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 

U.S. Catholic Sisters Against Human Trafficking Voter Guide

Human Trafficking, also referred to as modern-day slavery, is the use of force, fraud or coercion in an effort to exploit someone for some type of labor or a commercial sex act. The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 40.3 million victims of human trafficking around the world, including 24.9 million in forced labor and 15.4 million in forced marriage. We have a moral responsibility to end modern slavery around the world, and we must elect candidates who work to eradicate human trafficking through funding for survivor services, increased awareness, harsher penalties for traffickers, and holding all perpetrators, including individuals and businesses, accountable.

The U.S. Catholic Sisters Against Human Trafficking (USCSAHT) hope that you will use this guide as a tool to see how candidates in this next election have responded or plan to respond to the grave sin of human trafficking. Using the quotations from Catholic teaching as a guide, we encourage you to research how candidates for elected office in your area plan to do the hard work necessary to eradicate human trafficking. If their views and plans are in line with Catholic teaching, put a “check” next to the box with their name. If you are unsure of where the candidate stands on the various aspects of trafficking, you might consider raising the issue at a campaign event or writing to them using the contact information on their campaign website.

To download an 11×8.5 PDF of the Voter Guide: Click Here

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/ 

A Revolution of Tenderness--A 2016 Election Pope Francis Values Reflection Guide

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.” He called on us to orient our politics based on the Christian models of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Martin Luther King Jr.

We engage in this political process not because we’re partisan, but because we’re Christian.

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.”

We invite our fellow Christians and all people to consider carefully how candidates do, and do not, embrace the vision of Jesus and the values of God’s beloved community, and to make prudential judgments about which candidates best reflect Christian love.

We offer this guide to help inform our brothers and sisters about their specifically political vocation as Catholic Christians in the United States. Please feel free to share it widely.

http://popefrancis16.com/