The political campaigns are in full swing; the election is days away. Here's some more of the language we've heard—and will continue to hear—until then.

"My fellow Americans ... This November, this vitally important election year, you are going to have a great opportunity ... My fellow Americans, you are going to have the, opportunity to choose between good and evil between right and wrong, between all that is good and holy ... and all that is not.

"You are going to be asked to stand beside the people who are on the side of God, into whose ear God whispers.

"My fellow Americans, that is an awesome choice."

And my fellow Americans I'm not going to tell you which choice to make. But I assure you, lots of other people will. Hopefully, however, it won't be from a pulpit, or in a newspaper like this one.

This is a very political time in our country, and you're certainly going to hear a lot of rhetoric just like that. Even good preaching can sometimes sound a lot like a good political speech. As well as the other way around.

It's easy when the Gospel can be warped into a traditional stump speech. But my point here isn't to politicize the Scriptures. In fact, quite the other way around.

The separation of church and state is a very porous wall, especially depending on who's saying what to whom. The values and morals and challenges to the way we live that can be found throughout Scripture also can be the threads that run through a political system and a political agenda.

That can be good, and it can be bad.

I'm not pretending here to be a Jesse Jackson or a Jerry Falwell. And it's not the place of the church to choose any side—except the side of the Gospel.

But neither is the church ignorant nor uncaring of the vital issues that fuel our political system and which, all too often, are the victims of that system which seems to put personalities and image above the very values and morals that are proclaimed.

In our, uniquely American system, the church has formed a uniquely faithful response. And we as Catholics should understand our place in it, and our place in the vital political process.

Late last year, in anticipation of these elections, the U.S. Catholic Conference and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the most ,recent in its 30-year series of documents addressing the reality of our political system, and our faithful response and responsibilities within it.

It's called "Faithful Citizenship: Civic Responsibility for a New Millennium.” And it ought to be required reading for every American Catholic before heading to the ballot box.

"Faithful Citizenship" outlines the challenges for believers to function effectively and with a Gospel base in our political system. It renews and recites the proud legacy of Catholic social teaching and the reality of the disparities that we live with:

Disparities such as abortion in which more than a million children are destroyed annually; poverty—did you know a quarter of our preschool children are growing up poor? Other disparities such as the lack of morality and violence in our schools; intolerance, racism, bigotry and conflict; the sad and increasing gap between rich and poor; families under fire; the spiraling reliance on the death penalty; and the intense partisan combat that seems to pass these days for dialogue, discussion and answers to our problems.

Those are challenges, not just for the candidates, but for us, the Catholics in the public square, for us, the Catholics who, no matter our political stripe, will cast our ballots in November.

The bishops say that Catholics are ”called to be a community of conscience within society," and to proclaim Gospel values and human dignity. We are not, they say, called to form a religious voting bloc, and nor will the church endorse candidates.

Fact is, neither of the two major political parties, nor their candidates has a lock on Catholic values. Both have good points, and both have bad ones. And then, that's the challenge of the voting booth. Our call to is seek a Gospel-based justice for the people of our nation—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—with concern about such things as health care, housing, immigration, the environment, education, even agriculture policy.

"My fellow Americans" is a phrase you're hearing a lot. It's a good phrase … it connects us as a people, as a nation. But you and I and faithful people all over are connected in another, more basic and far more powerful way.

We're connected by a faith in God, and by a Gospel that calls us beyond our own petty politics and securities and into a relationship with the whole people of God.

That not any political rhetoric, is the sense of the Gospel when it proclaims that those who have a share in the body and blood of Jesus are united, and share in the reality of the Father. And that's more important. than any raucous political diatribe you'll hear this fall.

My fellow Americans … when you hear that phrase shouted out as a political mantra, listen instead for the quiet, insistent, loving voice of God.

The Faithful Citizenship document

More information is available on the Web site of the Archdiocese of Chicago: www.archdiocese-chgo.org.