SPEAKER_00 0:02

This is a special episode of Catholic in America with Jason Atkins. Brought to you by OSV News.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Great to be with you all. What a blessing. Can we begin with a prayer? In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. This is the prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas. Grant, oh merciful of God, I may ardently desire, prudently examine, truthfully acknowledge, and perfectly accomplish what is pleasing to thee for the praise and glory of thy name. Amen. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's the student's prayer. And as an alum of the University of St. Thomas, I thought I'd share that with you in case you haven't heard that before. What a blessing to be with you. Appreciate the opportunity to come up and spend some time talking about bioethics and Catholic health care and public policy. I looked at your syllabus for the next week here, and there's a lot of substance. I mean, you've got law and bioethics, you have deep dives into specific ethical questions. What I want to share with you at the outset, though, whereas those courses might talk about the what, the content, the principles, the issues, my presentation will focus on why we enter into the public arena, why we enter into the public conversation about difficult bioethics questions, who is in charge or who is called to do that within the church, and then how we do that effectively. So as you're gonna get a lot of the what, the substance, the content, Catholic moral principles, uh, Catholic social teaching over the course of the next week here on the syllabus. We'll talk about the why, the who, and the how. Start with why, as they always say, right? And why does all this really matter? Because at the end of the day, we need people who are formed in the right principles and are informed on the issues to go and transform our public life. I'll say a little bit more about what I do on a day-to-day basis working for the Catholic bishops of Minnesota, but I can tell you we've got all kinds of people participating in the explosion of great formation programs out there. There is a catechetical revolution going on, whether it's NCBC and the University of Mary, whether it's um St. Augustine Institute, whether it's Word on Fire, my boss, Bishop Robert Barron, all these great programs, the Catechetical Institute at St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul. So many great courses out there, great content, so much enrichment where people can go deeper into their faith. What I'm not seeing as much of is the people who are doing those programs, then translating that into their areas of business, law, medicine, politics, wherever it might be. So we need people taking that next step once they've been formed to go out and transform. And I think the healthcare bioethics world is a really important one because some of these questions touch on the very fundamental things. Who is the human person? How do we steward the gift of life from conception to natural death? How do we have difficult conversations about some of these questions that are at the crux of life and death, man and womanhood, the complementarity of the sexes, uh, all these thorny questions about making life, taking life, and faking life, as my friend Jennifer Lal from the Center for Bioethics and Culture says it. That's how she breaks it up. Making life, taking life, and faking life. So these are really, really important questions, and we need people who are well formed to go into the unique uh mission field of the public arena. When we hold rallies or events down at the state capitol in Minnesota, we have a lot of people who come to those. Then I invite them to go up the stairs and meet with their elected officials. And you know what they say? You know what, Jason, I really don't want to do that. Well, folks, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. So we need people taking that next step, walking up those stairs or going wherever it might be to have important conversations about what is good, what is true, what is beautiful, what is life, how do we protect it, how do we steward it effectively. As we'll talk about in a moment, politics is not simply elections or red versus blue or conservative versus liberal, Republican, Democrat. It is the great conversation about how we order our life together in the city. Polis, it's got that root word, polis, or the chivitas, the city in Latin. And so we everyone needs to be a part of that. I'm sort of giving you the nutshell version of my presentation. We all need to be a part of that conversation. And you who are formed, you can be leaders in not just leading that conversation yourself in public life, but then forming others, passing on that gift that you have received to form others to do the same thing. Because I got to tell you, we need more Catholics entering into the public score, not just as elected officials, but as people who are engaging elected officials on these important questions. The reality is Catholics are not showing up in the conversation. We do a lot of complaining about where things are at in public life, but we don't do a lot of that tough work of rolling up our sleeves and engaging those conversations. So this is why I love going out and giving these talks, is to hopefully form you in some of the right principles about why we do this and then inform you on some of the issues so that you can go transform your state. Obviously, now, of course, we're not we only have two hours together today. So there's a lot of ground to cover, and this is just to whet your appetite. But hopefully it starts you thinking about how do I bring this into every area of my life. And at the end of the day, here's my clicker. What is this really about? What's the ultimate why behind what we do? It's to help people meet Jesus. Whether we're we're working in hospitals or whether we're teaching young people in schools, the why behind everything we do is to help people meet Jesus Christ. It's our manifestation of a love of God and love of neighbor. So the summary of my presentation is as follows: to be a faithful citizen means that you understand and live the call to political participation, as Pope Francis said, in a missionary and evangelical key. All the church's ministries should be understood through that missionary and evangelical key precisely because what are they about? They're about helping people meet Jesus Christ. And it's not always direct, you know, it's like Mother Teresa, you know, Mother Teresa goes out and helps the poor in the streets and picks the poor off the streets of Calcutta. She doesn't beat them over a head with a kit with a catechism first and then take him into the home for dying, but she helps them encounter the love of Christ simply by caring for them, bringing in their home, cleaning them up, you know, giving them a kiss on the forehead, giving them a meal, and helping them die well. That's that encounter with Christ. Well, my audacious and bold claim is that even when we enter into the public conversation, political life, it is a manifestation of our love for our neighbor. In simpler terms, how do we help people meet Jesus through our participation in public life? And in answering and dealing with questions related to bioethics, we are evangelizing about the good of the human person, how we steward the gift of life. Stanley Howerwass, the great theologian, once said that in a hundred years' time, if Christians are known as the people who don't kill their young or their elderly and they're sick, we will have done something good. That's where we are at as a society. If we're just known as those people who don't, like the Christians in the Roman times, don't expose their young or expose the disabled on a hillside or in a trash heap. If we respect the dignity of the human person, we will have helped people meet Jesus Christ. Sadly, those questions are up for grabs more and more in the culture and sometimes even in the church. So we have to be well formed as to how to deal with them. That's the sum and substance of what I want to share with you today. We'll start, we'll do this presentation in three parts. We'll start with that question of why. We'll take questions from you all and have a conversation, then we'll move into the who is called to do this work, and then the third part will be how we do that effectively. And hopefully that'll be a nice picture frame around the what, the substance of what you're gonna be presented with this week. So, are you ready?

unknown 8:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Let's dig in, let's do it. Absolutely. Okay, first of all, what is a Catholic conference? A conference is not an event. People say, I want to go to the Catholic conference. Well, it's it's hate to break it, do you? The conference is the conference of bishops. So, people in my position, what we do is we help the bishops bring their public policy initiatives and public policy agendas to the state capitol and in the halls of Congress. Why do we do that? Because the bishop is not just merely the bishop of the Catholics in his diocese, he is the bishop of all the souls in his diocese. Everyone is under his pastoral care. So, as a bishop, as a shepherd, for him to see injustice in his community or a way of pursuing justice or pursuing human dignity, that's part of his pastoral concern for the community. So it's like just as we have hospitals and educational facilities and charitable institutions entering into the entering into the political arena and speaking on behalf of what is true and what is good and what serves the well-being of our communities and the human persons, that's part of his pastoral responsibilities. Well, at the state level, the bishops get together and talk about state level issues. They get together in a conference. So I work directly for the Catholic bishops of Minnesota. They don't have a, they're not politicians, they're not political experts, they don't understand always the intricacies of the legislative process. So they hire uh people like me who do it on a day-to-day basis and can be their day-to-day presence at the state capitol working on these issues, people who understand the people, the policy, and the process, as I like to say, the three Ps, people, policy, process, and can help navigate those things and get legislative wins. Again, though, we stay out of trouble and we don't fall into that part, that uh political, the negative sense of that term, political, partisanship, um, because we're principled. We speak at the level of principle, we talk about what is good, we work with Republicans and Democrats rooted in that real important reality of Catholic social teaching. That's what we do on a day-to-day basis, and then that we invite the bishops to come down periodically and then testify on things. Every year they all come together as a group to meet with the governor and legislative leaders. So it's just an example of them being faithful citizens themselves. If they invite us to be faithful citizens, as the church does, they have to model that themselves. We help them on a day-to-day basis. How many of you had never even heard of a state Catholic conference or didn't know that people in these positions existed? Probably quite a few. So in North Dakota, I've got colleagues here who work at the state capitol. I think I can see that from the window. Is that the state capitol, that tower there? Yep. Um, you can see the North Dakota State Capitol right out your window. It's that sandy-colored tower right out there. One of the more unique Capitol buildings in our great nation. Um, so we have the bishops have staff, and there's 36 different 36 states that have Catholic conferences. Some states that are so small in Catholic population, like Arkansas or Mississippi, they just have someone who works in the diocese who will do periodic uh legislative engagement. But there are 36 people in my role around the country. And it's not simply sufficient that we advise the bishops, but we also help them in their responsibility to help you be a faithful citizen. So, like I said, I go around and give talks to parishes. We have something called the Catholic Advocacy Network that we use to allow people to bring to join their voice to the voice of the bishops on important questions of public policy. As you can imagine, Catholic bishops don't quite have the moral authority or influence that they did 60, 70 years ago, or even 40 years ago. And so what's really necessary is that Catholics in the pew join their voice to the voice of the bishops on important public policy questions. What do we do on a day-to-day basis? We support our bishops by working with political and faith leaders to shape legislation that serves human dignity and the common good. We educate Catholics and the public about a moral framework that should apply to these issues, and we mobilize Catholics to make their voice heard. We're not a pressure group. We don't organize for power, we organize for participation because we're all called to participate in public life. A little plug for state Catholic conferences, wherever you live, they exist to serve you as a resource to engage the public policy questions, to engage political life. So reach out to your state Catholic conferences and their staff, use them as resources. They all have websites that allow you to connect with your elected officials. Like if you sign up for our thing called the Catholic Advocacy Network, you are connected because we have your name and address. So we'll send out action alerts on key issues, breaking down that barrier of participation about what to say, when to say it, and how to say it, and and allow you with a click of the mouse to connect your voice to your local elected officials. I'm not, I don't want you to raise your hand on this rhetorical question, but how many of you could name both your state house member or assembly member, as you call it in some states, and your state senator? Don't raise your hand. Most of the time when I give this talk or a talk and I ask that question, I'd say there's probably 10 to 15% of the people in the room who can actually do it. Why do am I even asking this question? Because some of these important bioethics questions that we're going to be talking about this week, they're decided at the state level. Whether we should mandate fundering of in vitro fertilization, whether we should legalize assisted suicide, whether we should legalize abortion, end-of-life surrogate decision making, pulse forms, you name it, all these hot bioethics questions, these are decided at the state level. We're so focused all the time on what's going on in Washington, we forget that in our own communities, this is where some of these real difficult moral questions are being addressed. And I gotta tell you, state legislators are not Olympian gods. They are not like Athena formed in the mind of Zeus with all this wisdom. They are people just like you and me. And you know what? They need you as resources and they need you as friends. And so it's really important that we engage with them at that level. We don't just vote and then uh 364 days out of the year, we just sort of wash our hands of political life. That's not how our system works. It's a democracy. It's of the people, by the people, and for the people. If it's gonna be for the people, then we have to participate. You're gonna hear me sound like a broken record today. I'm gonna use a lot of these terms, participate in that process to be effective. Okay, going back to why, what's the big why here? Were you able, um, Dr. Schneider, to distribute the speech from Saturday from Pope Leo to the group? Okay, so if some of you may have had a chance, I know I said it last minute. Well, it came out Saturday, so I can't hardly be blamed. Pope Leo, um, a Pope who seems to know how to pope very well, um, he came out with a great speech to legislators from 68 countries around the world, and he repeated this line. This is kind of an, you know, didn't have time to update the presentation, but Pope Francis, quoting Pope Pius XI, said, Politics is one of the highest forms of charity because it serves the common good. Now that's sort of counterintuitive, isn't it? Politics being a form of charity. Wait a second. What I thought politics was this ugly blood sport, you know, entertainment type thing. If you like to do that, you can do it. Here, the popes are telling us with a consistent voice. Pope Pius XI first said this in 1927, Pope Leo just said it on Saturday, again, repeating what Pope Francis said many times. Politics is a form of charity. So, again, just as we have charitable, charitable, educational, healthcare ministries, because of the which are manifestations of our love of neighbor, so too engaging in political life is a form of charity. It is a form of loving our neighbor. Why is that? Because when we help enact laws that serve human dignity and the common good, when we make that sacrifice to participate in the process of politics, that is a loving act of service to our neighbor. It takes work, it takes effort. So it is a true act of caritas, um, that loving service, that self-sacrificial service to our neighbor. Now, politicians don't get a good re have a good reputation in many instances, but I can tell you at the local level, most politicians get in go into office because they want to do something good. Now, there are two types of politicians, those who want to do something and those who want to be someone. The people who want to be someone are a problem. Um, but the people who want to do something are on the right track, and we have to help them do something because again, not everyone's born with all the answers. Um, and they need help from their constituents to help them make good decisions. Um, but it really is a form of charity. And so we think again about politics as partisanship, as politicking, as electioneering, as partisanship. But it's really, in the mind of the church, a noble activity in its best light, because again, it serves the whole community. It promotes the common good, not the special interest, but the public interest, not the individual good, but the common good. That's what politics should really be about. It's a great conversation about how we order our life together. And so the church, picking up on the wisdom of the Greeks in this regard, understands politics can be something noble and something good. And it says, in fact, a good Catholic, Pope Francis says, meddles in politics. Not watches it on TV, right? Not reads about it in the paper, not looks at his Twitter feed or her Twitter feed. Meddles in politics. That's like getting your arms in there and throwing some elbows, getting in the mix, right? Why does a good Catholic meddle in politics? So that those who govern can govern. So that those who are entrusted with public office can do so effectively. Again, because no one has all the answers. And in a government of elected representatives, they need the people to help them in that task. They need to know A, what the people want, and B what they should do. Most elected officials get elected to office because they care about three things. On the rest of the issues, they go with their constituents, their caucus, or their conscience. So we want to play a role in all those things. We want to influence the caucus, their political unit, their party. We want to make our voices heard as constituents, and we want to form their conscience. So just like we form our conscience, we want to help form the conscience of our elected officials so they can do what they're called to do. They have the vocation, the calling of public service, but again, they need us as resources and they need us as friends. You don't have to go to dinner with them on Friday night, but maybe you have to go to coffee with them on Saturday morning. And by the way, bring 10 friends. In Minnesota, I can tell you, and I suspect it's the same here because North Dakotaans strike me as a bit friendlier than Minnesotans are generally. Um they want to hear from you. They want to have those encounters and engagements. Why? Because in any given legislation, I'll just use Minnesota legislative session, I'll just use Minnesota as an example. There are 5,000 bills introduced. 5,000. Like I said, they care about, they're really passionate about three of those. On the rest, they're looking for guidance. What do I do? So I'll go back to that point I made at the beginning. If you're not at the table, you're on the menu. This year in Minnesota, we had a proposal to end the 50-year commitment to fund all students, regardless of school choice, in essential services, busing, nursing, transfer, busing, nursing, counseling, textbook aid, instructional aids. State of Minnesota makes a commitment to funding all students in those things. Now, if that funding goes away, kids in Catholic school will have their tuition rates increase because the school will have to cover those things, which might price kids out of Catholic schools. So what what had had to happen this set this legislative session? Catholics in the pews had to go talk to their legislators about why Catholic schools are making a difference in the lives of the people who they serve, how they're benefiting their community their communities, how impactful these funding cuts would be on their school communities, and who would be priced out by that, and how would that hurt not just Catholics who attend and those who attend Catholic schools, it would hurt the broader community. Why? Because we save the state money when we educate kids in Catholic schools. But legislators don't know that, especially A, if you're not Catholic, and B if you don't send your kid to Catholic school. So that's that's an example of the education that you always have to do in this process. As citizens, we all have a fundamental constitutional right to lobby our elected officials. First Amendment, we have a right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. You don't need to pay a lobbyist like me to do it. You can do it yourself, and you have a constitutional right to do so. It's not only your right to do so, it's necessary that you do so. Because if we don't enter into the public arena talking about important issues, other people will shape the conversation in the marketplace of ideas. That's what our system of government is all about. It's about debate and it's about conversation. Going back to that idea of politics as a great conversation about how we order our life together. If we don't what? Participate, someone else will and shape the conversation in a negative way. Now, I haven't gotten deep into some of these bioethics questions about that, and we will, there's some handouts you were given, but we have to do that across the spectrum of issues, including on some of these tough bioethical, moral, and medical issues. Whether it's Medicaid funding for low-in-income individuals, whether it's assisted suicide, we have to be in the conversation because they are impactful with provision of Catholic health care or stewardship of the gift of life. Okay, Pope Francis, going deeper, a little bit deeper on this why. Politics is a form of charity, he says that allows politics to rise to its responsibilities and move beyond polarizations. These polarizations which impoverish and do not help understand and confront challenges. This political charity is a called the entire Christian community with its different ministries and charisms. Let us train ourselves in this love to circulate it in a world that is lacking in civil passion. This was a great speech of Pope Francis's where he, and this was in 2024. He he said this politics is one of the highest forms of charity in one of his first speeches in 2013. And then 10 years later, he really unpacked it in this speech in northern Italy. And I just think it's just a beautiful encapsulation of what this is all about. How often does it feel like the issues that are being discussed in politics, or at least the ones that are covered by the news media, are not the ones that really impact people's lives. They're like diversions, distractions, not really the substance of what dictates the quality of life of people in communities every day. Well, it's often because it's a money-driven issue, it's politics is entertainment. Uh, MSNBC, Fox News, these are not news channels, they're entertainment channels. I hate to break it to you. Um, if that's bursting your bubble, I'm sorry, but these are entertainment channels. So why is it that politics always seems to be stuck in these distractions? Because we're in this partisanship that's playing the news cycle, that's playing the next election cycle, and it's not fundamentally rooted in sound principles. And this is what Pope Francis is really saying here is that how do we move beyond polarizations? Is that when people who are working for the common good enter into public life, we can move beyond these polarizations, these false binaries of right and left, either or politics, and we can confront real challenges that impact real people. Why? As we'll explain in a little bit, because we're seeing with the eyes of Christ. Because we're entering into that conversation, seeing with the eyes of Christ, seeing how it impacts our communities. We're working in the context of our communities. We're not simply waiting for people in faraway places like Washington or Brussels to solve our problems, but we're rolling up our sleeves and working within the concrete realities of our communities, participating in our corner of the vineyard in which we've been planted. It's not all about Washington or Brussels. It's about entering into our local communities where God has planted you and working for the good of the city, the polis. I live in many, well, I don't live in Minneapolis, I live in St. Paul, thank God. We're fraternal twins down there, um, separated by a river. But you see the word polis right in the name: Minneapolis, Indianapolis, the city. We need people working within the city. We overlook the local politics because we're so focused on what's consuming us in the news cycle, the big, these big national issues. And they are important issues, don't get me wrong. Right? War and peace, budgets, big bills, all these things, these are huge issues. But most of us don't have real agency at that level. We can't participate as effectively because it's the process has been so far removed from the people, but we can have agency in our local communities and at the local level. And when we do that, Pope Francis is saying we can move beyond some of these false dichotomies. And again, why do we do this? Because when we enter into that process, when we take the time to enter into that process, when we turn off the TV or the Netflix, and we go to the city council meeting, when we go to the school board meeting, the library board meeting, the park board meeting, um, the state legislative hearing, when we do that, we're working for the common good. We're working to protect the human, the dignity of the human person. We're working to love our neighbor. That's what this is. And the reality is in our system of government, we all need to be doing that. Now, as Pope Francis said in that prior slide, everyone can play a role, even if you're in bed and an invalid. Because what can you do even in that position? You can pray. You can pray for our elected officials. Why? Because praying for our elected officials is so, so important. They have the power to make things good or less good. And if we really believe in the power of prayer, if we really believe that the Holy Spirit can do things, when we ask the Holy Spirit to intercede, when we ask our blessed mother to intercede, when we ask exercise, ask our Lord to exercise his true dominion as Christ the King over the temporal sphere, he can do that. One of the most transformative things our office has done in the past years is bring Christ to the Capitol. Yes, of course, the presence of Christ, the word of Christ, and the logos who inspires Catholic social teaching. But literally, we brought Jesus into the Capitol in the form of Eucharistic adoration on first Fridays during the legislative session. I think that's been transformative. Why? Because we come and we invite the Catholic community in the Twin Cities and all over our state, and we have people coming from Crookston, way up in northwest Minnesota, come down every month to pray for our elected officials, to pray for our state. And I think it's been really transformative in Minnesota. And so we need to invite Christ in to every aspect of life. That's what it means to go to the peripheries. Uh the state capital politics is like one of the existential peripheries that we can go into. And so we have to invite him into that process and unite ourselves to him so that we can transform and work with him and be his hands and feet. You know, the church walks with, we say, the two feet of charity and justice. It's not simply enough to work at the charitable level. We have to work at the political level as well if we want to build the city of God, as St. Augustine called it, the Chivitas Dei. It's very, very important. So we work with the two feet of charity and justice. No one is exempt from participating in public life. Now, again, is is politics about power or about service? Now, some people say, Jason, I don't, I'm a little, I'm not sure I'm buying what you're selling here. Because politics is this kind of icky yucky business. It's really a power game. Um, and that's that's and we want we're about evangelization. We want to help people meet Jesus. We want to keep the main thing the main thing. I think if we get involved, if the church gets involved in politics, if it muddies itself in politics, I think it's gonna create a stumbling block for people to encounter the gospel. Now, when you hear objections like that, oftentimes it's because they have this idea that politics is fundamentally about power, it's not fundamentally about service. Now, if good people don't enter into political life, politics is going to be about power. It's going to be about power games, right? Descriptively, just as a matter of descriptive fact, it often is. There's no doubt about it. But if we don't evangelize the public arena, if we don't go in by our presence and our principles and our prayers into the public arena, of course it's going to be secularized, right? If we let it fall into these false binaries, it's going to be secularized, it's going to be a power game. Again, people working for the special interest and the private interests and against the dignity of the human person and not for the public interest or the common good. So we will see a secularized public arena riven by power games to the extent we abandon it from our apostolic activity. Does that make sense? We can talk more about that, but I really want to drive that home. That's the why behind everything here. We can lament this that this is no longer seemingly a Christian nation, that all these bad things are happening. But what are we doing about it at the end of the day? We can't just say, well, the bishops need to take care of the bishops have to say this and the bishops have to say that. No, you have to say that too, right? You have to enter into that process and be salt and light. You are called to do that. That'll be part two of this lecture, is how you are called to do that. But if we want politics to be about service, then we have to show that love of neighbor and participate, there's that word again, in public life. Again, should the church meddle in politics as Pope Francis was calling us to do? Absolutely. Because it's a again, politics is about that great conversation about how we order our lives together. And the church has something to say about that. Can the church be political? What are we saying and what are we not saying? What is permissible and what is prudent? Now, everyone's heard of the separation of church and state, right? The separation of church and state. The separation of church and state is a perfectly legitimate principle, right? In practical terms, it means we don't have clergy. Clergy are banned from running for office. Sorry if that breaks your bursts your bubble for the priests who are in here. Clergy are banned from running for office. Well, priests are, not deacons. But the point being is that we're not interested in the church running the state. But we are interested in the church being the conscience of the state, as Martin Luther King said. The church is not interested in running the state, but we are interested in being the conscience of the state. The separation of church and state is not the separation of law and morality or religion and public life. I'll say that again. The separation of church and state is not the separation of law and morality or religion and public life. In fact, all law is simply applied morals. That's what it is. So when people say to you in ministry, well, we shouldn't impose our morals on the laws. All law is moral. It's all moral because it's rooted in some question of the good. The question is, is whose question, whose perspective on the good is it going to be? And that's why we need to be a part of the conversation. You know, um, what's the line I'm thinking of? You know, Stalin said, how many legions has the Pope? We don't have armies, right? Our our what we do in the public square is simply the voice of persuasion. That's that's our moral credibility that we bring to the table and that we bring into the conversation on these questions. So again, all law is applied morality. The question is whose morality is going to apply? Whose is more reasonable? Who has the better conception of what is true and good and what serves the dignity of the human person, what best promotes the common good. So when you say, well, the church shouldn't be political, again, people are falling into that trap of thinking as politics as merely power games. The church is political, it is a polis in itself, it is a true political community, but it also impacts the temporal sphere, the broader public community, the republic, the res publica, as well. So, of course, the church should be political. What it shouldn't be is partisan, it shouldn't engage in electioneering, preferring one candidate over the other, although it's not completely barred from doing so. And in some instances, the church will actually endorse candidates. Um, in Germany, for example, they spoke out again, the bishops there spoke out against one of the political parties specifically. The last really famous case was when the bishops of the Philippines spoke out against the Marcos regime in the 1980s. Um there was a cardinal named Cardinal Sin, Jaime Cardinal Sin, and he was the leader of the Filipino bishops at the time, and I was on a plane to Rome with him, so that's my claim to fame that I was on a plane with Cardinal Sin. That was his name, I kid you not. Um okay, separation of church and state. Again, as Martin Luther King said, the church is not the master nor the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. Again, that's us working collaboratively with public officials to inform them and form them about the right principles and the right policies that serve human dignity and the common good. 5% of all deaths in Canada now are assisted suicide and euthanasia. Five percent, friends, that's 500 a week in Canada are being euthanized or given assisted suicide drugs. We are trying to fight that vigorously in Minnesota. We've been successful for 11 years. And how do again it's going to legislators whose instinct, and Americans are kind of libertarian, right? They want freedom, they want autonomy, they want choice. Well, I should be able to die when I want. Well, our claim to them is protecting the choices of a few is gonna endanger the healthcare choices of everyone, particularly the poor and the vulnerable. So we don't simply go into that conversation and say assisted suicide's wrong. You know, God is the author of life and he decides when we when we leave and when we go, or come into the world and he decides when we go out. That's not gonna cut it. So we have to be persuasive in our advocacy, and that's thinking through these issues the way the church thinks through them. It's not simply looking at them in a vacuum, but looking at how they impact the world of relationships, which we'll talk about some more in this presentation. The great Fulton Sheen said a religion that doesn't interfere with the secular order will soon discover that the secular order will not refrain from interfering with it. That's one way of saying there's no neutral territory. There is no neutral territory. You know, sometimes we think of the public square as a sort of morally neutral space where we line up white papers on one side and white papers on, you know what white papers are? They're like policy papers. We line up our white papers and then we have a conversation about it, and then one side wins. But it's essentially neutral, it's like a neutral public square. Well, there is no neutral public square. There's the city of God and the city of man, and they're competing for the same territory. And once you cede ground to the city of man, the city of man tries to invade. So you can't say, well, we'll go, we'll go live our mission and our vocation, and we'll have our own little private communities, and we'll, the state will, well, you know, the state will be out there and the world will go to hell in a handbasket, and we don't have to worry about that because we're gonna live our own little sectarian world. Well, that just isn't how it's gonna work. Because the city of man, it's a spiritual reality, it's a spiritual battle for the things of this world. And so we always have to be vigilant in perpetuating what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful. Because if we don't, the Lord of this world, Satan, will do it in the alternative. He wants to destroy, he wants to muck things up, he wants to ruin lives. So it's again, the city of God and the city of man, they're always competing. They're two cities with two loves. The city of God and the city of man in the mind of St. Augustine is not secular and religious, temporal and spiritual. It's two cities with two competing loves. So it's the job of the church to take the material reality of creation and draw it into the reality of the city of God. And we do that again when we go into the public square and evangelize the public square with our principles and our witness. How are we doing on time here? Okay, we're good. We're good. We got plenty of time. Okay, so the goals of politics, I've kind of alluded to this already. The ensuring the dignity of the human person and promoting the common good. These are two of the four pillars of Catholic social teaching. Um the dignity of the human person, the common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity. We protect the human person because the human person is created what? Imago dei in the image and likeness of God, given that inestimable dignity and worth. And so we need to protect the human person from conception and natural death and promote flourishing in between. And then again, promoting the common good. Why? Because we're not simply individuals, we all work together. We all are relational beings, we are social creatures, we're meant to be together, we're in a community, and we have to live together. That's the basis of the common good. But on other basis of the common good is we all have a common destiny, which is hopefully to be to live, enjoy, and eternity, an internal beatitude with our Father who art in heaven. So we have a common good because uh we have a common, not only because we live together, but we are brothers and sisters. We have a common father who art in heaven. Fostering the common good is about working for justice. I meant alluded to this already, the two feet of charity and justice, fostering right relationships, right relationships in how we distribute goods, distributive justice, right relationships in exchange and in between persons, community justice, social justice, giving all social actors what they need to flourish. Legal justice makes sure the law does uh treats people equitably. There's uh economic justice, environmental justice, racial justice, there's all kinds of forms of justice. I've just mentioned a few. But the point of politics is to foster right relationships. It can't create the civilization of love all by itself. Again, there's the two feet of justice and charity. If you think about the body politic, this image of the body politic, justice in the laws are like the skeletal framework. But you have to enflesh, enliven the skeletal framework with and breathe into it the word the life of charity. That's what gives the body true life. But justice is like the minimum standard. You have to forge right relationships, and if you want people to flourish, it requires not just justice, but also charity. So we always say the two work together. The state can't love people, is one way of saying this. So we have to love each other. Um, and we don't necessarily want the state to love people. We want the state to establish basic order and right relationship between people through these various forms of justice. Now, what is the framework of Catholic social teaching? Catholic social teaching is that body of principles, that toolbox of principles that we bring into these conversations. It's applying gospel values to the things of society. Now, the Catholic social teaching has existed since the New Testament, but the modern tradition of Catholic social teaching kicked off with Pope Leo XIII's execlical Rerum Novarum on the new things. Um the new things rooted in what the often overlooked first line, the revolutionary spirit of the times. Now, what's fascinating is that now we have Leo XIV explicitly drawing us back to Leo XIII, who dealt with the first industrial revolution, these convulsions related to labor and capital, the new forms of uh politics and democratic governance. And now we have a pope who's saying, just as we had a Leo who addressed the signs of the times in the late 19th century, we have a new digital industrial revolution, certainly imbued with a revolutionary experiment, uh revolutionary spirit, in fact, to transcend the merely material and get even beyond the material realities, not even be bound by biology or materiality, um, hence things like transhumanism. So I think everyone's eager to see what Pope Leo does with questions like artificial intelligence, which I think is really a bioethics question. I don't know if that's gonna come up. Transhumanism, bioethic, or uh artificial intelligence, transhumanism. These are fascinating uh questions rooted in fundamental anthropological errors about who the human person is that we can transcend our biology. We are embodied creatures. Um, so that's an interesting discussion as well. But we have to think of Catholic social teaching as like a mental model. It's not a grab bag of policy positions. Oh, Catholic social teaching, that means we're for immigrants and we want to protect the poor and we're against abortion and some of these other things. Those are outcomes, those are policies that we draw from Catholic social teaching. But like I said, the four pillars of it are dignity of the human person, common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity. It's really a mental model. Catholic social teaching is like a mental framework or a mental model that we can apply in our particular contexts. Um, whether you live here, whether you live in Florida, whether you live in South America, whether you live in Africa, how do we apply these principles into the social realities of our time? How do we see with the eyes of Christ? And so your mental architecture is going to shape how you view these moral questions and these social problems. So our mental architecture can be formed, our conscience can be formed in Catholic social teaching, or it can be formed in some other principles. Utilitarianism, individualism, libertarianism, collectivism, socialism, you know, you name it, objectivism. There's all these sorts of ideological frameworks with which you can think about the world, but Catholic social teaching is the one that the church proposes. But to be formed in Catholic social teaching, you need to have a sense of what those principles are, and then you can apply them rightly in the proper context. The moral framework of Catholic social teaching, again, is principled, it's not partisan. Now, it might be the case that on some issues they look, as we'll talk about later in the lecture, they look more conservative or more liberal, but it's really rooted in a consistent view of the human person and the human person's relationships within society. In Catholic social teaching, we're always working to offer a credible witness. We hope that when we talk about social problems through the lens of Catholic social teaching, we're ultimately pointing back to the author of those principles, the word-made flesh, Jesus Christ ourselves. So again, though we might be working in an indirect evangelical way in the public square, we hope it is an evangelical exercise that when we speak about these principles, that when we break through the left-right partisanship, when we transcend the intellectual binaries, that we hopefully help people meet Jesus Christ in that process because they say, hey, I love when the Catholics, you know, I have this experience at our state capitol, is oftentimes the Catholics think they know what it's all about. And it's the non-Catholics who find Catholic social teaching so refreshing and interesting because it's a new vocabulary for them. And that's what Catholic social teaching is it's a vocabulary and a framework for thinking through really difficult issues and important questions, and people find it very refreshing. And I see the evangelical uh possibilities of Catholic social teaching every day in my job, and that's so encouraging. That's how I've been able to stick with it for 15 years because politics can be a discouraging business sometimes, but when you understand why you're there and what you're trying to do, and again, it's and it's to try to make life a little bit better for people through Catholic social teaching, but also help people meet Jesus Christ, you won't follow, fall into some of the traps that sometimes uh are laid for people who work within the political sphere. We're not simply reactive to what the issues are. When you work through the lens of Catholic social teaching, you get up in the morning, you don't have to think to yourself, oh, what are my principles today? You know, the principles are there, they're the gospel principles. They're there, it's Jesus Christ yesterday, today, and tomorrow, forever, right? They don't change, and that's so refreshing. They might, how they apply might change in a particular context, but the principles themselves don't change. And as a result, we don't simply impose our views on people, we propose them. We propose them because we think they're true, they're good, and they're beautiful, and they have a proven track record through history. I mean, you can look at back at documents from the U.S. Bishops Conference in the 1980s, I'm thinking economic justice for all, the challenge of peace. These were two documents that were ridiculed on left and right at the time, but 40 years later look really, really uh prescient, you know, especially when we're talking about nuclear warfare. Um, kind of in the news, right? Um, so geez, if if only people would have listened to the U.S. bishops in 1983, um, maybe we wouldn't find ourselves in some of the challenges um that we're facing today. I want to talk about this principle of solidarity as well. I think it's an important one. And again, what does the compendium of the social doctrine of the church say? So there we have a catechism of Catholic social teaching called the compendium of the social doctrine of the church. Have people heard of this? Anyone? Bueller? A couple people have heard of the compendium of the social doctrine of the church? It's like a gr it's like a big catechism of of these social principles, and it's draws from speeches of the popes and various documents from the Vatican or the bishops' conferences. Really a great resource. And what he says about solidarity, what it says about solidarity is that it rises to the rank of a fundamental social virtue because it places itself in the sphere of justice. It is a virtue directed to the common good, and is found as a commitment to the good of one's neighbor with the readiness in the gospel sense to lose oneself for the sake of the other and to serve him instead of oppressing him for one's own advantage. We might call solidarity social charity, right? We might call it social charity, especially when it's applied in the political context. We work for the good of our neighbor in the political context, we are exercising a form of social charity. We recognize that we all do better when we all do better, right? That my well-being is bound up in the well-being of my neighbor, and that when there is someone poor and hurting or facing challenges in our community, that impacts all of us, right? That hurts all of us. And so that's what fundamentally at a basic level solidarity is. It's a recognition that we have a responsibility to work for the good of our neighbor, and that what impacts the most vulnerable, hence the principle in Catholic social teaching of the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable, that our well-being is impacted as well. And so it's a solidarity, then in the land of the church, is a political virtue, it's a social virtue or an aspect of social charity that calls us into, again, participation. I'll use that word again. It calls us into participation in public life. Why? Again, because we all do better when we all do better. Again, Pope Francis in that speech from July 2024, democracy is not an empty box. Rather, it is linked to the values of the person, fraternity, and integral ecology. I don't have time to get into all the church jargon on some of these things, but the point is that, again, we have to step into that space in solidarity precisely to fill public life with perspectives on what impacts human dignity and the common good. What are some aspects of Catholic social teaching or advocacy areas? Care for creation, civic participation, the importance of education as a path of human flourishing, health care to steward the gift of life, labor and economy because there's a certain dignity of work that helps promote the common good and material flourishing for all, but helps develop the individual personality as well. And of course, the great encyclical on that is laborum exertions from Pope John Paul II. Life and bioethics, marriage and family. We understand from Catholic social teaching that marriage and family are the basic building blocks of society, not the individual, not the state, the family. That is radically different than the other ideologies that are out there on sale, right? That the family is the basic building block. And so, for example, when you're talking about state budget questions, how does a state budget, the really the met the ultimate metric of a good state budget, this is the this is our pitch in Minnesota, is how it impacts the well-being of the family. So a couple years ago, we spearheaded the enactment of a child tax credit for low and low middle income families because they're doing the most important work of raising the next generation. So when you have a vision of the common good and a vision of the well-being of the family, it completely shifts the conversation in a different direction than again, those typical left-right binaries. Should we tax more or should we spend more? You know, it's it's a zero-sum game between taxation and spending. Doesn't that seem like every one of these questions related to budget and spending? Should we tax more or should we spend more? Well, it's not about taxing more or spending more, or taxing less and spending less. It's like, what should government be doing to promote the good, right? And well, what is good? Well, we live in this morally relativistic society where no one knows the good anymore. Well, what's good? I don't know, that's your opinion. Um, we're proposing particular goods, and that's why the church is often looked at uh with uh a sense of scandal, because we have the audacity to propose what is good. Well, you can't do that. How do you know that? That's just opinion. Like, this is relativism. No, we actually do know what is good, uh, not only by revelation, but also by reason as well. We can tell what works and what doesn't in a society. And we know from basic human experience that if you want society to flourish, you have to build on the building block of the natural family. Society is a family of families. So again, these are things known by reason, but they're also known by revelation as well. And we propose these things for the common good. Pope Leo talked about the importance of religious freedom in his address and why that is necessary so that people can respond to the call, the creator, because we can't exclude religious values from public life, the importance of being able to migrate when necessary, and of course the protection of the poor and vulnerable. These are some of the themes and advocacy areas uh that we talk about when we go to the state capitol in Minnesota. Now, what is the Catholic social teaching vision? Some call it a consistent ethic of life from womb to tomb. Pope Francis uses this term integral ecology, saying everything is connected. Um, we talk about the preferential option for the poor. So all these are themes or labels that people put on Catholic social teaching. And they're all, of course, an aspect of that in one way or another. But it's something that is Pope Francis used the term integral ecology because the church integrates what the world disintegrates. We put together what the world pulls apart into those false binaries that I was talking about, right and left, either or conservative, liberal, whatever. The church puts back together, it makes whole. That's in fact another word term for the word Catholic to make whole, right? Pope Leo the 13th, I mentioned Pope Leo the 14th calling back to his predecessor. Again, what is it that we're seeing? What was he seeing in 1891 that we're seeing today in 2025? I'll go to that last bold faceline. The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension. What will artificial intelligence do? Are we on the brink of nuclear disaster? Wise men are discussing it, practical men are proposing schemes, popular meetings, legislatures and rulers of nations are all busied with it. There's no question which takes deeper hold in the public mind. This is the first paragraph of Rerum Navarum. This is what Pope Leo is calling us back to and saying, boy, um, the more things change, the more things stay the same, right? And so we need that kind of vigor and participation to think about the new things of today. And that's what we're all called to do, whether it's in the bioethics sphere or some of these other themes of Catholic social teaching. I've talked a little bit about the two images of the city of God and the city of man. It's not the sacred and secular, not church and state, not religion, um, the spiritual and the and the temporal. It's the two spiritual realities competing for the raw materials. Our task, as I like to say, in a what seems like an often hostile ambient culture, it's a lot more hostile in Minnesota than North Dakota, but we've got to build Babylon's good without bending to its gods. We have to build Babylon's good. We have to go back to um what um, I think I have the slide. Here it is. Imagine that. I have the slide for it. One of my favorite passages, it's probably the favorite passage in scripture of mine, Jeremiah 29, 7. He says, Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you, pray for it to the Lord, for upon its welfare your own depends. This is our call to work for the good of the city. Now, of course, Jeremiah is speaking to the Israelites in exile, right? They've been taken from where? Jerusalem. Right? The city of peace, the city of the promise. And they brought into exile in where? Babylon. There's no greater city, of course, of hell on earth. Babylon. Going back to what? Babyl. You know, man's pride, the sinfulness of man. So they're exiled in this horrific place that is so contrary to the place of peace, to the city of peace. And the Lord promises that, well, he says, you're here because of your infidelity, right? Like if you go back in the book of Jeremiah, you're here because of your infidelity. You're living in this hostile ambient culture where they make you change your name, where they, at the sound of the lyre, the trigon, the harp, the pipe, you know, you know that passage, right? Every knee shall bend to the sound of Nebuchadnezzar. And if you don't, we're gonna throw you in a burning fiery furnace or throw you into the lion's den. But Daniel, Shia, Jadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, what do they do? They don't sprinkle the incense, they don't eat the unclean foods, and when there's a ban on prayer, David throws open the windows so everyone can see him. Right? So they have to learn their fidelity again in this hostile ambient culture. Now, the Lord promises them that they will return after a time. But they can't just sit around waiting and doing nothing and twiddle their thumbs until the time of the promise returns. He says, No, work for the good of the city. Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their fruits, take wives and have sons and daughters, find wives to your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so they may be your sons and daughters. Increase there, do not decrease. This is our task. So even if you think we live in this hostile ambient culture, even if it feels like the city of man, the city of Babylon is encroaching in our society today. We can't just wait around and hope for things to improve. We have to work for the good of the city. We have to lay down roots, even in Babylon. I think this is so prescient to where we are today. We can't just wait around for things to improve. We have to get in there, like Pope Francis says, and meddle in politics and be a part of the process. And interestingly enough, maybe it's in infidelity in a hostile culture where you relearn faithfulness is how we will be brought out of exile. So why does Cyrus the Persian send the Israelites back to Jerusalem? Maybe it's like, ah, these people are really faithful to their God and he intercedes for them and intervenes for them. Maybe we should just send them back to Jerusalem. So in this time of exile, maybe we relearn fidelity in a hostile ambient culture, having to deal with some of these challenging ethical and moral issues. And then we are brought back into the city of God. But it will be because we were faithful in those things. We worked for the good of the city. For in the good of the city, just like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They worked for the good of the city, and in the good of the city, they found their own welfare. Okay, thus concludes part one. Questions? Comments, concerns. Yes, in the back. Hi, nice to see you. But participating, politics requires the participation of citizens. Why is it the case it requires the participation of citizens? Well, we've sort of been over this already. Because it's that great conversation about how we order our life together. And so if people aren't playing a role in the conversation, then some perspective about what serves human dignity and the well-being of our communities is lost. I want to get, I think it's helpful sometimes to get into the etymology. Oops, Dr. Schneider, I'm not moving forward here.

unknown 59:40

And then click the act.

SPEAKER_01 59:42

There we go. Okay, so community is literally a sharing of gifts. Who's heard of this term moonus? Anyone know this term moonus? Moonis is probably the most important term in Catholic social doctrine. The plural of moonus is moonera. The translation might be gift, office, role. The bad translation of that that you'll often see in Catholic social documents is function. I don't think that's a good word to use, but it's really a gift role office responsibility. A communis, a community, is a sharing of gifts. Every person has unique gifts. They have unique perspectives, gifts that they've been given and been given by God to them alone. And the gifts we have is that song says, we are given to share, right? You know that song. Kind of got a good scriptural reference, right? Now, whether you like that tune or not, I will not opine on it. But the point is, it's scriptural, St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians, and it's an important one because we do each have unique gifts. Every single person, no matter their state, no matter who they are, they're created in the image and likeness of God and given gifts. You could be a severely disabled person, and you have inestable value and gift that you can bring to the conversation. That's why the church calls us to participation. All of us. And when people are excluded, you know, we talk about diversity, equity, inclusion. Those words are often given a bad name, or there's a lot of controversy. But those are, at the end of the day, those are a Catholic way to think about those things. There's a diversity of gifts. People should be treated equitably because we're all equal in the eyes of God, and we should be inclusive of people who've been excluded from social, political, and cultural life and economic life too. Right? And to the extent our communities are strong, to the extent there is social justice, there's a term, it's because we are living the values of inclusion. We are giving each social actor what he or she needs and inviting them into the great conversation about how we order our life together. Prisoners should not be excluded from that conversation. Oftentimes we want to kick prisoners to the curb, but they're people within creating the image and likeness of God too. Yes, they've sinned and committed crimes, sometimes horrific ones, but we should make sure that their voices are included about prisons and what prisons are like, for example. We think that prisons are not just places of punishment, but reform, responsibility, and restoration. So the point is that even people at the margins of society, which is why Pope Francis and other popes have talked so repeatedly about not excluding people at the margins or the peripheries. It's because everyone needs to be brought into social life. And another way of thinking about solidarity is civic friendship. So community is really a sharing of gifts. Again, Catholic social teaching is not simply a grab bag of public policy positions, it is a rich philosophy of social life. One of the mistakes we make in thinking about and talking about bioethics issues, and this is why I'm doing sharing this with you, is because we talk about bioethics issues in the abstract. I think this is a huge mistake. Yes, is abortion, does it contravene the natural law? Absolutely, it does. But you know what? When you start talking about abortion as a failure and a breakdown in relationships, that's when you start changing hearts and minds. And you're able to do that precisely because you understand this rich vision of society through the lens of Catholic social teaching. So when we legalized abortion up till birth in Minnesota in 2023, a horrendous thing, the bishops, their statement was read on the floor, and I'm proud of what we did, and we tried to fight the good fight on that. But we were able in many ways to be a part of that conversation and to get a respectful hearing because we talked about the failure of relationships and what we owed to the woman, the unborn child, and not pitting one against another or simply talking about the immorality of killing an innocent child in the abstract. But in the context of relationships, we owe legal protection of the unborn child, right? We owe that that's a right relationship between society and that child. But we also owe the woman in a difficult pregnancy, we owe her the resources that she needs to bring that child to term. Again, that's talking about these issues in the context of relationship and the social order. That's why I wanted to spend this time with you talking about Catholic social teaching. You might be scratching your head, well, why are we talking about Catholic social teaching and not bioethics specifically? Because I want you to be able to propose, or at least have your appetite wedded, to go deeper into this rich vision of society so that you'll be more effective as advocates on these tough bioethics questions. That's why we're talking about this vision of community and right relationships of Catholic social teaching. So who's responsible to bring Catholic social teaching in the public arena? Well, it turns out we are. Why? Because, like I said, we all have unique gifts, perspectives, and it's upon all of us to respond to the call to be faithful citizens. Again, I want to go back to that talk of Pope Francis. He says, Let us think of those who have made room with an economic activity for people with disabilities, workers who have given up a right to prevent the dismissal of others, renewable energy communities promoting integral ecology, also taking care of families facing energy poverty, administers who support birth rights, work, school, educational services, accessible housing, mobility for all, integration of migrants, all these things are not part of politics without participation. The heart of politics is participation. And these are the things that make participation taking care of the whole, solidarity, integration, not just charity. But taking care of the whole, taking care of this, the whole, he says. That's a perfect summary of what I'm talking about is that we when we participate through a Catholic lens and a Catholic perspective, we restore what is broken. We integrate what is disintegrated. We bring issues that impact people at a very basic level into the conversation. And it's not simply in the political arena, but how we run our hospitals, how we run our parishes, how we run our schools. All of social life can be transformed by Catholic social teaching. How we run our businesses. All these principles can be applied because it's living in society. Whether you're running a monastery, a household, a hospital, a school, it's all social life. Because what is a social life? It's a community. And what's a community? A sharing of gifts, right? A family is a little society. And society is what? A family of families. So all these principles of social life apply in all these different contexts. Preferential option for the poor and vulnerable. When you're a family and you're making a family budget, what do you do? You prioritize the needs of the children and the elderly, right? And you prioritize the basics food, shelter, clothing. Same is true for a state budget. You provide prioritize the needs of the weakest before you provide tax breaks for PGA, golf tours, sports stadiums, and amenities, the luxury goods, so to speak. So the same principles that should apply in a family budget through the lens of Catholic Social Teaching would also shape a state budget as well. Okay. So Pope Francis says, and first we can think about the crisis of democracy as a wounded heart. So many of us are discouraged when we think about politics. That which limits participation is right before eyes. So our friend in Washington, here, so many people are discouraged. They don't want to get involved. I can't make a difference. So they're discouraged and they don't participate. They see the corruption and illegality that reveals, as Pope Francis calls it, a heart attack. Then different forms of social exclusion must also be a concern. Every time someone is marginalized, the whole body suffers. Again, going back to a principle I mentioned earlier. The throwaway culture creates a city where there is no place to the poor, the unborn people who are vulnerable, sick, children, women, young, and elderly. So if we give in to that heart attack, that discouragement, literally, a lack of heart, a faint of heart, faint-heartedness, discouragement. It's right in the word. Encourage to strengthen heart, discourage, weaken the heart. Then the throwaway culture wins. The city of man infiltrates and pushes out the city of God. So what do we do as a church? This is the whole role of the church, to involve in hope, because without it we may manage the present, but we do not build the future. Without hope, we would be like administrators, typewriter walkers of the present rather than prophets and builders of the future. That's what you all are. That's why you're here in this great program because you want to be a builder of the future. You want to build on the solid foundation of human dignity and you want to promote the common good. But to participate rightly in the public arena, you need to be formed, not just in the principles, but in the virtues, right? Prudence. We talked to Father a moment ago. So you can have the principles, but you also have to be prudent. I like to say that stupid for Jesus is still stupid. You can have the right principles, the orthodoxy. And you can have the right heart, the orthopathos. But if you don't have the orthopraxis, the right skills, then you're not going to be effective. That's why you have to be informed on the issues, not just formed in the principles. Or if you're informed on the issues, you've got to be formed in the principles. And you've got to have the right heart to do it. You're not going to be effective if you're mean. Right? So, what do we need? The three stools, preaching the truth with charity and love. Right? That's what we need. We need people who are formed in the principles and are formed in the virtues. Think globally, but act locally. Again, where do you have agency? You have agency in your corner of the vineyard. All politics is local, and we have to remember that. That's where you have agency. That's where God has planted you, and that's where, in fact, you can make a difference in your business, in your hospital, in your school, in your family. Start there. We're so worked up on what's going on all outside in the world, and everything in our own lives is falling apart. Father, run your parish well. I'm sure you do. But like, you know, don't get, I get, I mean, I know priests who are like worked up on national politics. And it's like, hey, you know, have you seen the bride's room? I mean, like, so it's uh we gotta focus on where we're planted in our corner of the vineyard. So word about identity politics. I think we're running a little short on time, so I think we're gonna skip over. Yeah, we're gonna skip. I'm gonna skip this piece. So, how do we bring our faith in the public arena? Form, inform, transform. I've talked about that. Forming your conscience. The church gives us abundant resources to do this. I mean, there are the catechism, the compendium, the social doctrine. I mean, it's like every day the popes have great speeches about something relevant in this regard. So there's lots of resources to form your conscience out there. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, you're you're here forming your conscience in this program. When we form our conscience, we can are more capable of effectively making a difference. Our posture is relational, not confrontational. So it's not just what we say, but how we say it that is going to be evangelical. When we can be reasonable actors, relational, not confrontational, making appeals and not demands in the public arena. In my experience, legislators want to hear from you more and more when you can be a reasonable actor, when you're always demanding them, we're gonna vote you out of office if you don't do this, or you're a jerk, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, like it's like having kids and they're always demanding things. Do you really want to listen to your kids when they're always demanding things from you? No. Like, it's easier when they're reasonably making a request as opposed to making a demand. So we want to be relational and not conscient, confrontational. Getting our, I mean, I don't want to get too deep into some of this because this is this might be well-trod ground for you, but we have to act in formation. Right? Why do I focus on formation? Because conscience is not simply the ability to choose right from wrong, but it's the inability to act in accordance with the good. Our ability to act in accordance with the good will be done to the extent that we shape and form our conscience, right? It's like a muscle. You gotta strengthen it, you gotta like weight train with the conscience, you know? So you have to be formed in the right principles, and even better, be given opportunities where you can exercise your agency to choose the good. So we have to act in accordance with our conscience, but we do have a duty to properly form our conscience. Why do we have a duty? Because you can't give what you don't have. And conscience is not simply an infallible guide. That's why church teaching, that's why the great thing about being Catholic is we have access to uh the magisterium of the church. The late Archbishop Flynn in St. Paul, he said, conscience does not determine what is right or wrong, but rather makes a judgment about whether a particular proposed action is in accordance with what is right or wrong and therefore a good or evil action. So again, it's about formation in conscience to be able to choose what is right or wrong. Okay. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving will help you do that. We've talked about being informed on the issues. Um, the types of legislation on which we engage, uh, just to give you a sense of the issues that we work on and the types of things that you could work on, the people we invite people and the people of the pew, it doesn't fall down on partisan lines. Some things look a little bit more Republican, like school choice, opposition to assisted suicide, opposition to marijuana and gambling, um, opposition to abortion and reproductive technologies, support for religious freedom. Some things on the Democrat side, earn sick, and safe time, child tax credits, migration issues. So the church's positions, rooted in principle, they don't fall neatly on partisan lines. Here are some legislative bioethics questions on which we've engaged. In the making life section, assisted reproduction, abortion, IVF mandates, surrogacy, gender ideology, conscience protections for health care providers, and on the end-of-life questions, assisted suicide legalization, surrogate decision makers, and pulse. All these are active legislative issues in the Minnesota legislature. And again, it's really important that within your sphere of influence, whether it's in the healthcare facility, whether it's in a school, parish, that you're not just waiting for the bishops and my staff to go talk to elected officials, but you're helping people actively do this too. You're taking what you've heard here today and helping them be faithful citizens because you're helping to form them the right principles and then encouraging them to make their voice heard so that we avoid the problem that our friend in Washington raised, which is, you know, we don't have the as many committed people speaking out as folks on the other sides of some of these questions are. So this is just by way of example, these are active legislative issues in the bioethics sphere in Minnesota right as we speak. I'm gonna skip that one. Um often Catholics feel politically homeless. Those are two prominent Catholics, one Republican, one Democrat, neither of whose views represent the totality of Catholic social teaching. Um, but again, how do we transform society? We work within our corner of the vineyard. I'd encourage everyone to consider a vocation of public service because if we don't have good people making decisions, virtuous people, then, and if we're not in relationship with them, we can't be surprised when we don't have good public policy. Some of you do holy hours, everyone goes to Mass on Sunday, but consider a citizenship hour. How do I become a faithful citizenship? I'm gonna get into that in the final lecture here, but the point being is what are some practical things that you could do? You could write a letter to the editor, you could promote the Catholic Advocacy Network, you could talk to your family. Our friend from Minnesota here is doing talking to her family, join a community board or council. There are lots of things that don't involve uh you could be part of like a uh a library board or a citizen commission that meets an hour once a month or something like that. You can pray for elected officials, inform yourself about a key issue. So consider a faithful citizenship hour. That's one practical bit of advice I give to folks. Okay, that's part two, and we've got one more to go here, and I'll breeze through it, but I do want to take some time for questions. Yes, from Toledo. Yes, I think one way to th to think about it is that our enemies are not people. Our enemies are the powers and principalities. Now, the powers of principalities have their hooks and tentacles into people, but the people themselves are not the enemy, right? And so how do we drive out evil is to do good. And so, I mean, you can read the gospels, and you know, what is Jesus the number one thing he does is heal the sick and drive out demons, right? So it's not like it's not like there's not real scriptural proof for this in the reality in the world. Um, that's Genesis 2, you know, or Genesis 3 or whatever it is, the the garden in Adam and Eve. So the the point being is spiritual, the spiritual, you know, the reality of the spiritual warfare and the two cities is the whole theme of scripture, right? Um there's the new city and the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven. Um, but the point being is that the people are not the enemy. Even they might be our temporary opponents, but they're not our enemies. And in society, we're called to be friends, and so we might have disagreements, but we can be dis we can disagree without being disagreeable, and that recognize that there is someone. I I think this is actually a helpful reality, is to recognize that the powers and principalities are the true enemies and not other people. Um, the line between Soltz and Eatzen says this, the greatest line. The line between good and evil runs through every human heart, right? So what we want to do in society to say is to say the problems in the world are because of those people. That's not the problems of the world are because of me. Like Chesterton said, what's wrong with the world? I am. And I think like when when we can when we can make what a secularizing society has lost is the sense that the real battle between good and evil is not between groups of people, it's between sin and it's the struggle and sin in our own human hearts, right? So that might be a helpful way to think about that. Okay, part three, here we go. This is one of my I love this line. Talking about meddling in politics. There's a great book called Prayer as a Political Problem. Cardinal Daniello says, I have no liking for Christians who will not touch the facts of human existence for fear of soiling their hands. The Christians who struggle to make Christianity effective in the world, even at the cost of painful blows, those I admire. You might not be, you might be thinking Pope Francis is called to make a mess here. I love that church which plunges into the thickets of human history and is not afraid of compromising itself by getting mixed up with men's affairs, with their political conflicts and their cultural disputes. I love that church because it loves men and therefore goes out to look for them wherever they are. I love best of all that church which is mud splashed from history because it's played its part in history. The church of the poor, which is denounced for its weaknesses by Pharisees, whose hands are clean, but who can point to no single person they have saved. I love that quote. I just think it's so encouraging. And it just speaks to who we are as we get it, we you know we get in the hands of history, we we're engaged in history, and because we're trying to rescue people at the end of the day, right? We're helping, trying to help them meet Christ and we're trying to save souls, trying to build the city of God. And we got to get in there and uh let the Holy Spirit do its thing. Trust that it's not all about us, but with the Holy Spirit, with God, all things are possible to restore all things in Christ. Okay, how do we do oops, here we go again. How do we do this effectively from a legislative? I want to just get really focused on legislative engagement, uh, and it'll be practical for you because you can become legislative advocates, especially where you're so needed. I need more people with a bioethics background who can go and talk to legislators about these important issues. Okay, what are the do's and don'ts of legislative engagement? The do's. This is Paul Bunyan Catholic, by the way, and these are his friends. Paulette. Uh, and and um, I forget what we named the other guy, but there's Paulette. I remember Paulette. Paula, yeah, that's it. Paula, Paulette, and Paul. Um, Paolo, that's it. Get to know your elected officials, all of them. So, do you know your elected officials? Have you ever met them? If you don't know who's making the laws, you can't expect they're going to be good. Simple, right? You got to get to know your elected officials. They want to meet you. Your elected officials need to hear from you and they want to hear from you. They need you as a resource, and they need you as a friend. So, going back to that theme of civic friendship. That's what civic friendship is, is being a resource to them, helping them do their job. A good Catholic meddles in politics so that those who can govern, who govern, can govern. They need you to do their job. That's why we get involved and we get in the process. Some of you are a parent, you'll understand this principle. There are no rules without relationship. It's much easier to get your kids to do something when you have a constructive relationship with them. There's no rules without relationship. You can't expect someone to do what you want without having a constructive relationship with them by making demands instead of appeals. Again, going back to the why. Why do we do what we do? Start with the reality of the proclamation. That's what we're here for, is even when we're speaking indirectly about a legislative issue, we're ultimately speaking about the kingdom of God and what serves human dignity and the common good. That's the why, is to remember that what we do is evangelical and missionary in character. We don't win at all costs. Here's the practical aspect of it. We don't win at all costs, right? We're reasonable, we make appeals, we believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to change hearts and minds. We don't get discouraged. We don't get discouraged. We encourage others and we remember what it's really all about. We don't win at all costs, we don't fall into the worldly traps of the political partisans on either side. Why do we do this besides the proclamation? I love this line. Politics matters because policy matters because people matter. That's why we do this. Politics matters because policy matters because people matter. A lot of P words. You notice that? I like I love the alliteration. People policy process. Principled, here we go. Principled public policy advocates root in the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable. So going back to assisted suicide. So we we handed out, um, Dr. Schneider, you handed out those flyers on assisted suicide. What I want you to notice about those.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:24

The ones that were sent to you in your email.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:26

Yes, the ones that were sent to you. What I want you to notice about those is on the assisted suicide question, look at the coalition that we built. It's not simply religious groups or faith communities, it's groups who are concerned about economic injustices and health care disparities for racial minorities. People who are concerned about dis people, the impact of assisted suicide on people with disabilities. It doesn't matter the issue. The preferential option for the poor and vulnerable applies to more than just economic justice issues. It applies to all sorts of issues. Is the unborn child in the womb vulnerable? You bet it is. Is the family vulnerable? Is the family under attack today? Yes, it is. Is the immigrant someone who is often poor and vulnerable? Yes. But assisted suicide brings into this question as well. It's integral ecology. Everything is related. Because if we protect the choices of a few, the white, wealthy, and worried who want assisted suicide, we're gonna endanger the healthcare choices of everyone in our society, particularly the poor and the vulnerable. Assisted suicide drugs cost 130 bucks. You know how much a cycle of chemotherapy costs? 3,500. So if you don't think your healthcare is endangered by assisted suicide, you better think again. So again, this is what I'm talking about when I'm saying if we want to talk about assisted suicide, you can't just say it's wrong. God is the author of life and we shouldn't kill people. I agree, I totally agree. But you have to be able to make appeals to people in the way, like as St. Thomas Aquinas says, the thing is received in the mode of the receiver. So you might not get a politician to agree with you on assisted suicide on the morality of it. But what you might be able to get a politician to do is agree with you that we shouldn't have policies that negatively impact poor and marginalized people, right? So that's where they're going to agree. In the abstract, they might say, yeah, I think people should have choice if they want to end their life. But they might say, in practice, this law will endanger vulnerable people. And so we can't enact it. And so you have we have to understand the relational dynamics of these issues when people's mental architecture today is not Catholic social teaching, it is not Catholic morality, and it is not the natural law, right? It is autonomy-based, by and large. It's not communitarian. So you have to be able to appeal to them in a way that they will be understand. So it's not just being informed on the issues, it's also being informed about your audience and what they care about. How will you know what your audience, the legislator, cares about? Oh, because you know them as people. Right? Because you know them as people. You know who they are, you know what makes them tick, you know what they care about. You did your homework before you went into the meeting. Better yet, you meet with them once a year. That's how you know. That's how you're better able to persuade them on these questions. Again, we're principled, not partisan. Be proactive, proposing policies that promote the common good. Don't simply be reactive. The child tax credit was enacted in Minnesota, which now benefits $500 million a year, go to low and low middle-income families, because we weren't sitting around waiting for the agenda to be set. We set the agenda. We said families need the child tax credit. We're gonna make that happen. And we did. Or how do we proactively promote better end-of-life care? So the Alliance for Ethical Health Care, the sheets that you received. We're not just opposing assisted suicide. We're proposing what? Better funding for those who care for people with disabilities. Better palliative care. There's my palliative care guy. Funding and training and better access for palliative care. So set the agenda. Be proactive in proposing policies that promote the common good. Set the agenda, don't simply be reactive. The church also needs professional collaborators who understand people, policy, and process, who are passionate, persuasive, principled, and prudent bringing the church into the public arena. That's all you. You've taken the next step to be better formed in these issues. We need you stepping forward as professionals in whatever your sphere is, whether you're a lawyer, a healthcare executive, whatever, stepping into this conversation because of that formation. Be present, not omnipresent, don't nag people, but you have to be present. There's an importance of being a regular presence in these conversations. I'm gonna skip that one. Skip that one. Be pragmatic and keep your powder dry. Understanding it's hard to persuade others who do not share your premises. Again, stupid for Jesus is still stupid, but you have to be persistent to a degree. The people in the pew are the hands and feet, but we must avoid casting the church as a pressure group. We propose we don't impose. I'm sounding sorry if I'm sounding like a broken record, but I really want to drive home that important point. We propose we don't impose, and we trust in the power of the Holy Spirit because we remember the proclamation. Finally, persevere in prayer. For we are this is the question that you ask. Ephesians, for we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. That's it. That's the answer to your question. Ephesians 6, 12 through 13. People are not our enemies. We are called to persuade them and treat them as our friends because they, like us, are created in the image and likeness of God, even if they are our temporary opponents. Okay, some don'ts. Don't assume that you will not make a difference. Don't demand things as though you are entitled to them. Propose, don't impose. Sorry again. Assume, don't assume anything by them by their partisan affiliation friends. This is one we fall into. I think a lot of Catholics say, well, I disagree with them on every issue. Well, you probably don't. You probably don't even know where they stand on things, on many issues, because there are thousands, like I said, 5,000 bills a year. You can't fall into the trap of R's and D's. More and more I know that is the case, that there's sort of uniform positions nationwide because of party affiliations. But on a lot of these difficult bioethics questions, except for abortion, which is essentially a partisan issue now, um, don't assume anything about party affiliation. Difficult end-of-life circumstances don't know partisan divides. Infertility doesn't know partisan divides, for example. So the we have Democrat lobbyists who we've engaged on the assisted suicide question, even though they're pro-choice, they work with us on the assisted suicide question because they've cared for loved ones at the end of life and think assisted suicide is a tragedy. Um, it's not it's not compassion, they don't believe it's compassion or choice. Sending someone home to die along with a vial of pills is the absolute opposite of compassion. So don't assume anything by Republicans and Democrats, talk to everybody, and they will appreciate it when you do that you don't assume things about them simply because of party affiliation. Don't expect that you will convert them to your idea on the first sitting. Here's another trap people get discouraged because they don't just walk in and like the walls of Jericho, they fall down on the first time. Like, when when are you persuaded the first time you're introduced to an idea? Hardly ever, right? Like things take time, you gotta be worked on a little bit. So recognize that these elected officials have all kinds of people asking and demanding things of them. They're not just gonna be like, oh yeah, sure, that's exactly right. Now, sometimes they do, but um, but that's if they trust you and they know you. But usually you have to work on them a little bit and work with the power of persuasion. Persuasion takes time. Voting, don't fall into the trap of saying, well, I voted, I did my part two years from now, I get to vote the bums out. Nope. The work of faithful citizenship is that legislative process. Voting is one small piece of that. It is not the sum total of faithful citizenship. It's only one small piece of it. The real work of politics happens on those other 364 days of the year. Uh the most important elections are the ones which you're likely not showing up at. City councils, county commissioners, state legislatures, um, mayor, mayoral offices. You gotta show up for those because those, like I said, they they have huge bioethical implications, but they have big impacts on quality of life, and they're the ones where you can really make a difference in your community and for your local community. Again, form, inform, transform, and that's what I got. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:32

It's been a pleasure, this OSV Podcast production is in partnership with OSV News. Visit OSVnews.com to learn more.