Conscience, Candidates and Discipleship in Voting

Bishop Robert W. McElroy

In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis points powerfully to the vocation of faith-filled citizenship: “An authentic faith…always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it. We love this magnificent planet on which God has put us, and we love the human family which dwells here, with all of its tragedies and struggles, its hopes and aspirations, its strengths and weaknesses. The earth is our common home and all of us are brothers and sisters. If indeed ‘the just ordering of society and of the state is a central responsibility of politics,’ the Church ‘cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.’”