Playing for time in the Middle East
Goldberg, J. J.
Lining up the people in the pews atholic prolife commissions also worked to influence Catholic voters during the New Jersey campaign. On Respect Life Sunday (October 1, 1989), Catholics in the...
...The use of the liturgy to mobilize prolife volunteers during an election campaign is imprudent and inadvisable...
...Some Caftolics objected verbally and in writing that Project Life Roll came dangerously close to church endorsement of Republican candidates...
...Although prochoice Catholic politicians were not denied the Eucharist (as happened in one case in California) and the New Jersey bishops were careful that parish priests and prolife commissions observed the letter of the law by not endorsing or criticizing candidates from the pulpit, the appearance of partisanship at Mass politicizes the liturgy and coerces conscience...
...In still another parish, the priest read the archbishop's statement, gave a homily urging parishioners to enroll, then sat silently for ten minutes waiting for people to sign up...
...We have a duty to vote and a duty before God to uphold our moral position with our vote...
...Parishioners were asked to indicate whether they would write or visit their elected representatives, join a prolife prayer group, or help in some other way...
...at the end of that Mass, the pastor announced that prolife parishioners had cards at the back of the church if anyone was interested...
...In my parish, 679 individuals (out of 2,500 families) signed up...
...According to Rita Martin, prolife director for the Metuchen diocese, all together 225,000 New Jersey Catholics (roughly 7 percent) signed up for Project Life Roll...
...In one parish, a priest preached a sermon on God's compassionate love and said he could never judge the decision of a woman who had had an abortion...
...The computerized list made from the cards will be used to lobby legislators and candidates for office and to demonstrate Catholic support for prolife legislation...
...My own thoughts took me back to the days of the Legion of Decency when Catholics were asked to stand at Mass and pledge to observe the Legion's movie ratings...
...An informal survey among friends and colleagues garnered the following...
...The love of Jesus celebrated in this Eucharist impels us to form our consciences and to act upon them in the voting booth...
...This appeal was made during the time usually reserved for the homily...
...The coercion of such a tactic and the inevitable hypocrisy that followed it reminded me that the issue of the prolife roll goes beyond the obvious questions of separation of church and stale or the proper relations between religion and politics in a pluralistic society...
...The Life Roll was taken in the Camden diocese during 1988 and is planned for the Paterson diocese in 1990...
...What happened elsewhere...
...M.C.S...
...at bottom it is a question of cccle-siology...
...Some parishes did not distribute the cards...
...The appeal to sign was preceded by a statement from the archbishop which said: "Legislators who arc personally opposed to abortion but who do nothing to back up that position are looking for voles among the living without counting the cost of the innocent dead...
...On Respect Life Sunday (October 1, 1989), Catholics in the Archdiocese of Newark and the Dioceses of Trenton and Metuchen were asked during Mass to sign pledge cards authorizing the prolife commissions to use the resulting list of names (called a "Life Roll") in lobbying for prolife legislation...
Vol. 117 • January 1990 • No. 1
