With the presidential election only days away, Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph is calling his flock’s attention to the gravity of the choice they face and is urging them to join him in prayer. Bishop Finn describes the coming election in the opening lines of his column for The Catholic Key by quoting Deuteronomy: “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.”
Finn also turns to Pope Benedict for insight on how Americans should view the choice they will face in the voting booth.
‘The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right – it is the very opposite. It is “a deep wound in society’.”
Contrary to some Catholics who have been arguing that other moral concerns can outweigh a candidate’s position on abortion, Bishop Finn said, “Our Catholic moral principles teach that a candidate’s promise of economic prosperity is insufficient to justify their constant support of abortion laws, including partial-birth abortion, and infanticide for born-alive infants.”
Finn also targeted the Freedom of Choice Act, describing it as a “pledge to eliminate every single limit on abortions achieved over the last thirty-five years.” Sen. Barack Obama has promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act into law if he is elected president. “The real freedom that is ours in Jesus Christ compels us, not to take life, but to defend it,” Bishop Finn stated.
Given this political climate, Bishop Finn, along with the other Bishops of Missouri is calling on all the faithful to make the last week before the election “a week of prayer for our nation - a week of prayer for the protection of Human Life.”
Invoking the intercession of Our Lady of the Rosary, Bishop Finn asks her to “watch over our country and bring us the victory of life.” The bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph also turns to the Guardian Angels for their intercession on behalf of the 47 million babies lost through abortion in our country in the last thirty-five years. “This horrendous loss of life remains one of the greatest threats to human civilization we have ever faced,” he writes.
“This week,” Bishop Finn exhorts his flock, “please pray and make some sacrifices for our country. I ask every parish to provide some additional opportunity for prayer in the church: an evening Mass, or rosary, or time of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Say the rosary as individuals or as a family, or even simply a decade each night with your children. Say the election prayer. Give up meat, or do without some convenience this week. Make a good Act of Contrition and get to Confession. Offer a worthy Communion.”
Bishop Finn closes his column by announcing that he will preside over an Eve of the Election Mass at St. Therese Parish, North at 7:00 p.m. on November 3.
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(Source: CNA)