The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has approved a new voting guide, with excerpts from the guide to be inserted in parish bulletins across the country during the next voting cycle. In the new guide, the USCCB reaffirms its opposition to abortion and even goes so far as to label it the “preeminent priority” in the country.
In the introduction for the new guide, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the USCCB says the goal is to continue affirming the Catholic Church’s role in upholding timeless principles, the foremost of which is “the infinite worth and dignity of every human life.” The guide further outlines the numerous threats right now in the United States against human life, the primary of which is abortion.
The threat of abortion remains our pre-eminent priority because it directly attacks our most vulnerable and voiceless brothers and sisters and destroys more than a million lives per year in our country alone.
Other grave threats to the life and dignity of the human person include euthanasia, gun violence, terrorism, the death penalty, and human trafficking. There is also the redefinition of marriage and gender, threats to religious freedom at home and abroad, lack of justice for the poor, the suffering of migrants and refugees, wars and famines around the world, racism, the need for greater access to healthcare and education, care for our common home, and more. All threaten the dignity of the human person.
Though the USCCB reminded Catholics that they cannot instruct anyone to vote for one specific candidate, they said Catholics should keep these principles in mind when deciding who to elect. “Conscience — properly formed according to God’s revelation and the teaching of the Church — is a means by which one listens to God and discerns how to act in accordance with the truth,” the guide explains. “The truth is something we receive, not something we make.”
In the bulletin leaflets, the bishops further exclaimed,
We work to protect the most vulnerable — children in the womb who are in danger of abortion — while also standing in radical solidarity with mothers. Building on their bond of flesh and kinship, and on the network of family, neighbor, and community relationships in which they are situated, the Church actively assists mothers and their children to have a brighter future.
We continue to protect the dignity of our sister or brother who is elderly, disabled, or ill by strongly rejecting euthanasia and assisted suicide. These practices are symptoms of a “throwaway culture,” in which children of God of inestimable worth are cast aside as worthless.
In a press conference, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, USCCB vice president, said that while many issues are important, they are not all the same.
“We are called to stand in radical solidarity with women in difficult pregnancies and their unborn children and to provide them with the kind of support and services and public policies that they need,” he said. “So, it’s not simply a public policy issue. It is a deeply, deeply pastoral issue of loving the moms in need, walking with them, helping them bring their babies to term, and then providing them with what they need to move forward. In a culture where there is so much death and so much disregard for life, we bishops and together as a Catholic family, a united Catholic family, we need to stand together.”
