NEWS STORY: Bishops urge `new politics’ for new millennium

c. 1999 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ The country’s Roman Catholic bishops, as they do before every national political campaign, called on the church’s 43 million voting-age Catholics to get involved in politics and, this time, to forge a”new politics for the new millennium.””The next millennium requires a new kind of politics,”the bishops said in […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ The country’s Roman Catholic bishops, as they do before every national political campaign, called on the church’s 43 million voting-age Catholics to get involved in politics and, this time, to forge a”new politics for the new millennium.””The next millennium requires a new kind of politics,”the bishops said in a 19-page statement,”focused more on moral principles than on the latest polls, more on the needs of the poor and vulnerable than the contributions of the rich and powerful, more on the pursuit of the common good than the demands of special interests.”We must challenge all parties and every candidate to defend human life and dignity, to pursue greater justice and peace, to uphold family life, and to advance the common good,”they said.

The statement,”Faithful Citizenship: Civic Responsibility for a New Millennium,”is expected to be widely distributed by the U.S. Catholic Conference, the bishops’ social action arm, and individual dioceses during the the coming year leading up to the November 2000 election.”Every believer is called to faithful citizenship, to become an informed, active and responsible participant in the political process,”the bishops said. They urged Catholics to move beyond indifference and cynicism about the political process.


But as they have in other election years, the bishops also said they”do not seek the formation of a religious voting bloc. Nor do we wish to instruct persons on how they should vote by endorsing or opposing candidates.” Still, the statement said, the bishops are convinced”a consistent ethic of life should be the moral framework from which to address all issues in the political arena.” Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of the Galveston-Houston Diocese, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, underscored the point, saying the church can make its voice heard without endorsing a particular candidate.”The challenge for our church is to be principled without being ideological, to be political without being partisan.” The statement recognizes the contemporary diversity of a Catholic community once considered a monolithic voting bloc.”The Catholic community is large and diverse,”the statement says.”We are Republicans, Democrats and Independents. We are members of every race, come from every ethnic background, and live in urban, rural and suburban communities. We are CEOs and migrant farm workers, senators and people on public assistance, business owners and union members.” In the statement, the bishops touched on a number of familiar political stances they have taken, such as their opposition to abortion, as well as some less well-known, such as a call for debt relief to overcome the poverty of the world’s poorest countries.”As Catholics,”they said,”we are not free to abandon unborn children because they are seen as unwanted or inconvenient,”adding at the same time”we are not free … to turn our backs on immigrants because they lack the proper documents, to turn away from poor women and children because they lack economic or political power.”Nor can we neglect international responsibilities because the Cold War is over,”they added.”No polls or focus groups can release us from the responsibility to speak up for the voiceless, to act in accord with our moral convictions.” The statement, which listed a series of 10 questions voters should use to evaluate candidates’ positions and decisions, said,”Every candidate, policy, and political platform should be measured by how they touch the human person; whether they enhance or diminish human life and dignity, and human rights; and how they advance the common good.” The bishops said they hoped the document would be used in parishes, dioceses, schools and other Catholic institutions to encourage active participation in nonpartisan voter registration drives and voter education efforts.

Eds: The full text of”Faithful Citizenship”is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.nccbuscc.org)

DEA END ANDERSON

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