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The Cardinal’s Column

Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.

At the end of a calendar year, many review their lives and make promises to themselves to change for the better. We call these New Year’s resolutions. To make them, we engage in a sort of examination not only of our lives but of our consciences and the choices that have shaped our lives.

“Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1778).

Catholics have a lifelong obligation to form our consciences and to act in accord with human reason, enlightened by the teaching of Christ as it comes to us through the Church. In our personal lives and in social life, we are to oppose evil and do good.

Prudence is a virtue that trains us to judge a situation in accord with the moral law and to act accordingly. While there can be clarity about general principles, there is often conflict when it comes to particular decisions and actions.

A person of faith doesn’t just act according to abstract principles but decides what must be done with the help of God’s grace. If one cannot invite the Lord to direct an action, it shouldn’t be done.

Three areas of common moral concern and of much practical disagreement that dominate public life at this time are warfare (especially in Iraq), migrants (especially those in this country without legal documentation) and corruption (especially the misuse of public resources for private purposes).

As we form our conscience on these matters, we should pray for enlightenment from the Lord and also consult others whom we respect and know to be upright.

Pray for peace

I recently received a letter that moved me deeply from an Air Force captain serving in Iraq. He is not someone I’ve met, but he was a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Chicago in the early 1990s.

He wrote: “As I write this letter now, I am serving on my third deployment to the Middle East. I am very proud to serve our country in uniform, but I think we all know that military might alone is not enough to bring peace to this region.

“In the early part of October, I visited with a wounded soldier in our hospital here. He’s proud of the work that he’s done, but he asked the eternal question: Why must all of this have to happen? While we are making great strides in certain areas, every death and every injury is keenly felt…

“As I’m sure you’ve read in the news, many Muslim leaders have appealed to His Holiness Pope Benedict for a discussion about ways to resolve our differences. Within the last two months, I’ve read Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s discourse on Mary and the Muslims. It appears that she is one common bond we share with the Muslim world.

“It is at this point that I make my most humble request. For the benefit of all of us serving here, as well as the people who live in this region, would you make an appeal to the Catholic community in Chicago to make a commitment to praying the rosary for peace in the Middle East? I do not ask for military victory, but a change of heart for all people.

“If all people were to follow the example of Mary, we would experience the peace that Christ calls each one of us to....

“Just as the praying of the rosary turned the Battle of Lepanto, I’m hoping that praying the rosary now will bring victory — not through any more violence — but through the realization that we all must respect one another as members of the same human family.”

People, including Catholics, will continue to disagree about the war in Iraq; but one New Year’s resolution we could all make — especially because Jan. 1 — is the Feast of Mary, Mother of God and also the World Day for Peace, is to make our own the captain’s plea and pray the rosary each day for peace.

Pray for migrants

A second moral issue that will continue to divide the civic community concerns those many millions who share our lives but who are not here in the United States with legal papers.

In his message for the 94th World Day of Migrants and Refugees (Jan. 13), Pope Benedict draws our attention especially to young migrants, those who feel the “difficulty of dual belonging.” The Holy Father writes of those in refugee camps, and he reminds us that human trafficking along national borders and in camps destroys many lives in adolescence.

A large group of Chicago priests has consistently and insistently spoken to the issue of exploitation, encouraging undocumented migrants here not to lose hope and reminding all of us about families in danger because our elected officials have effectively abandoned the question of immigration law reform as politically inflammable in an election year. They are right that it is a dangerous situation but wrong in ignoring it.

The Priests for Justice for Immigrants have resolved to join others in praying the rosary each day at 7:15 a.m. at the Broadview detention center.

Again, praying the rosary can join in prayer those who disagree over what faith might tell us should be done about reforming our immigration laws; but praying with and to the Blessed Virgin brings everyone to a different vantage point.

Pray for public officials

A third pressing moral issue is the corruption that accompanies our public life. We’re so used to it that each new investigation seems like a replay over many generations. Our history becomes a succession of scandals, and many of the actors have been or are baptized members of the Catholic Church.

Bishops have often enough messed up the governance of the Church, and there is corruption in the Church; but laypeople are responsible for the world, and it’s not in great shape.

Praying the rosary each day in this election year for our elected officials and the federal, state and city bureaucracies that control public life joins us to them in concern for the common good and diminishes a sense of self-righteousness that sometimes seems to overtake those most incensed by stories of corruption.

It should also bring conversion of heart to all concerned, for it seems clear to me that if conversion is the fundamental reason for the Church’s existence, then the Church has often failed in her mission.

Maybe, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we will receive the grace to do better in the New Year.

2008 is upon us. It will likely be a year with lots of disagreement and public acrimony.

Let it also be a year when praying the rosary centers our spirit on the great mysteries of faith that inform our lives and keep our choices morally consequent with our baptism.

A blessed New Year to you and your families.