“The Gospel tells us constantly to risk a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction. True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness.”—Pope Francis (Evangelii Gaudium 72)
As we live out this Jubilee Year of Mercy and the United States enters into the 2016 election season, Americans face a myriad of choices between competing visions for our nation’s future. As Catholics, we are called by our faith to engage in this election. Pope Francis says that “a good Catholic meddles in politics, offering the best of one’s self so that those who govern can govern well.”
Politics, Francis says, “is one of the highest forms of love, because it is in the service of the common good.” While visiting the United States last year, he called on us to orient our politics based on the Christian models of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln.
We engage in this political process not because we’re partisan, but because we’re Christians.
Our faith offers a specific vision for the common good. It isn’t theoretical or abstract. It’s rooted in the story and person of Jesus Christ. In short, the entire social vision of the Catholic Church is this: in Jesus, God became poor to save humanity from every form of oppression. We must do likewise.
The Catholic vision for the common good, then, is a radical invitation to what Pope Francis calls a “revolution of tenderness.”
God’s mercy reigns in this new community. Here the last are first, the poor are blessed, and enemies are loved. Black lives matter here. LGBTQ lives matter here; and so too do the lives of refugees, the imprisoned, the unborn, and anyone else who suffers dehumanization, exclusion, and injustice.
While we offer this guide to help inform our brothers and sisters about their specifically political vocation as Catholics in the United States, let us say at the outset: We do not in any way wish to claim for ourselves the right to speak for the Catholic Church, nor for all Catholics.
Instead we offer this guide to show how we apply the teachings of our Church to the problems of our day. We here seek to take up the call issued by the American bishops in their document Faithful Citizenship to form our consciences in light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. By doing so, we hope our brothers and sisters will prayerfully examine the signs of the times and reach informed, conscientious decisions about the issues we hold dear as Catholics and as Americans.
Read more here: https://popefrancis16.com/
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