USCCB's Latest Version of "Faithful Citizenship"

On The World Over on EWTN tonite they discussed the latest version of Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship. The general consensus, was that it is better than previous versions, but not as good as it should or could be. & from what I have seen in looking at it, I have to agree. It has some strengths & plenty of weaknesses.

What I really enjoyed was watching Raymond Arroyo put some of the bishops on the hot seat by pointing out to them that they went into specific detail on lesser issues yet left wiggle room on the abortion issue. In his disarmingly nice way he asked some very tough questions. For example,how could they say that you can't vote for a candidate that supports an intinsic evil like abortion & then turn arround & say we are not 1 issue voters? Cardinal George & the others were obviously very uncomfortable at being called out & did their best to justify it being worded the way it was. Yet you could tell they knew that Raymond was right in what he said & they had left their spines at home.

As was pointed out at the end, it now falls back on the individual bishops to do their job to see that this is implimented properly. There will be people who will try & use it to justify voting for pro-abortion candidates. The reality is, even if they had said point blank that a Catholic can never vote for pro-abortion candidates & a politician could never support abortion, many would still ignore it. But, even so, that doesn't excuse any bishop from doing what he should do, & often doesn't, in calling Catholic politicians to either live their faith or quit receiving Communion etc.

As I said earlier, the document does have some good points, but it is weak in many areas. It waters down or slightly twists what Catholic Social Teaching really says about an issue by making it sound like areas where there is room for debate on how to accomplish certain goals doesn't exist. (Way too much to go into detail here.)

Fortunately, this is not an official teaching document that would have to be sent to Rome for the recognitio. If it did, it would be sent back for rework because several parts are weak in their accuracate presentation of Catholic Social Teaching. Sadly, I suspect I know more about what is found in the Church's teachings in this area as I have & study the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. I suspect many of our Bishops, priests, catechists etc haven't.

The Bishops also called on every diocese to issue voter guides. (Paragraph 8) Fr. Pavone pointed out how poorly most dioceses have been in the past at doing this. In other words they usually didn't. I suspect that Fr. Pavone is sceptical that most will issue them next year. & even though it didn't specifically say not to ignore those put out by Catholic groups, it gives those priests who want to cop out another excuse for not doing the right thing & speaking out against abortion.

Fortunately, there are still many priests & bishops who will have the courage to speak out & teach the truth. We need to pray for them & even more so, for those who don't have the courage to do what is right. We need to pray that God would change their hearts so that they might become the shepherds they were ordained to be.

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As an aside, the USCCB has also issued a bulletin insert summary of the document. The summary runs for 10 pages. The full version is 44 pages long.