The Catholic citizen who goes to the polls is the same Catholic citizen that goes to Mass on Sunday. We cannot compartmentalize our lives or ourselves. We cannot turn off our moral compass like a television set without living a lie.
That moral compass is called our conscience. It is shaped over our lives by our parents, our family, our teachers, our priests, and our encounters with good and evil. We don’t buy a conscience readymade off the shelf. It is deep inside of us, part of our essence. A compass is a good analogy because just as a compass points north, our conscience points to God.
Most of us are not theologians, but we learned right from wrong, justice from injustice, selflessness from selfishness, honesty from dishonesty. We learned the Ten Commandments and we learned the Beatitudes. These are the points of our compass. These are the fundamentals of our conscience.
During an election campaign we are subjected to a plethora of promises and a cacophony of claims. Our conscience is our touchstone of truth. It is the measure of our faith.
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