Reflection
On this Election Day let us prayerfully reflect on our responsibility as citizens within a politically and religiously diverse nation. It is important to vote according to a well-formed and well informed conscience that can perceive a balanced relationship among various goods. It is a time to choose factual information over personal opinion. It is a time to recognize that all issues do not carry the same moral weight and that the good of the nation and the world is larger than party loyalties. It is vital to discern whose commitment to public service for the common good is deserving of the public trust. It is a time to try to get beyond opinions to facts, beyond loyalties to objective choices, beyond personality to what is best for our common future. It is the time to forget the shallow barometer of popularity and to make the best choice of who has the ability to lead well.
Prayer
We pray that each of us may be able to see what is for the good of this nation and choose wisely.
Action
No matter what the inconvenience or difficulty, vote if you have not already voted.. Make the best choice you can for the good of our nation.
Suggested Reading
Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be servant of all.
Mark 10:42
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you—but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.
Matthew 23:1-39
It is now, more than ever, necessary that political leaders be outstanding for honesty, integrity and commitment to the common good.
Pope Francis
Every believer in this world of ours must be a spark of light, a center of love, a vivifying leaven amidst the world community.
Pope John XXIII
Pope Francis is teaching us, as is our tradition, that it’s more complicated than a single issue, and we have to be multi-issue voters.
Sister Simone Campbell
Give us leaders who lead this nation to virtue without seeking to impose our kind of virtue on the virtue of others.
Joan Chittister, OSB
A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.
James Freeman Clarke
Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: ‘Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who don’t vote.
George Jean Nathan
The only politics I am willing to devote myself to is simply a matter of serving those
around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its
deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and
for the whole.
Vaclav Havel
My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
John F. Kennedy