Pastoral Letter

A Pastoral Letter on Life and Choice

A Pastoral Letter on Life and Choice

The recent leak of the draft opinion (now official) of the Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade has brought the question of access to abortion front and center for many of us. As a nation, we are politically polarized on this issue into two irreconcilable camps. Polls show that most Americans have more nuanced positions than our elected leaders, both respecting the mystery of life in the womb and generally favoring legal access. While we do not know where the Supreme Court will ultimately land, the issue is before us. If our faith is to have any power, it must be able to speak to us in the midst of such profound questions of the sanctity of life and the right to choose. We cannot ignore these questions. Rather, I believe firmly that if we wrestle with them, we will see a way forward that allows each of us to come to our own informed understandings as well as understand better those who, through similarly formed consciences, might still disagree with us.

Lord, make Instruments of your Peace

Lord, make Instruments of your Peace

On November 3, voting in the 2020 elections will conclude and we will soon thereafter know who our next elected leaders are. This has been a very fraught time for our nation and for each one of us, and Election Day is not guaranteed to settle it.

From pandemic, to violence, to racial injustice, to economic, housing, and food insecurity, to manipulative disinformation for the purpose of division, we are beset on every side.

Every aspect of our lives has been disrupted and each of us has been thrust into a more vulnerable space that can emotionally and physically exhaust us. We are facing choices in this election that many of us, regardless of party or candidate we support, see as existential in nature. More than once we have likely heard, “Nobody is at their best right now.”

In the midst of all of this we have a calling as God’s people to be, in the words of the Prayer of St. Francis, “Instruments of [God’s] peace.”