By CatholicVote | Created at 2024-10-31 21:33:13 | Updated at 2024-11-01 04:30:17
6 hours ago
CV NEWS FEED // CatholicVote President Brian Burch called for supporters to urge bishops, priests and deacons to speak in their homilies this weekend about Catholics’ moral obligation to vote on November 5.
“This Sunday presents an historic opportunity to talk about the need to properly form one’s conscience consistent with Catholic social teaching … and to passionately encourage every Catholic in your churches to vote,” Burch wrote in an October 30 email to CatholicVote supporters. “Catholics alone can single-handedly decide the outcome of the election next Tuesday.”
Burch highlighted that his call for clergy members to encourage voting this weekend does not mean they will be endorsing any candidate for president.
“[T]he Gospel call includes our civic duty as Catholics to protect and promote the common good. And the freedom to spread the Good News is sustained by our right to religious liberty,” he wrote. “There is no need to endorse candidates or talk about parties or candidates. No member of the clergy needs to say the words ‘Trump’ or ‘Harris’ or ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat.’”
Burch included several statistics on Catholic voting in his email, noting that roughly 15 million Catholics likely did not vote in 2020. He also said, “Catholics remain one of the largest voting blocs in the country.”
“In 2020, the margin of victory was less than 50,000 votes across three states, out of over 155 million votes cast,” Burch wrote. “In 2000, the entire presidential election came down to 500 votes in Florida. That’s fewer people than are registered in most Catholic parishes!”
Burch also encouraged voters in states with abortion measures on the ballot to vote, saying that their decision to vote will decide whether or not life is protected in those states.
“Catholic voters can decide which states will become places where life is protected and mothers are supported with real, life-affirming family policies,” he emphasized. “Votes have consequences.”
