Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good Voter Guide

The CACG voter guide has just been posted online. A sample:

In our country, a long series of social and political achievements give testimony to the thirst for justice and human dignity that are at the core of the Church’s social teaching. From the creation of Social Security and unemployment insurance during the New Deal, to the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid to provide health care to the elderly and the poor, our government has taken steps in the direction of greater social justice. The growth of organized labor in the first half of the twentieth century not only protected the rights of workers, but helped raise the living standards of the entire society. The passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act guaranteed that no Americans be denied their rights as citizens to equitable treatment before the law.

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good celebrates these national achievements and devotes itself to defending them.

Sadly, in America today, our nation’s political, social and economic debate has been assaulted in recent years by a different understanding of the human vocation, one in which there is no room for Christ and no room for Christian love. This different understanding, exemplified by the Tea Party, is rooted in explicitly anti-Christian teachings, it celebrates a hyper-individualism that specifically denies the possibility of a Common Good, and is dedicated to a form of social Darwinism in which the poor and vulnerable are despised and only the achievements and wealth of the strong merit political protection. In order to protect exorbitant tax cuts for the super-rich, some advocate terminating social programs that promote the poor and middle class, both at home and abroad, often in ways that are profoundly anti-life. Many have sought to deny the basic rights of workers to organize and collectively bargain. In the strongest possible terms, we denounce this new ideology as un-Christian, un-Catholic, and, indeed, as a perversion of America’s own best traditions.

The election of 2012 will be a choice between competing visions for America’s future. No candidate and no party completely adhere to the vision of Pope Benedict XVI. Ours is a pluralistic society in which many do not share our Catholic values. It is our hope that the essential beauty of Pope Benedict’s vision, and the humane values of Catholic social teaching, will appeal to all men and women of goodwill. We bring that vision and those values into the public square because they animate us in all we do, privately and publicly. We invite our fellow Catholics to consider carefully how candidates do, and do not, embrace that vision and those values and to make prudential judgments about which candidates are best able to achieve political results that reflect Christian love. We offer this voter guide to help inform our fellow Catholics about their specifically political vocation as Catholic Christians in the United States.

Let us say at the outset: We do not in any way wish to claim for ourselves the right to speak for the Catholic Church, nor for all Catholics. Instead, we offer this voter guide to show how we apply the teachings of our Church to the problems of our day. We here seek to take up the call issued by the U.S. bishops in their document “Faithful Citizenship” to form our consciences, guided by the Church’s teaching, examining the issues we face, and reaching informed, conscientious decisions about the issues we hold dear, as Catholics and as Americans.

See the full guide here.

Tim Reidy