In 2004, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops found themselves in the middle of a rancorous public debate about the church’s political priorities and Communion, its most holy sacrament.
As another presidential campaign gathers steam, the bishops are preparing to publish moral guidelines for political life, as they have every four years since the 1970s, this time with lessons learned from 2004.
The 2008 version of “Faithful Citizenship” will be debated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore next week (Nov. 12-15).
“We did not want to appear, as we enter a major political cycle, as if we’re trying to tell people how to vote,” said Archbishop John J.Myers of Newark, N.J. “We’re not taking a political role but the role of teachers.”
“Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” delineates in three sections how Catholics should behave in the public square. Rather than just present a checklist of the proper Catholic stance on issues, the document takes pains to explain the church’s role in politics.
And if the Catholic bishops are too “loosey–goosey” on who can receive communion, then the moral rot will set in inside the Catholic Church just as it has set in inside some mainstream Protestant denominations which never faced prophetically the moral abominations being promoted by the powerful and immoral mass media and power lusting judges.
You can’t be a Sunday Christian.