How did your Congresspeople vote in 2017?

As we head into the 2018 Mid-term elections, it is important to know how your congresspeople up for re-election have voted in the past. 

Network Lobby has put together a voting record for 2017 of all Congresspeople according to their policy platforms.  Learn more below:

NETWORK releases our annual voting record each year to evaluate all Members of Congress on how they voted during the previous session of Congress. View our 2017 voting record and see how your elected officials scored.

Two hundred and fifteen members of Congress were successful in voting with us 100% of the time.

Our system will read how your elected officials scores and pull up the appropriate messages whether your elected officials received a 100%, a passing grade, a failing grade, or are new to Congress. If you live in D.C., Delegate Norton will receive the same message as those new to Congress since she does not receive a score, but it’s still important to let her know about your values!

Don’t forget—you can personalize each message with your unique thoughts and encouragement!

To send a message to your elected official click here.  

A Call to Holiness: Pax Christi 2018 Voter Guide

Since our last national election, the people of the United States have seen growing political divides, widening economic disparity, and increasing instances of bigotry, hate, and violence often done in the name of patriotism. At the same time, we’ve seen communities across the country come together in support of the values of our faith and our nation.

As Catholics, we are called to carefully consider the many critical issues facing our nation. Pope Francis reminds us, “We cannot uphold an ideal of holiness that would ignore injustice in a world where some revel, spend with abandon and live only for the latest consumer goods, even as others look on from afar, living their entire lives in abject poverty.”

This election, Catholic voters have a choice to make. Catholic Social Teaching directs us to participate in public life and exercise our civic duty. Let us engage ourselves and others this election season and choose the path of the common good, to seek a better life for everyone.

We hope this guide will help us all apply longstanding Catholic teaching to the most pressing issues of our time. The 2018 Election comes in the context of deep reflection on where we are going as a country. It is critical that we examine candidates’ positions on the multiple and interrelated policies that defend the dignity of all God’s people. We must also address these issues with a commitment to civility and dialogue in pursuit of the common good.

Please share widely. You are welcome to print and distribute.

2018 Midterm Voter Guide Booklet

2018 Midterm Voter Guide Digital Version

Llamado a la Santidad Guia para Votantes – 2018

Original posting on Pax Christi USA website 

LCWR Commits to Gospel Values in Post-Election Season

November 17, 2016

The presidency and staff of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious congratulate President-elect Donald J. Trump and promise to work with him to build a society worthy of our values where the dignity of each person is respected and all can flourish.

We thank Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton for her many years of service and sacrifice on behalf of our nation. We are especially grateful for her tireless commitment to promoting the wellbeing of women and girls everywhere.

After a difficult and contentious election characterized by partisan rancor and divisive rhetoric, it is time for all of us to ask forgiveness and be reconciled with one another. We are called to “. . . put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with one another, and forgive whatever grievances you have against one another. Beyond all these things put on love which is the perfect bond of unity.” (Colossians 3:12-14)

Now is the time to heal the deep divisions laid bare by this bruising political campaign and to tear down the walls, real or imagined, which divide us by gender, race, class, geography, lifestyle, political party and belief. This moment, these times, require us to engage in deep contemplative prayer and to risk courageous action for the sake of all who call these United States their home.

Now is the time to make space in our hearts and our homes for the needs and concerns of all God’s people, the undocumented mother, the unemployed steel-worker father, and those children and elders consigned to live in poverty. It is long past time to make room in our politics for those who have been disaffected, disenfranchised, and discarded.

We recall the many times that Catholic sisters in the United States and around the world have been called upon to exercise courage in the face of fear and division. We promise once again to be the healing hands of God. We pledge to hold the needs and concerns of all in a contemplative space, in the heart of a loving and ever faithful God.

We recommit ourselves to the Gospel call to welcome the stranger, care for creation, establish economic justice, abolish every form of modern-day slavery, and promote nonviolence and just peace and we pledge to continue to work together with all people of good will to build God’s beloved community in this place we call home.

(from LCWR webpage)

A Citizen's Prayer for the Pending Election

A Citizen’s Prayer: Election 2016  
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Call to Prayer:
Each son or daughter of a given country has a mission, a personal and social responsibility. We are called to defend and preserve the dignity of our fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics. A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. (Adapted from address of Pope Francis to the US Congress, September 24, 2015.) 

Reading: None of us can say, ‘I have nothing to do with this, they govern. . . .’ No, I am responsible I have to do my best by participating in politics according to my ability. Politics, according to the Social Doctrine of the Church, is one of the highest forms of charity, because it serves the common good. I cannot wash my hands. We all have to give something! A good Catholic meddles in politics, offering the best of him or herself, so that those who govern can govern. And what is the best that we can offer to those who govern? Prayer! (Adapted from a homily of Pope Francis, September 13, 2013.)

And so let us pray . . .

Leader: God of all creation, in a world where life and dignity is threatened at every turn by racism, xenophobia, misogyny, consumerism, and environmental degradation, we pray for the grace to choose leaders who will build a nation where all of God’s creation is cherished and the dignity of each and every person is respected. 
Response: Creator God, grant us the grace of discernment.

Leader: Spirit of wisdom, make us mindful of our brothers and sisters who suffer from poverty, injustice, and violence, We pray for the insight to choose leaders who understand that the moral test of our society is how the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable are faring.
Response: Spirit of God, grant us the grace to choose wisely. 

Leader: Word of God, in this election season fraught as it is with conflict and division; where some pit neighbor against neighbor and try to turn us against ourselves, we pray for the courage to choose those who will labor to heal divisions and build the common good.
Response: Word of God, grant us the grace to stand in solidarity with all who seek to build your beloved community.

All: Good and gracious Triune God, we pray that through your mercy and ever abundant love these elections may lead to a world of greater peace, where justice is the norm, and all of God’s creation is treasured. Amen!

(created by the LCWR Office for Social Mission) 

Join Oct 5 Webinar: Faithfully Engaged in the 2016 Election

IIC WEBINAR: October 5^th at 4pm 

Faithfully Engaged in the 2016 Election

We are one month out from election day! And candidates, trying to get your vote, want to hear your perspective. What will you tell them? How can you best get your message across?

Join the Interfaith Immigration Coalition on Wednesday, October 5^th at 4 pm EST for a special webinar. We’ll outline ways that communities of faith can meaningfully participate in the final month before the election, key for building support for compassionate action on immigration in 2017.

Civic engagement is a key component of integration and building welcoming communities. Participating in civil society by voting, understanding the issues of the day, and engaging in civil and productive conversation with others is one of the many strengths of the United States and an important part of integration for new Americans.

Join the webinar on October 5th and find out:

• How can we strengthen our democracy by ensuring that more people are registered to vote, including new American voters?
• How can people of faith ensure better access to the polls for disenfranchised voters?
• How can we talk about the election from a faith perspective to our neighbors, faith communities, the media, and directly to candidates for public office?

Speakers include a first-time voter, and representatives from Church World Service, the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Register today!

2016 Pope Francis Voter Guide

“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/ 

Human Rights and the Peru Elections

Human Rights Agenda in the Peru Elections

The upcoming general elections in Peru call us to be aware of the candidates and how they will work to defend human rights in this country, attending to the four important freedoms to protect: freedom from misery, freedom from fear, respecting the freedom of worship and expression; as the UN called for in December 2015.

Thus, the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (IDEHPUCP) presented to political organizations participating in the next election (April 2016) and the general public the Human Rights Agenda. This document focuses on various issues to be included in both plans for the new government and public discussion during the 2016 general elections.

The Institute considers it essential to include in the electoral debate a list of problems associated with the promotion and protection of human rights, the same as, in general, those which seem to be absent from the debates between presidential and parliamentary candidates. The Human Rights Agenda is organized into three axes.

• First, the transitional agenda related to tasks focused on truth, justice, and reparations for victims of the period of violence that took place in the country between 1980 and 2000. In particular, to consider issues relating to reparations, the Place of Remembrance, human rights education, tracing missing persons and responding to the needs of their families.

• Second, the use of the armed forces, particularly during social conflicts. Our Institute considers it important to address this issue despite the guarantees that the State respects the environment and the rights of those involved. 

• Third, the problems of vulnerable groups, which have a higher risk of having their rights violated. This includes people with disabilities, women, indigenous peoples, migrants and LGBTI citizens.

PRAYER FOR THE ELECTIONS. Lord, open our understanding of the responsibilities that accompany human freedom. Grant this nation wisdom to choose those who will lead the country and help us to stay responsible and vigilant so that those elected fulfill their duties for the good of all.   Amen