EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW: USCCB publishes “A New Approach to Politics”
An early look at the refreshed tactics for Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship
G.O.T.H.S. is grateful to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for their permission to share this early read of their upcoming communication to the faithful, in anticipation of the 2024 national elections.
Holy Scripture boldly tells the faithful of a love that “comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a ‘we’ which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is ‘all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28).” However, the times in which we live show us how far we are from realizing this vision in our body politic. Political polarization has grown sharply in recent election cycles, dividing friendships, institutions, and even the sacred bond of the family. As bishops, we are called to read “the signs of the times” and proclaim the risen Christ in a way that addresses the current realities of community and communication, and it is in this spirit that we come to you today to propose a new approach to American politics.
Our annual fall assembly will take place next week in Baltimore, and while there are several items on the agenda, we plan to spend some time revising and approving the new introductory letter and bulletin inserts for our “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” document. Our intention is to speak as the unified teaching authority of the unified mother church, in an era when “unification” can often seem illusory. With every update of “Forming Consciences…”, our aim is to aid the political discernment of Catholics across the country. Of course, Catholics can and do disagree on many issues liturgical, doctrinal, and political, from the acceptability of receiving Communion in the hand, to whether the Marian Apparition of Garabandal says it’s okay to bust in a high school girl. Politics are no exception, as seen in the complex interconnected web of political issues that voters face every cycle, and the prominent Catholic members who serve in each of our two major political parties.
Perhaps no issue has been more polarizing in the past several election cycles than abortion. Since the Dobbs Supreme Court decision last year, seven different states have addressed the issue of abortion directly through constitutional referenda, most recently this week in Ohio. In all of these elections, the bishops and the Catholic church have supported protections for preborn children, often committing significant financial resources to do so, and in all of these elections, those protections were defeated by significant margins. Any observer would be able to take away the message from these defeats: our tactics to protect the preborn in the arena of politics have not been effective, and in a new political era, it is time for a sea change in how our church engages on this issue. We are excited, therefore, to update “Forming Consciences…” for the 2024 federal election cycle, and begin the hard work of our new approach in this new world: we’re going to start saying that abortion is bad.
Our careful research over the past year and half has confirmed our original suspicions: the major flaw in our conference’s engagement on the abortion issue has been the ambiguity and vagueness with which we’ve expressed our views on abortion as bishops. These ballot measures are complex, and voters in every state carry with them a wide range of education, engagement, and whorishness. We have no margin for miscommunication or misunderstanding, and that is why it is time, now, for us, as bishops, to start saying, finally, for the first time: we think abortion is bad. Our failure to properly express this in the past has obviously come with a cost to our credibility, and we are here to tell you that we are now ready to take this next step, to finally tell the world in clear terms that we think abortion is bad. The days of vague communication, of Catholic voters everywhere saying "I'm not quite sure whether my bishops like abortion or not", is now a thing of the past.
But we're not just changing how we communicate this message: we're also changing how we prioritize it. For too long, Catholics under our care have been left with no answers on whether their bishop, say, saw abortion as a more important political issue than protecting the environment, or caring for asylum seekers, or not torturing people, or giving the franchise to colored folk. Voters were left on their own, to weigh these issues against each other, with only equivocal and unclear episcopal statements to guide them. We had worked tirelessly to accompany our flock wherever they were in their faith journey, to acknowledge the complexity of their different faith journeys at different points in history, to acknowledge our own failings and uncertainties, to seriously listen to Catholics about their fears and concerns, to talk to Catholics like they were adults. We worked tirelessly to articulate a credible, coherent, and responsible position on this very personal and divisive issue, a position that recognized it as more than just a political football, and a position that, first and foremost, prioritized the pastoral accompaniment of all Catholics, regardless of political leaning. But that just hasn't gotten results, so we are excited to move to these new tactics, where we'll just keep saying "abortion is bad" over and over and louder and louder, to the point where it is the only thing you associate with the bishops and political engagement. Where necessary, we will withold the sacraments from politicians and their supporters who oppose us, although we would only use this tool as a last resort; we would never expect to regularly use the sacraments as a political cudgel and have you still take us seriously as informed and mature teachers of the faith. It may all sound drastic, but as the signs of the times tell us, we clearly need to make a change in how we communicate, so that we can make the change we need in our politics.
You have this promise from us: we will do everything we can to drive this home. Every decision we make on political support, every public statement we make on policy, every political candidate we are recorded on a campaign call with, we are going to put abortion at the center of it, in what promises to be a seismic change for the USCCB. We will work so hard to foreground abortion as our key political issue that we will ignore many other issues, or depending on your perspective, actively work against them, to make sure that Catholics know, for the first time, that abortion is an issue we care about. We will not get it right all of the time. We will have to make trade-offs, trade-offs we've never had to consider before, decisions we thought we'd never have to make. But we will try, and we will work to find coalition partners who can help us in our new undertaking, with a special priority placed on partners that we can work with on other important issues like maintaining proper respect for the police or keeping very tight statutes of limitations for certain categories of assault.
We are coming to the faithful with candor and humility. This is all new to us, this is a new approach and we are trying things we've never tried before. We want you to accompany us on this journey, to listen to us as we say, for the first time, that abortion is bad, and that it is more important than anything else that you know we think abortion is bad. We can't be certain where this new approach will lead our church, but it is sure to win hearts and minds of countless American voters, and to finally change the callous disregard for the preborn that we've seen in the past eighteen months of election results. Every preborn child deserves to be born, and every white non-gay born child deserves to be loved. Together, we can proclaim this good news to the world. This is a big swing. This is a big risk. This is how we will win.
The Marian Apparition of Garabandal says it’s okay to bust in a high school girl.