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Thursday 21 March 2013

Religion and ethics


The central concern for the United States Catholic Bishops, Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility reading is to spur a new form of politics for the political class. The Bishops want the politicians to engage in politics based on the fundamental morals and not just to be overly concerned with opinion polls. The central concern of the Sarah Nolans living faithful video is to educate the members of the elective offices on the importance of taking responsibility of the social problems facing humanity especially as far as basic needs is concerned (Sarah, 2010). The central concern of St. Francis and the Foolishness of God’s reading is the need for us to make our faith felt in society by responding to the needs of suffering humanity (Marie, 1993).

The passage that most sparked my interest is the Catholic Bishops publication is the section 1:6 which tells of how the Catholic Church is actually helping their faithful to voice their political and social concerns. The paper goes into the details of how the church builds a good conscience in their faithful. The good conscience will create in faithful a love for good and a desire to see every form of evil rooted out. This caught my attention since it points out an interesting angle of the moral degradation in society; that the church has a role to play and should partly take the blame for not building good conscience in their members (US Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2009).
The connection I made between the reading and my life experience was the need to uphold my high morals which will be the guarantee for decisive action in society. For instance, when my local politician is pushing for an immoral cause like abortion or gay marriages just because it is the popular thing to do, I should not be carried by the wind but rather stands to my principles and look for agreeable avenues to make my voice known
Why the church calls its members to be politically active
I feel the church calls for its members to be politically active because they are supposed to be the conscience of the society. In the words of Scripture, the church is the salt of the world and there is need for their savor to be felt in all spheres of life especially politics since it affects all of society. Politics is often a game of numbers and a typical politician will only be too willing to do something he knows is wrong if it will make him popular. For this reason, the church has to come up in arms to make sure the fundamental human rights are not violated on the altar of popularity politics. The church is also in a good position to provide impartial criticism of the political class and this is important as it will keep the politician on toes knowing he is being watched. The result of applying enough positive pressure will be seen in positive reform in politics

References
Marie, D. et al. (1993). St. Francis and the foolishness of God. New York: Orbis books.
Sarah, N. (2010).Living Faithful Citizenship. Retrieved October 12, 2010 from
http://www.faithfulcitizenship.org/resources/videos
US Conference of Catholic Bishops. (2008). Forming Consciences for faithful Citizenship
Retrieved October 13, 2010 from http://www.usccb.org/faithfulcitizenship/FCStatement.pdf

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