“Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.”
Legend of King Cepheus and Cassiopeia, punished by his country being destroyed. Sacrificed his daughter.
We are facing now a grim world of politics. More than ever, the support of a political leader and the support of the values that matter is getting harder and harder to line up.
First, the family and most local area is where we can and will have the greatest impact. Turn into your family and work there. Prayer. Be people of prayer within any and all decisions. Make God your God.
Catholic Social Teaching rises above the divisions of our politics. We should look first and foremost to the Catholic social teaching. We seem to look first to a political party.
Voting is a duty, but we are to vote with a conscience. Man has a conscience, has an obligation to follow his conscience, but also an obligation to form his conscience. “Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right” We must fully and completely be aware, be conscious of the effects of our actions, all of them. We must begin by saying I want to seek what is true and good. Not necessarily what is most efficient, not what is most profitable, pleasant or comfortable.
We do not have an enforced and agreement of reality.
Not all values and issues are on the same level. There can be no other rights, no other freedoms if there is no right to life. Thus, we cannot support abortion. Never a “yes because of…”
“A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who favors a policy promoting an intrinsically evil act, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, deliberately subjecting workers or the poor to subhuman living conditions, redefining marriage in ways that violate its essential meaning, or racist behavior, if the voter’s intent is to support that position. In such cases, a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil. At the same time, a voter should not use a candidate’s opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity”
Principal vs prudence Not all possible courses of action are equal and not all are good. We must oppose as principals intrinsically evil acts. However, in prudence we can see how something is to be accomplished or what further means must be supplied.
Life(Abortion, euthanasia. Also human cloning and IVF), subsidiarity (How are we supporting the societal nature of man as family, as belong,) Common good (taxes and jobs), solidarity (immigration).
Common good is the sum of social conditions that allows both individual and society to reach fulfillment. This comes about only through respecting human dignity and meeting basic responsibilities.
Anytime we turn to war we must admit that something in human dignity and society has failed.