Tuesday, Nov. 8, is Election Day in the United States (although many voters already will have voted by mail or at an early voting location). As Catholics, we see responsible citizenship as a virtue, and thus participation in the political process is not only a right but also a duty. And so, as Catholics and as American citizens, we should exercise the right and duty of our citizenship by voting. And while candidates for President and Vice-President are not on the ballot, this “midterm” election will choose a governor, a senator, representatives for the House of Representatives along with several other state and local officials.
Of course, these days there is great disaffection with politics: The hopes people place in politics are more often frustrated than fulfilled. St. Paul, the great Apostle to the Gentiles who died martyred in Rome, never overestimated the possibilities of politics. A few Sundays ago, in the second reading of the Mass, St. Paul offered this piece of sage advice to Timothy, his protégé and later co-worker: "First of all, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life."
The way I understand St. Paul here is that while we pray for kings and those in authority, we do so not to endorse them or their policies but so that they leave us alone so that we can worship the Lord in hope, witness to his truth in faith and serve our fellow men in love. Our Prayers of the Faithful often include prayers for political leaders: We pray that they work for peace and in the interest of the common good.
Our Church rightly does not tell the faithful to vote for any candidate or party. The Catholic Church is not — nor does she want to be — a political agency or a special interest group. However, she does have a profound interest — and rightly so — in the good of the political community, the soul of which is justice. For this reason, the Church engages in a wide variety of public policy issues including the defense of unborn life, of religious liberty, and of marriage as a union of one man and one woman, as well as advocacy on issues concerning immigration, education, poverty, and racism, along with many other concerns.
- Hits: 1905
Maravilla morir y que lo recuerden a uno admiradores y detractores, que la gente discuta tus ideas, polemice tu obra, te convoquen a cielo o infiernos. Pues no otra situación se ha dado con la partida al cosmos de Mijaíl Serguéyevich Gorbachov, abogado y político ruso que ocupó los más altos cargos de la plataforma soviética y que sin embargo en el fondo fue socialdemócrata, partido disuelto en la URSS de 2007 y al que se consideraba, tras la revolución de Octubre, mediatizador de las ideas socialistas y por ende reaccionario. Gorby, cual lo apodaban, asciende al Politburó como secretario general del Partido Comunista en 1985 e intenta recomponer la atrasada economía del país.
aceleraría la financiación del Estado, por lo que la Perestroika era para ciertos rusos como un “socialismo capitalista”, valga sólo por razones explicativas este imposible matrimonio, engendro político. Pero es que aquello acontecía en una nación terriblemente dividida entre quienes detestaban o respaldaban al socialismo (autoritario, excluyente, fracasado en el manejo de recursos humanos y materiales), a la cola de otras comunas del orbe (nórdicas, por ejemplo), horriblemente militarizado y con una cúpula dirigente que aspiraba parecerse a dios.
El ataque terrorista a las “torres gemelas” que destruyó varios edificios monumentales del World Trade Center el 11 de septiembre de 2001 en Nueva York cambió el curso de la historia cuando el gobierno de Estados Unidos aprobó una ley conocida como el “Patriot Act”, la cual viene aplicándose de forma cada vez más intrusiva desde entonces, pese a que se proclamó sólo como una medida provisional de emergencia.
Toward the beginning of “