WCC questionnaire:
A useful tool for faithful citizens at elections

		Eye on the  Capitol  John Huebscher

Another election season is underway and with it another voter education effort by the Wisconsin Catholic Conference (WCC).

For the WCC staff, voter education is just that. No one is being told how to vote. Rather, our efforts are directed to help people prepare to vote by informing themselves.

As Pope Benedict put it so well in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Catholic social doctrine has no intention of giving the church power over the state. Nor is it an attempt to impose our faith on others. Rather, it is to help people use their reason in ways that further the effort to attain a just society.

Accordingly, the WCC's voter education resources are an attempt to help Catholics to approach the task of being "faithful citizens."

Tool for voters

One tool is the candidate questionnaire. Though directed at candidates, the questionnaire is a tool for Catholics as well. The questions presented are intended to help voters, as well as those who run for office, to have a better grasp of how broad is the range of issues of interest to Catholics.

Staff consulted widely in framing the questions. First, we identified a preliminary set of questions based on the WCC's policy priorities. We then asked diocesan offices to review the lists and offer suggestions. Staff also consulted with our Policy Advisory Group before submitting them to the bishops for final approval.

Two questionnaires

As in past years, the WCC has developed two questionnaires. One focuses on state issues and asks 18 questions of candidates for governor and the legislature. The other looks at federal and international issues and poses 20 questions to candidates for the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

Both questionnaires group the questions into four categories. These categories - Protecting Human Life, Promoting Community and Family Life, Practicing Social Justice, and Promoting Global Solidarity - mirror the four "Moral Priorities for Public Life" identified by the Administrative Committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in their most recent statement on Faithful Citizenship.

No endorsement

Every candidate certified for the ballot by the Elections Board will receive a questionnaire. Any and all responses will be posted on the WCC Web site and shared with the diocesan newspapers. But the WCC will not endorse or oppose any candidate. Nor will it identify any answer as a "right" or "wrong" response.

The questionnaires are a tool, not a list of specifications. While Catholics are encouraged to ask these questions when they meet candidates on the "campaign trail," they are also urged to ask questions of their own. We also hope the questionnaires will help candidates grasp the fullness of how Catholics define the common good that should be the goal of all policies and politicians.

The questionnaire is not perfect and cannot capture every issue of interest to every citizen. But it offers anyone interested in the vocation of "faithful citizen" a good place to start.

John Huebscher is executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference.

Facing reality: How do we learn to quit?

		Grand Mom  Audrey  Mettel Fixmer

Kris and I were driving to Madison a few weeks ago to visit our favorite yarn shop. My daughter was driving, of course, and talking about her travel plans for her job.

She is a consultant in customer service for hospitals and clinics all over the country. Hers is a mind-boggling schedule, and yet I see her at home, where she is a devoted gardener, accomplished seamstress, and gourmet cook. We share plants, recipes, and knitting patterns.

It's one of the many treasures of a relationship with grown daughters. But I worried that she was doing too much.

"Well, where do you suppose I got that from, Mother?" she laughed. "But I learned that just because I can do something, it doesn't mean that I should."

I pondered those words and decided I needed to adopt them for my own motto. Now that I am aging and running out of steam, I must face the reality. I shouldn't even attempt to do what I did so routinely years ago.

In the first 20 years of our marriage I learned to do anything and everything that would make a good home for my growing family. I learned the most efficient way to do everything in order to "do everything."

I sewed shirts and pajamas for the boys and nearly everything the girls wore, including prom, homecoming, and school dresses, coats, and even bridal gowns.

I learned to can, freeze, make jams, and bake bread from the good farm women in Minnesota, where Bob was teaching.

For the next 20 years I taught school full time while still having children at home, so I did cut back on the sewing, but I continued to create big dinners every night.

Before leaving for school in the mornings I frequently washed a couple loads of clothes, baked a dozen muffins, or started dinner in the crock-pot. I didn't have to do it; I did it because it was more healthful, more economical, and tasted better to boot.

Now in my old age, I confess that I am having a hard time letting things go. When I gaze out at my flower garden from the view in my sunroom, I am gratified, but then I go out to water and see the ugly weeds that need pulling and I begin beating myself up for my neglect.

I browse through my cooking magazines and I am seduced by a photograph of yummy things wrapped in phyllo dough, but then I look at my clean kitchen and wonder if I really want to mess it up and will I have the energy to clean it up again?

Sure, I can still bake bread. I can still put on a first class dinner party and produce a beautiful weed-free garden, but should I? As Kris says, "Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should."

Daughter Elizabeth says it so wisely, "Energy is a prize possession, one that we rarely recognize until we are stripped of it for a time."

This morning at Mass Father Bill talked about the beauty and innocence of a five-year-old. Life is simple then, but as we grow life becomes too complex.

We need always to simplify, simplify, simplify. Only when we can remove all busy-ness can we become God-centered and find peace in our lives.

Doesn't it say in the Scriptures, "Be still and know that I am God"?

"Grandmom" likes hearing from other senior citizens who enjoy aging at P.O. Box 216, Fort Atkinson, WI 53538.

'In the beginning': Objective view of call to love

		A Culture  of Life  Christopher West

The Church's teaching on sex seems a far cry from the way sex plays itself out in the experience of real human beings.

The historic abuse of women at the hands of men; the tragedy of rape and other heinous sex crimes, even against children; AIDS and a host of other sexually transmitted diseases; unwed mothers; "fatherless" children; abortion; adultery; skyrocketing divorce rates; prostitution; a multibillion-dollar pornography industry; the general cloud of shame and guilt that hangs over sexual matters - all of this paints a very different picture from the one St. Paul and John Paul II give us.

The picture it paints, in fact, is the tragedy of human sinfulness and our fall from God's intention for our sexuality "in the beginning."

Our call to love

In the Book of Genesis while the first creation story gives an objective account of our call to love, the second creation story speaks of our first parents' subjective experience of that call.

Adam and Eve represent us all. If we allow the inspired Word to speak to us, we see in their story the inner movements of our own hearts being laid bare. We experience an "echo" of God's original intention deep within us. We sense its beauty, realize how far we've fallen from it, and long for its restoration.

God created Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into him (see Gn 2:7). The Hebrew word for "breath" in the original biblical language is also a word for spirit. And let's remember that the Spirit of God is the very love between the Father and the Son. God is breathing his love into the man.

Love with God

What this means, as we've seen, is that the man is a person called to live in a relationship of love with God.

The man, having received the love of God, is called to give himself back to God. He's also called to share the love of God with others (see Mt 22:37-40). It's stamped in his very being, and he can only fulfill himself by doing so.

As the Second Vatican Council put it, "Man, who is the only creature on earth that God created for his own sake, cannot fully find himself except through the sincere gift of himself."

This is why the Lord said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him" (Gn 2:18). That is, God said: "I will make someone he can love." So the Lord created animals from the dust of the ground and brought them to the man for him to name.

Common humanity

In naming the animals, he realized he was different from them. The animals weren't free to determine their own actions as he was. They weren't called to love in the image of God as he was. We can imagine Adam's reply to God: "Thanks, God, for all these animals. But I can't love a giraffe. I can't give myself to a fruit fly."

So the Lord put the man into a deep sleep and took a rib from his side. Yet again, we lose some things in the English translation. "Deep sleep" might better be translated "ecstasy."

Ecstasy literally means "to go out of oneself," and Adam's "ecstasy" is that God takes a woman out of himself. Furthermore, for Jews "bones" signified the whole human being. The point here is that man and woman share a common humanity. Both have God's spirit within them and both are called to love in the image of God.

Christopher West is a research fellow and faculty member of the Theology of the Body Institute in West Chester, Pa. His column is syndicated by www.OneMoreSoul.com and reprinted from his book Good News About Sex and Marriage: Honest Questions and Answers About Catholic Teaching (St. Anthony Messenger Press).

Love, naturally: Learning NFP

	Life Issues Forum  Theresa Notare

"Love, Naturally," is the theme of this year's Natural Family Planning (NFP) Awareness Week.

On July 23 to 29, Catholic dioceses in the U.S. will provide educational events designed to help people better understand human fertility as a gift from God and to see how NFP respects that gift. The slogan captures the fact that marital love is for the building up of the spouses and the family.

Just a glance at recent news articles provides a glimpse at why NFP awareness is sorely needed.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved three new chemical contraceptives, and by the end of the year it expects to approve a new "under the skin" contraceptive implant. It is being reported that doctors consider these "advances" to be "less risky and more sophisticated" than the decades-old predecessors.

There is an assumption "out there" that it is somehow good for women to suppress their natural, healthy fertility as if it were a disease. Little concern for women's actual health is demonstrated. Pursuit of fertility suppression shows no appreciation for the relational aspect of sex or for human fertility itself.

Some look at advances in contraceptive drugs and devices as simply giving women "more choices" in regard to family planning. In fact, it would serve women and men well to question the healthiness of contraception - both for their own bodies and for their relationships.

Works with fertility

In the world of family planning, only a handful of methods are unquestionably healthy, respect human fertility, and have the added benefit of enhancing the spousal relationship. Those methods fall under the name "Natural Family Planning."

These are methods that are based on a woman's menstrual cycle, what her personal signs of fertility look and feel like, what conditions might affect these signs, and how these work together with a man's fertility. And, by the way, Natural Family Planning is not the "Rhythm" method.

NFP methods help married couples achieve pregnancy by highlighting the optimum time of fertility. By identifying the phases of the infertile time of the woman's cycle, they are also effective for avoiding pregnancy.

When a couple plans to postpone pregnancy, they abstain from sexual intercourse during the fertile time. Nothing is done to suppress, change, or damage the natural and healthy biological system of human fertility. In short, NFP methods effectively work with the nature of human fertility.

Strong relationships

NFP methods have an added benefit: they often strengthen a couple's relationship. By focusing together on their combined fertility and the management of periodic abstinence, husband and wife have to talk about "where they are at" with regard to their fertility.

They need to discuss whether or not they want to try to achieve a pregnancy or postpone one. Because of this, couples who practice NFP say their marriage is enhanced as they find "non-sexual" ways to show love and affection when they are abstaining from sexual relations.

Watch for NFP Awareness Week in your diocese. The good news about the methods of NFP is that they provide a viable means for married couples to love, naturally - as God intended.

Theresa Notare, MA, is assistant director, diocesan development program for NFP, USCCB Pro-Life Secretariat. For information about NFP Awareness Week see: http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/nfp/nfpweek/index.shtml