Denver Newsroom, Oct 11, 2020 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- Abortion is a “fundamental threat to the beginning of life itself” and Catholics can’t be passive on the “pre-eminent” human rights issue, the right to life, Bishop Felipe Estevez of St. Augustine has said in a pre-election letter to his diocese’s Catholics about the importance of conscientious political participation.
“Pope Francis has made it clear that if we fail to protect life, no other rights matter. He also said that abortion is not primarily a Catholic or even a religious issue: it is first and foremost a human rights issue,” Bishop Estevez said in his Oct. 7 letter.
He rejected the claim of those who say, “as a matter of faith, I am against abortion, but I cannot impose my belief on others.” Such claims reflect a commitment to the “false belief” that some human beings don’t deserve legal protection, said the bishop.
“It is not a matter of imposing a belief, but of being committed to the truth about human life, which, as biological science confirms, begins at conception,” he said.
Citing the Declaration of Independence, Estevez said the Founding Fathers knew that the right to life “surpassed all others in importance” because “without the right to life, none of the other rights could be protected.”
“The right to life was, and is, preeminent,” said the bishop.
He said the bishops are praying for Catholics who seek to be educated voters with well-formed consciences.
“This is a difficult time in our nation and a critical time to not only exercise your right to vote but to do so with the utmost integrity,” he said.
Discussing the importance of participation in public life, Estevez said that politics is about “securing justice in society” and is thus “a fundamentally moral activity.”
“While the Church and its clergy cannot endorse a particular candidate or political party, we do have a responsibility to encourage you to understand the issues in the context of Church teaching and to help you in this area of the ‘proper formation of your conscience’,” he said.
“As Catholics, our belief is that there are fundamental truths about the human person and society that are accessible to both faith and reason,” he continued. “We, therefore, have a right and a duty to participate in the public square in a way that reflects these truths, both for the good of our community and for the glory of the God who created us.”
He cited the words of the Our Father, when Christians pray to fulfill God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven.”
“We cannot with integrity pray the words of the Our Father or say ‘Amen’ when receiving the Eucharist, and then be passive on the issues that destroy God’s creation,” he said. “This is true for all people of faith, elector, and elected officials.”
“Some would prefer that Catholics and others of faith remain silent, or they will say that such beliefs have no place in the public square,” Estevez said. “Such views run contrary to our fraternal bonds and commitment to the common good as equal and valued citizens.”
He rejected the claim that focusing on “the preeminent issue of abortion” means the Church promotes “single-issue voting that will tend to support a particular candidate or party.”
“The Church will always act to promote the dignity and value of every human life from conception to natural death. We care about both mothers and their children, born and unborn, as well as the poor, the immigrant, the sick, the disabled, the elderly, those who are marginalized, and those on death row. We seek to promote a Culture of Life through our teaching and through our ministries, some of which are threatened by the extreme positions taken by some on issues of life and the family.”
“The political parties and their candidates have provided you with information that they believe will help you to understand their positions on issues that are important to you and for the good of the country,” he explained. “The Church engages in this political process by providing you with the faith context to judge some of these positions.”
Estevez spoke with CNA about his letter.
“It is very important that our citizens vote, and that they vote consciously reflecting on the spectrum of the entire social teaching of the Church and that they consider the intrinsic evils in a very prominent way,” he said Oct. 9.
“Like I say in my (letter’s) first paragraph: I don’t tell you who to vote for, that is your great and awesome responsibility,” the bishop said. “Please vote. It is a patriotic and common good responsibility.”
Estevez told CNA he put euthanasia on “the same level of intrinsic evils” as abortion, drawing from the teachings of Benedict XVI and St. John Paul II. “I think we need to protect as well our senior citizens. Regretfully, there are several states as well that do not protect them,” he said.
The letter includes a quotation from St. John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae, addressing the case of “an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia,” in which the pope said “it is therefore never licit to obey it, or take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it.”
Estevez said that in his letter “I enumerate all the other issues, including the death penalty, which are you aware is on the other side of the political spectrum, Republican and Democrat.”
He said the diocese and the Florida Catholic Conference had done much work to provide Catholics with a list of issues presenting the positions of the political parties.
However, he decided to write the letter after continued requests from laity who were “struggling with how to make a decision.”
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While I support background checks and banning felons and the mentally ill from owning guns, Chicago already has very strict gun laws and they have failed miserably in curbing violence.
Did the archbishop even bother to learn this fact?
Cardinal needs to shut his mouth and mind his own business. Take the beam out of your own eye Cardinal before worrying about the mote in your neighbor’s.
I find it dispiriting that you think it’s more appropriate to castigate DiNardo for speaking out against a senseless loss of life… and that he should “mind his own business”? This is a website whose writers and users proffer almost exclusively in minding others’ business. The moment someone speaks out against gun violence, they are getting too uppity?
I urge you to think more with charity and empathy, instead of venting hate and anger as your first recourse. It’s bad for the soul.
What utter nonsense. There is no such thing as “gun violence”. The gun is a tool. Do we characterize the genocide of the 1990s in Rwanda as “machete violence”? no we do not because the tool used to commit the horrendous acts of violence is simply the material at hand. The Cardinal should pull his head out of his fourth point of contact and focus on the underlying hatred, mental distress, and the triggering causes of the act of violence. We don’t focus on the crack pipe when helping addicts heal, we focus on their mental and physical state, and those things that cause the addict to reach out for the crack pipe (or the bong, or the bottle). Its not the presence of the crack pipe that made the addict light-up, it was an mental/emotional disorder. Cardinal DiNardo’s continuance of the myth of “gun violence” is yet another entry on the scroll of reasons the laity do not trust the judgement of the “leaders” of the Catholic Church in America. They continue to prove their judgment clouded by emotion, false reasoning, and lack of focus on authentic Catholic Apostolic Teaching.
Begs the question, when was the last time that the Cardinal purchased a firearm from a federally licensed firearms dealer? Has he ever? My guess is that he has not because anyone who executes a legal purchase from a federally licensed firearm dealer is well aware of the extensive ‘reasonable’ restrictions already in place. And there are many.
Additionally Cardinal DiNardo’s calling into question how someone ‘capable of such violence was able to obtain a firearms to carry out this heinous act’ betrays a stunning naiveté on at least two fronts. First, does the Cardinal really lack imagination to such a degree that he cannot consider any number of ways both legal and illegal that the weapon was acquired? Was his question rhetorical or an irresponsible and ill-informed throw away comment indicting the legal firearms market?
Secondly, does the Cardinal not realize that we are all fallen and capable of committing evil? That someone is capable of acquiring a firearm and committing such a heinous act is a surprise to him? Really? Murders happen everyday in Chicago and only now is he surprised that people commit murder? At risk of putting too fine a point on it, on what planet does he live?