After my talk about voting as Catholics during the Faith Formation Friday on September 4, I thought a more extended, organized, and precise written exhortation may be a helpful conscience formation aid for November. This article provides a two-fold approach—first, general Catholic conscience formation principles and, second, a resource guide for references to Church documents on key issues for diving deeper into the research.
 
Conscience Formation—When it comes to voting as Catholics, we need to remember that not all issues are created equal. The protection of the sanctity of life—especially the unborn—is essential and uncompromisable. We need only remember St. Teresa of Calcutta’s words, “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”
 
Therefore, no Catholic in good conscience can vote for a pro-abortion candidate or issue. We cannot cooperate in this evil. This must be our first guide as we research the candidates and issues. If we do not respect life and human dignity at the smallest level, how can we expect it to be respected in the other issues later in life? Abortion is therefore a more primary issue for us than economy, health care, immigration, foreign policy, etc. These other issues need to be weighed in level of importance as to how many lives are being taken, how many lives are being affected, how much human dignity is being harmed, what is the best solution, etc. While all of these issues are still critically important, they aren’t leading to the death of nearly 3,000 unborn children per day in the U.S. Life is of utmost importance.
 
Resource Guide—CCC is for the Catechism of the Catholic Church
· Overall Dignity of the Human Person—CCC sec. 1700
· Life Issues
Begins CCC 2258—https://bit.ly/32app1c
Abortion—CCC sec 2270
Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide—CCC 2276
· Marriage and Family—CCC 1601—https://bit.ly/3ihkTna
· Immigration—CCC 2241—https://bit.ly/32lRZgs
· Economy
Pope St. John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus—https://bit.ly/2GAdykH
Sections 41-43 discuss economic systems and their implications.
NOTE: This document also dives into all sorts of complexities of social
doctrines of the Church.
 
This is obviously an incomplete list due to the space limitation. Hope it is somewhat helpful. Prayer is obviously crucial! Let us pray for each other
and our country.
 
God Bless,
Fr. Jeff