As your bishop, I plan to offer a series of brief articles that I pray will be helpful to all of us as we approach the 2020 national, state, and local elections in November. Let me be clear, I have no intention of publicly endorsing any specific party or any candidate.
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The most important foundational teaching and principle of Catholic Social Teaching is that every human life is sacred from conception to natural death, because every man and woman is created in the Image of God. Further, there is a fundamental Right to Life, which is confirmed in the Natural Moral Law, the Sacred Scripture, and the unbroken Tradition of the Catholic Church. Every Civil Law must respect that fundamental Human Right to Life, or such a law is an unjust law.
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In his World Peace Day message for 1988, Pope St John Paul II said: “Religious freedom, an essential requirement of the dignity of every person, is a cornerstone of the structure of human rights, and for this reason an irreplaceable factor in the good of individuals and of the whole of society, as well as of the personal fulfillment of each individual. It follows that the freedom of individuals and communities to profess and practice their religion is an essential element for peaceful human coexistence. […] The civil and social right to religious freedom, inasmuch as it touches the most intimate sphere of the spirit, is a point of reference for the other fundamental rights and in some way becomes a measure of them.”
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In our consideration of morally coherent Catholic citizenship we have considered the fundamental Right to Life and the Right to Religious Freedom. Now, we turn to the urgent challenge of defending the first and most vital cell of society, marriage, and the family and social order founded upon it.
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One of the experiences which accompanied the COVID 19 Shelter at Home Orders was that all parents became “home school” parents. But, in a sense, all parents already WERE “home school parents”. Some simply choose to share that educational mission with others outside of the home as their children mature. I say that because parents are the “first teachers” of their children. That very phrase is a part of the Baptismal Rite.