advance the common good; Wars, terror, and violence which raise serious moral questions about the human and moral costs of force, particularly in regards to the Holy Land and Middle East. So please, before you exercise your right to vote, fulfill your duty to inform your conscience with the teaching of the one, holy catholic and apostolic church. 5

Marriage. Embryonic Stem-Cell Research

Marriage. Embryonic Stem-Cell Research Marriage Embryonic Stem-Cell Research 1 The following excerpts come from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops Faithful Citizenship document http://www.usccb.org/faithfulcitizenship/fcstatement.pdf