Stitching the Seamless Garment

VOTE  2020  

Election Reflection

As members of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in the United States we invite you to join us in our 2020 Election Reflection Process, Towards a More Perfect Union.  Each week until Election Day, November 3rd, we will highlight a reflection and dialogue theme.  This week’s Election Reflection is entitled, Stitching the Seamless Garment.  Please pray, reflect and dialogue along with us.

Towards a More Perfect Union

Stitching the Seamless Garment 

Scripture

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. (Matthew 25:40)

Reflection 

In  response to a question from a group of 

young Catholics about how our faith should inform our politics and our voting decisions Cardinal Blase Cupich points to Pope Francis: “Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection.”

What the Holy Father is urging is that we attend to the interconnection of moral issues. I reminded the audience that Cardinal Joseph Bernardin made the same point decades ago when he pressed for a consistent ethic of life. “The purpose of proposing a consistent ethic of life is to argue that success on any one of the issues threatening life requires a concern for the broader attitude in society about respect for human life … the viability of [this] principle depends upon the consistency of its application.”

The point is that Catholic social teaching cannot be neatly fitted into the partisan political framework that governs American public life, then or now. MORE

(Cardinal, Blase Cupich “The Call to Holiness in an Election Year,” ChicagoCatholic, 11/20/19)

 

Music

Room at the Table (Carrie Newcomer)

Questions for Reflection and Dialogue

How consistent are you in your application of Catholic Social Teaching tothe critical issues of the day? Are there seams in your own garment?

How can our faith help us discern those choices that are most consistent with gospel values?

Closing Prayer

God of all, in this year of election, in these days of discernment, IGNITE us with fire of your love. ENFLAME our hearts with courage to embrace dialogue that transforms and truth that frees. KINDLE our love with kindness to heal divisions and reconcile relationships. LIGHT our imaginations with insight to envision and create a world where all are one. STIR our actions with justice and peace to engage critical concerns and cherish all of life. FIRE our lives with audacity and hope to risk all for God’s mission. -- Roxanne Schares, SSND