Archbishop Chaput delivered the following address, titled “The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life,” on Monday, March 1, 2010, at Houston Baptist University.

One of the ironies in my talk tonight is this. I’m a Catholic bishop, speaking at a Baptist university in America’s Protestant heartland. But I’ve been welcomed with more warmth and friendship than I might find at a number of Catholic venues. This is a fact worth discussing. I’ll come back to it at the end of my comments. But I want to begin by thanking Drs. Sloan and Bonicelli and the leadership of Houston Baptist University for their extraordinary kindness in having me here tonight. I’m very grateful for their friendship.

I also want to thank my friend Dr. John Hittinger of the University of St. Thomas. Part of my pleasure in being here is to encourage his efforts with the John Paul II Forum on the Church in the Modern World. The Forum is hugely important – and not just for Catholics, but for the whole Christian community. I’m grateful to the leadership of the University of St. Thomas for supporting him.

I need to offer a few caveats before I turn to the substance of our discussion.

The first caveat is this: My thoughts tonight are purely my own. I don’t speak for the Holy See, or the American Catholic bishops, or the Houston Catholic community. In the Catholic tradition, the local bishop is the chief preacher and teacher of the faith, and the shepherd of the local Church. Here in Houston you have an outstanding bishop – a man of great Christian faith and intellect – in Cardinal Daniel DiNardo. In all things Catholic tonight, I’m glad to defer to his leadership.

Here’s my second caveat: I’m here as a Catholic Christian and an American citizen – in that order. Both of these identities are important. They don’t need to conflict. They are not, however, the same thing. And they do not have the same weight. I love my country. I revere the genius of its founding documents and its public institutions. But no nation, not even the one I love, has a right to my allegiance, or my silence, in matters that belong to God or that undermine the dignity of the human persons He created.

My third caveat is this: Catholics and Protestants have different memories of American history.  The historian Paul Johnson once wrote that America was “born Protestant.”   That’s clearly true. Whatever America is today or may become tomorrow, its origin was deeply shaped by a Protestant Christian spirit, and the fruit of that spirit has been, on the balance, a great blessing for humanity. But it’s also true that, while Catholics have always thrived in the United States, they lived through two centuries of discrimination, religious bigotry and occasional violence.  Protestants of course will remember things quite differently.  They will remember Catholic persecution of dissenters in Europe, the entanglements of the Roman Church and state power, and papal suspicion of democracy and religious liberty.

We can’t erase those memories.  And we cannot – nor should we try to – paper over the issues that still divide us as believers in terms of doctrine, authority and our understandings of the Church. Ecumenism based on good manners instead of truth is empty.  It’s also a form of lying.  If we share a love of Jesus Christ and a familial bond in baptism and God’s Word, then on a fundamental level, we’re brothers and sisters.  Members of a family owe each other more than surface courtesies.  We owe each other the kind of fraternal respect that “speak[s] the truth in love” (Eph 4:15).  We also urgently owe each other solidarity and support in dealing with a culture that increasingly derides religious faith in general, and the Christian faith in particular.  And that brings me to the heart of what I want to share with you.

Our theme tonight is the vocation of Christians in American public life.  That’s a pretty broad canvas. Broad enough that I wrote a book about it.  Tonight I want to focus in a special way on the role of Christians in our country’s civic and political life.  The key to our discussion will be that word “vocation.”  It comes from the Latin word vocare, which means, “to call.”  Christians believe that God calls each of us individually, and all of us as a believing community, to know, love and serve him in our daily lives.

But there’s more.  He also asks us to make disciples of all nations.  That means we have a duty to preach Jesus Christ.  We have a mandate to share his Gospel of truth, mercy, justice and love.  These are mission words; action words.  They’re not optional.  And they have practical consequences for the way we think, speak, make choices and live our lives, not just at home but in the public square. Real Christian faith is always personal, but it’s never private.  And we need to think about that simple fact in light of an anniversary.

Fifty years ago this fall, in September 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president, spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association.  He had one purpose.  He needed to convince 300 uneasy Protestant ministers, and the country at large, that a Catholic like himself could serve loyally as our nation’s chief executive. Kennedy convinced the country, if not the ministers, and went on to be elected.  And his speech left a lasting mark on American politics.  It was sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong.  Not wrong about the patriotism of Catholics, but wrong about American history and very wrong about the role of religious faith in our nation’s life. And he wasn’t merely “wrong.”  His Houston remarks profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation.  Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage.

Now those are strong statements.  So I’ll try to explain them by doing three things.  First, I want to look at the problems in what Kennedy actually said.  Second, I want to reflect on what a proper Christian approach to politics and public service might look like.  And last, I want to examine where Kennedy’s speech has led us – in other words, the realities we face today, and what Christians need to do aboutthose realities.

John Kennedy was a great speaker.  Ted Sorensen, who helped craft the Houston speech, was a gifted writer.  As a result, it’s easy to speed-read Kennedy’s Houston remarks as a passionate appeal for tolerance.  But the text has at least two big flaws.   The first is political and historical.  The second is religious.

Early in his remarks, Kennedy said: “I believe in an America where the separation of Church and state is absolute.”  Given the distrust historically shown to Catholics in this country, his words were shrewdly chosen.  The trouble is, the Constitution doesn’t say that. The Founders and Framers didn’t believe that.  And the history of the United States contradicts that.   Unlike revolutionary leaders in Europe, the American Founders looked quite favorably on religion.  Many were believers themselves.  In fact, one of the main reasons for writing the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause – the clause that bars any federally-endorsed Church – was that several of the Constitution’s Framers wanted to protect the publicly funded Protestant Churches they already had in their own states.  John Adams actually preferred a “mild and equitable establishment of religion” and helped draft that into the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution.

America’s Founders encouraged mutual support between religion and government.  Their reasons were practical. In their view, a republic like the United States needs a virtuous people to survive.  Religious faith, rightly lived, forms virtuous people.  Thus, the modern, drastic sense of the “separation of Church and state” had little force in American consciousness until Justice Hugo Black excavated it from a private letter President Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Association.(4)   Justice Black then used Jefferson’s phrase in the Supreme Court’s Everson v. Board of Education decision in 1947.

The date of that Court decision is important, because America’s Catholic bishops wrote a wonderful pastoral letter one year later – in 1948 – called “The Christian in Action.”  It’s worth reading. In that letter, the bishops did two things. They strongly endorsed American democracy and religious freedom. They also strongly challenged Justice Black’s logic in Everson.

The bishops wrote that “It would be an utter distortion of American history and law” to force the nation’s public institutions into an “indifference to religion and the exclusion of cooperation between religion and government . . .” They rejected Justice Black’s harsh new sense of the separation of Church and state as a “shibboleth of doctrinaire secularism.”(5) And the bishops argued their case from the facts of American history.

The value of remembering that pastoral statement tonight is this: Kennedy referenced the 1948 bishops’ letter in his Houston comments. He wanted to prove the deep Catholic support for American democracy. And rightly so. But he neglected to mention that the same bishops, in the same letter, repudiated the new and radical kind of separation doctrine he was preaching.

The Houston remarks also created a religious problem. To his credit, Kennedy said that if his duties as President should “ever require me to violate my conscience or violate the national interest, I would resign the office.” He also warned that he would not “disavow my views or my church in order to win this election.” But in its effect, the Houston speech did exactly that. It began the project of walling religion away from the process of governance in a new and aggressive way. It also divided a person’s private beliefs from his or her public duties. And it set “the national interest” over and against “outside religious pressures or dictates.”

For his audience of Protestant ministers, Kennedy’s stress on personal conscience may have sounded familiar and reassuring. But what Kennedy actually did, according to Jesuit scholar Mark Massa, was something quite alien and new. He “‘secularize[d] the American presidency in order to win it.” In other words, “[P]recisely because Kennedy was not an adherent of that mainstream Protestant religiosity that had created and buttressed the ‘plausibility structures’ of [American] political culture at least since Lincoln, he had to ‘privatize’ presidential religious belief – including and especially his own – in order to win that office.”(6)

In Massa’s view, the kind of secularity pushed by the Houston speech “represented a near total privatization of religious belief – so much a privatization that religious observers from both sides of the Catholic/Protestant fence commented on its remarkable atheistic implications for public life and discourse.” And the irony — again as told by Massa –is that some of the same people who worried publicly about Kennedy’s Catholic faith got a result very different from the one they expected. In effect, “the raising of the [Catholic] issue itself went a considerable way toward ‘secularizing’ the American public square by privatizing personal belief. The very effort to ‘safeguard’ the [essentially Protestant] religious aura of the presidency . . . contributed in significant ways to its secularization.”

Fifty years after Kennedy’s Houston speech, we have more Catholics in national public office than ever before. But I wonder if we’ve ever had fewer of them who can coherently explain how their faith informs their work, or who even feel obligated to try. The life of our country is no more “Catholic” or “Christian” than it was 100 years ago. In fact it’s arguably less so. And at least one of the reasons for it is this: Too many Catholics confuse their personal opinions with a real Christian conscience. Too many live their faith as if it were a private idiosyncrasy – the kind that they’ll never allow to become a public nuisance. And too many just don’t really believe. Maybe it’s different in Protestant circles. But I hope you’ll forgive me if I say, “I doubt it.”

John Kennedy didn’t create the trends in American life that I’ve described. But at least for Catholics, his Houston speech clearly fed them. Which brings me to the second point of my talk: What would a proper Christian approach to politics look like? John Courtney Murray, the Jesuit scholar who spoke so forcefully about the dignity of American democracy and religious freedom, once wrote: “The Holy Spirit does not descend into the City of Man in the form of a dove. He comes only in the endlessly energetic spirit of justice and love that dwells in the man of the City, the layman.”(7)

Here’s what that means. Christianity is not mainly – or even significantly — about politics. It’s about living andsharing the love of God. And Christian political engagement, when it happens, is never mainly the task of the clergy. That work belongs to lay believers who live most intensely in the world. Christian faith is not a set of ethics or doctrines. It’s not a group of theories about social and economic justice. All these things have their place. All of them can be important. But a Christian life begins in a relationship with Jesus Christ; and it bears fruit in the justice, mercy and love we show to others because of that relationship.

Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Mt 22:37-40). That’s the test of our faith, and without a passion for Jesus Christ in our hearts that reshapes our lives, Christianity is just a word game and a legend. Relationships have consequences. A married manwill commit himself to certain actions and behaviors, no matter what the cost, out of the love he bears for his wife. Our relationship with God is the same. We need to live and prove our love by our actions, not just in our personal and family lives, but also in the public square. Therefore Christians individually and the Church as a believing community engage the political order as an obligation of the Word of God. Human law teaches and forms as well as regulates; and human politics is the exercise of power – which means both have moral implications that the Christian cannot ignore and still remain faithful to his vocation as a light to the world (Mt 5:14-16).

Robert Dodaro, the Augustinian priest and scholar, wrote a wonderful book a few years ago called Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine. In his book and elsewhere, Dodaro makes four key points about Augustine’s view of Christianity and politics.(8)

First, Augustine never really offers a political theory, and there’s a reason. He doesn’t believe human beings can know or create perfect justice in this world. Our judgment is always flawed by our sinfulness. Therefore, the right starting point for any Christian politics is humility, modesty and a very sober realism. Second, no political order, no matter how seemingly good, can ever constitute a just society. Errors in moral judgment can’t be avoided. These errors also grow exponentially in their complexity as they move from lower to higher levels of society and governance. Therefore the Christian needs to be loyal to her nation and obedient to its legitimate rulers. But she also needs to cultivate a critical vigilance about both. Third, despite these concerns, Christians still have a duty to take part in public life according to their God-given abilities, even when their faith brings them into conflict with public authority. We can’t simply ignore or withdraw from civic affairs. The reason is simple. The classic civic virtues named by Cicero – prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance – can be renewed and elevated, to the benefit of all citizens, by the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity. Therefore, political engagement is a worthy Christian task, and public office is an honorable Christian vocation. Fourth, in governing as best they can, while conforming their lives and their judgment to the content of the Gospel, Christian leaders in public life can accomplish real good, and they can make a difference. Their success will always be limited and mixed. It will never be ideal. But with the help of God they can improve the moral quality of society, which makes the effort invaluable.

What Augustine believes about Christian leaders, we can reasonably extend to the vocation of all Christian citizens. The skills of the Christian citizen are finally very simple: a zeal for Jesus Christ and his Church; a conscience formed in humility and rooted in Scripture and the believing community; the prudence to see which issues in public life are vital and foundational to human dignity, and which ones are not; and the courage to work for what’s right. We don’t cultivate these skills alone. We develop them together as Christians, in prayer, on our knees, in the presence of Jesus Christ – and also in discussions like tonight.

Now before ending, I want to turn briefly to the third point I mentioned earlier in my talk: the realities we face today, and what Christians need to do about them. As I was preparing these comments for tonight, I listed all the urgent issues that demand our attention as believers: abortion; immigration; our obligations to the poor, the elderly and the disabled; questions of war and peace; our national confusion about sexual identity and human nature, and the attacks on marriage and family life that flow from this confusion; the growing disconnection of our science and technology from real moral reflection; the erosion of freedom of conscience in our national health-care debates; the content and quality of the schools that form our children.

The list is long. I believe abortion is the foundational human rights issue of our lifetime. We need to do everything we can to support women in their pregnancies and to end the legal killing of unborn children. We may want to remember that the Romans had a visceral hatred for Carthage not because Carthage was a commercial rival, or because its people had a different language and customs. The Romans hated Carthage above all because its people sacrificed their infants to Ba’al. For the Romans, who themselves were a hard people, that was a unique kind of wickedness and barbarism. As a nation, we might profitably ask ourselves whom and what we’ve really been worshipping in our 40 million “legal” abortions since 1973.

All of these issues that I’ve listed above divide our country and our Churches in a way Augustine would have found quite understandable. The City of God and the City of Man overlap in this world. Only God knows who finally belongs to which. But in the meantime, in seeking to live the Gospel we claim to believe, we find friends and brothers in unforeseen places, unlikely places; and when that happens, even a foreign place can seem like one’s home.

The vocation of Christians in American public life does not have a Baptist or Catholic or Greek Orthodox or any other brand-specific label. John 14:6 – “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” – which is so key to the identity of Houston Baptist University, burns just as hot in this heart, and the heart of every Catholic who truly understands his faith. Our job is to love God, preach Jesus Christ, serve and defend God’s people, and sanctify the world as his agents. To do that work, we need to be one. Not “one” in pious words or good intentions, but really one, perfectly one, in mind and heart and action, as Christ intended. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “I do not pray for these only, but also those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (Jn17:20-21).

We live in a country that was once – despite its sins and flaws — deeply shaped by Christian faith. It can be so again. But we will do that together, or we won’t do it at all. We need to remember the words of St. Hilary from so long ago: Unum sunt, qui invicem sunt. “They are one, who are wholly for each other.”(9) May God grant us the grace to love each other, support each other and live wholly for each other in Jesus Christ – so that we might work together in renewing the nation that has served human freedom so well.

———-

Footnotes:

1. Paul Johnson, “An Almost-Chosen People,” First Things, June/July 2006; adapted from his Erasmus Lecture

2. Full text of the Kennedy Houston speech is available online from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

3. John Witte, Jr., “From Establishment to Freedom of Public Religion,” Emory University School of Law, Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, Research Paper No. 04-1, 2003, p. 5

4. Ibid., p. 2-3

5. U.S. Catholic bishops, pastoral letter, “The Christian in Action,” No. 11, 1948; see also Nos. 12-18; reprinted in Pastoral Letters of the American Hierarchy, 1792-1970, Hugh J. Nolan, editor, Our Sunday Visitor, 1971

6. Mark Massa, S.J.; quotations from Massa are from “A Catholic for President? John F. Kennedy and the ‘Secular’ Theology of the Houston Speech, 1960,” Journal of Church and State, Spring 1997

7. John Courtney Murray, S.J., “The Role of Faith in the Renovation of the World,” 1948; Murray’s works are available online from the Woodstock Theological Center Library

8. Robert Dodaro, O.S.A.; see private correspondence with speaker, along with Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine, Cambridge University Press, 2008 (first published in 2004), and “Ecclesia and Res Publica: How Augustinian Are Neo-Augustinian Politics?,” collected in Augustine and Post-Modern Thought: A New Alliance Against Modernity?, Peeters, editor, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium , 2009

9. Referenced in Murray, “The Construction of a Christian Culture;” essay originally delivered as three talks in 1940, available online as noted above.

by Ricky J. McRoskey

In March, a psychologist from the London School of Economics will publish the findings of a recent study concluding that “liberals” and atheists have higher IQs than their “conservative” or God-believing counterparts.  The implication is plain-even embarrassing-for the religious: people who don’t believe in God are smarter.  Leaving aside the question about whether IQ aptly measures intelligence, and as somebody who falls on the dumber end of this implication, I’d like to ask one of the study’s interpreters-a professor at the George Washington University business school named James Bailey-a few questions about his explanations.

I’ll begin with a passage from the CNN article describing the study:

Participants who said they were atheists had an average IQ of 103 in adolescence, while adults who said they were religious averaged 97, the study found. Atheism “allows someone to move forward and speculate on life without any concern for the dogmatic structure of a religion,” Bailey said.

• How is atheism any less dogmatic than religion?

One of the greatest fallacies about atheism is that it’s not dogmatic, that it’s somehow not bound by the codes and strictures of organized religion.  Atheists, Bailey would have us believe, are free to speculate on anything and everything.

That is, as long as that speculation does not fall outside the atheist’s unyielding principle that there is no God.  Atheism is bound by its very definition: the moment someone even explores the reality of God’s existence-just explores, not confirms-is the moment he or she is no longer an atheist.   If a dogma, as Bailey uses the term, is a principle someone believes to be incontrovertibly true, then an atheist subscribes to his own dogma. And if a religion is something defined by a dogma-say, the belief that there is no god-then atheism is a religion.

• When you say that atheism allows someone to “move forward,” what does that mean? Forward toward what?

The implication, again, is that somehow Christians or Jews or Muslims have a tough time “moving forward”-which is why their intelligence lags.  But forward motion requires that you’re going somewhere-that there is an end, a destination.  Otherwise, you might be moving backwards, or sideways, or in a circle.  It’s the problem of defining “progress,” which G.K. Chesterton addresses: “Progress is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.”  And if we define progress as gravitating toward something new, then atheism isn’t progressive or forward-looking-just ask some of the philosophers from ancient Greece or Rome.  Choosing not to believe in God is nothing new.

So, my question to the atheist folks with the higher IQs: In your philosophical pursuits, where are you going, and how do you know it’s forward?

One final passage:

Bailey also said that [preferences for novel ideas] may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ. In fact, aligning oneself with “unconventional” philosophies such as liberalism or atheism may be “ways to communicate to everyone that you’re pretty smart,” he said.

• How does holding an “unconventional” philosophy communicate that you’re smart?

Let’s get the logic of this straight.  According to Bailey, we determine someone’s intelligence not on the merits of their beliefs, but on the basis of whether that belief is widely held?  If that’s the case, I can think of a few extremely unconventional beliefs that would then be associated with brilliance: that the best cure for the common cold is eating asphalt; that the earth rotates based on the movements of the squirrel population; or that the moon is made of mozzarella.  Also, I was always taught there was another word for “a desire to show superiority or elitism”: arrogance.

The point is, atheists in this groundbreaking study may indeed have had higher IQs than their God-fearing neighbors-for a bundle of different reasons that we’ll never know.  But to conclude that this “higher intelligence” is somehow because of their godless dogma-well, that’s not very smart at all.

—

Ricky McRoskey writes for a New York-based financial firm.  A 2006 Notre Dame alumnus, he recently graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and has written for Business Week, Silicon Alley Insider and the San Diego Daily Transcript.  He writes a weekly article on life and culture in his blog, The Three Points, Originally from San Diego, he now lives with his wife in Stamford, Connecticut.

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This column is the first in a series reflecting on Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 Lenten message. Reprinted with permission from Denver Archdiocesan paper. —ed.

by Archbishop Chaput

“’Distributive’ justice does not render to the human being the totality of his ‘due.’  Just as man needs bread, so does man have even more need of God.”—Benedict XVI, 2010 Lenten message

One of the defining moments of Jesus’ public ministry takes place before his work even begins.  In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, God’s Spirit leads Jesus into the desert for fasting and prayer.  While there, Satan attacks him with temptations to vanity, worldly power and glory.  In effect, Christ’s knowledge of who he really is and the nature of his messiahship are put to the test.  Pressed by the devil to turn stones into bread, a hungry and weakened Jesus nonetheless answers:  “It is written, ’Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’” (Mt 4:4).

Reading the New Testament reminds us again and again that Christian discipleship has social implications.  We have obligations of charity, mercy and justice to each other that bind us together as one human family.  We cannot be saved alone.  We prove our faith and we make our way to God through service to other people, especially the poor and the weak.  The Epistle of James especially warns us that pious words alone do not make a Christian.  James urges us to “be doers of the word and not hearers only” (Jas 1:22).  And he stresses that “religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (Jas 1:27).

We are in the world, and we have duties to help ease its needs.  We’re called to make it a more virtuous and humane place.  But—and this is vital—we are not of the world.  As Pope Benedict says in this year’s Lenten message, the material dimension of Gospel justice flows from a deeper and more important spiritual truth:  We were created by God.  We cannot be happy or whole without him. 

Human beings are much more than mere animals or interesting biochemical systems.  We have souls.  Through Jesus Christ, we will live forever.  Thus we have needs and longings that can never be satisfied by merely material things.  There can be no real “justice” divorced from questions about man’s final purpose and humanity’s deeper spiritual hungers.  Any social order that denies God or refuses to allow him space in the public life of its people fundamentally attacks its own legitimacy because it denies reality and trivializes the scope of the human person.

Today, Ash Wednesday, Catholics around the world begin the holy season of Lent, one of the most sacred periods in the Christian year.  Lent is a time for self-denial and prayer; a time to reconnect with Scripture; a time to purify ourselves and reconcile with God through the sacrament of penance.  It’s an invitation to humility, forgiveness of others, honest self-examination and repentance—but also to growing joy, because with Easter, our redemption will be at hand.

This is a precious time and gift; a unique chance to reorient our lives toward those unseen but enduring things that really matter.  This year, may God grant us the wisdom to use these weeks of Lent well.  May we remember that we serve justice best by first giving ourselves to God; and then bringing the light of Jesus Christ to others through the witness of our lives, our words and our actions.  There is no justice without truth; and only Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life.

Read the Holy Father’s 2010 Lenten message.

Reprinted with permission

Ric Brutacao, president and COO of premiere kitchen appliance manufacturer DACOR, will discuss the impact of Faith in business on Saturday morning, February 27, 2010, from 11 a.m. to Noon EST (8 a.m. - 9 a.m. PST) on The Catholic Business Hour with host Dick Lyles.

To find a radio station near you, go to www.EWTN.com/radio/amfm.htm.

To listen live online on Saturday, go to www.EWTN.com/radio.

To call-in to the show, the Toll Free call in number is: 1-877-573-7825.

Let our sponsors know you support them!! Mention “CBJ”.  The Catholic Business  Hour is sponsored by: Andrew at AdvantageTech, a national IT placement firm, at www.advantageTech.NET, by the Population Research Institute, putting people first, at www.pop.org, and byAlpha and Omega Processing, the first and last relationship you’ll ever need for electronic payments, at www.aopsales.com.

I am inviting you to join me along with Tom Peters of Catholic Vote Action (www.catholicvoteaction.org) and other special guests, for an important election-related conference call on Thursday evening, February 25, from 9 to 10pm ET. This will be part of Priests for Life’s “Vote Pro-life” Coalition, as we continue to gear up for the elections of 2010. You will be able to listen to the call either by phone or by internet.

This call will not be the same as the January 25, for those who were part of last month’s call, but rather a continuation of the discussion. Click here to listen to a replay of the January 25 call which featured David Barton of Wallbuilders, Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List, Brian Burch of Catholic Vote and Gary Bauer of American Values.

After signing up for the Feb 25 call here, you will receive a letter via email with the details. If you do not receive the letter, be sure to check your spam folder. The letter will also appear on your computer screen and you can print it from there.

Now is the time to get started, and we need all hands on deck! Join us for an informative and inspiring call on February 25.

Thank you,

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life

by Tom Loarie

Authors J. Barry Griswell and Bob Jennings set out in The Adversity Paradox to uncover the source of business savvy, an underlying and critical attribute of extraordinary success. They found that success and fortune were not an accident of luck. Rather, it was about adversity - embracing it then overcoming it - that played a crucial role in establishing a success trajectory that was extraordinary. Adversity can be your teacher and your friend. When approached with this attitude, you will emerge stronger, smarter, and savvier.

“Paradox” is filled with stories of business leaders -including the personal stories of Griswell and Jennings - who have overcome all manner of adversity and applied their experiences to create the business savvy to attain unmatched levels of success. They turned failure on its head and built successful careers and personal lives upon the very experiences most people work to avoid.

Griswell and Jennings include sections on how adversity transformed leading people 1) to be more introspective (and prayerful), 2) to become values-based, 3) to work with “and then some” attitude, 4) to identify their purpose and seek it with passion, and 5) and to develop an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. These are foundational Catholic attributes which lead to extraordinary success.

Adversity, large and small, is always lurking and it happens. Last year, 2008, millions came face-to-face with adversity due to the catastrophic global, economic meltdown. Those caught up in this mess will find The Adversity Paradox a hopeful book…but only if they can make adversity a friend. Severe setbacks have a way of “making us take stock of our careers and our lives - our progress towards dreams and goals, our strengths and weaknesses, our motivation, and our daily work habits which can often reveal inner resources and abilities we wouldn’t have otherwise known we possessed.”

We have a choice when faced with adversity and with the right choice, we will find ourselves in one of the most powerful and transformative situations life has to offer…one that can lead us to live a life fulfilling our God-given purpose.

This is a book for the times.

Thomas Loarie . Danville, CA . February 2010 . (c)2010 Catholic Business Journal. All rights reserved.

The Catholic Business Journal is pleased to introduced two new columnists: Andrew Marquardt, Esq., and Fr. Frank Pavone.   A former employment law attorney in Kansas City, Mr. Marquardt transitioned 12 years ago into launching with his brother-in-law, and becoming the CEO of, a now-thriving Internet Technology (IT) staffing firm—Advantage Tech—headquartered in Kansas City with offices in Washington D.C. and Dallas, and serving clients nationwide.  He brings an interesting background and perspective to Catholic Business Journal readers, but we’ll let you read more about him in the columnist biography sectioin (left side of the Home Page).

Fr. Frank Pavone is the world-renown National Director of Priests for Life, a dynamic priest based in New York who has literally traveled the world and especially the United States in defense of Life and the Culture of Life.  He is also president of the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life and the National Pro-life Religious Council, and pastoral counsellor for Rachel’s Vineyard.  Read his extensive biography on the Home page (left column) or here.

The Catholic Business Journal welcomes guest columnists from every walk and profession of life on issues relating to living our Faith in the boardrooms, entrepreneurial fields and in the workplace, wherever that may be.   Submit queries or articles to admin@catholicbusinessjournal.biz, or leave a message on the contact number listed in the “Contact Us” page.  —ed.

ATLANTA - Details were announced today for the second annual Atlanta Catholic Business Conference to be held Saturday, Feb. 20th at St. Peter Chanel Catholic Church. Mass begins at 8:30 a.m. and the Conference takes place from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.Sponsored by the Aquinas Center of Theology at Emory University, the Woodstock Business Conference out of Georgetown University and The St. Peter Chanel Business Association, the Atlanta Catholic Business Conference is intended for the Catholic business and professional community who wish to more deeply understand the connections between faith and work. The mission is to invest deeply in attendees’ knowledge and understanding of how to integrate their lives and let their Catholic faith guide their actions in the business world.

Presenters include: Chris Lowney (former Managing Director of JP Morgan and author of Heroic Leadership and Heroic Living), James Nolan (author of Doing the Right Thing at Work, Director of the Arrupe Center at the Woodstock Theological Center and founder of the Woodstock Business Conference), Terry Trout (Catholic speaker, Senior Executive with Cbeyond), Father Ricardo Bailey (popular speaker, Parochial Vicar at Transfiguration and Chaplain at Blessed Trinity High School) and Randy Hain (Catholic speaker, columnist for the Catholic Business Journal, and Managing Partner of Bell Oaks Executive Search).

Those wanting to attend can register for the Conference at www.stpeterchanel.org. Look for the Atlanta Catholic Business Conference button at the top of the homepage which will take you to a recap of the 2009 Conference, information on the 2010 Conference and online registration. Registration covers light breakfast, lunch and the Conference resource book.

Speakers, table discussions and other content will help attendees answer these questions:

• What does it mean to be Catholic in the workplace?
• What does it mean to be a Steward Leader?
• What are practical ways I can live out my faith at work?
• Is there anything truly distinctive about being a Catholic professional?

Questions regarding the Conference may be directed to Deacon Mike Bickerstaff at seminar@stpeterchanel.org or Randy Hain at rhain@belloaks.com.

The Atlanta Catholic Business Conference seeks through the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the teachings of our Church to provide Catholic business people and professionals in our Archdiocese with opportunities to foster a spiritual growth that integrates their faith and work lives.

WE ARE SO INSPIRED BY YOUR NOTES!!!!  The following are notes we received from listeners to Host Dick Lyle’s request for “What is your prayer practice at Work?  on last Saturday’s show of the The Catholic Business Hour.   We’d love to hear more of your prayer practices at work, just enter in the COMMENTS section below the article… —ed.

Marty, from Canada, writes:

The prayer practice I mentioned on the show today is the following;

I lead a number of comittees and often times there is a great deal of disagreement.  About four yeras ago I started the practice of sprinkling Blessed Salt around the room and especially the doorway prior to the meeting praying for a professional outcome.  I would arrive before anyone else and perform this task.  The results have been absolutely outstanding.

Peggy, from Sacramento:

I work at a computer paying medical bills.  When we switched from Access to a web data base that had to constantly refresh, I was very impatient and would start counting to see how much time was being wasted.  Then I got the idea to pray a Hail Mary between each refresh and say it for the inmate whose medical bill I was paying.  I tell Mary I’ll give her my problems to handle while I pray for the souls of others.

Mary, from Hayward CA:

Every time I see Law Enforcement Officers or Firemen,  I say the following prayer:

Our gratious heavenly father, bless these civil servants with the wisdom and courage to protect themselves as they bravely protect their community.   I make this request in Your Holy Name.  Amen

Colin Bardin from an undisclosed location in the U.S.:

My name is Colin and I was a RE agent (although recently quit).  I tried to diligently keep the habit of praying the Angelus at 12pm in the breakroom or even in my car, and if I was in charge of closing the office at 6pm I would pray then as well.  Take care.

Lori Brown, general manager of Immaculate Heart Radio:

 Good Morning,

I’m listening to your show right now and have heard your request for sharing of prayer practices.

Here are a few I employ:

1)      Personal prayer first thing in the morning “Dear Lord, I love you and thank you for this day.  I give this day to you, Jesus!  Thank you for all of the people you’ve send to help me on my journey (and I list some), and thank you for the people that you’ve sent for me to help on their journey (and I list some), please help me to help them in the way you want me to.   Please lead me and my loved ones today to the right people, places and activities.  Keep us close to you, and help us to glorify you in all that we do and who we are.  As a leader, please make my thoughts, words and vision yours.”

I find this prayer gives me great peace as a leader, as I’ve given all of my responsibilities over to Christ right at dawn….and I can then have complete confidence in the outcomes of the day, regardless of what is to come.

2)      Praying the Rosary with the radio (Immaculate Heart Radio) at 6:30 a.m., helps me to make sure I get that in early in the day.

3)      Attending daily Mass as often as possible, again, gets my day off to the best start (and to me the Mass is a prayer)

4)      As a Catholic organization, we have the luxury of praying aloud at work, and I realize not everyone has that, but for those that do…we pray the Rosary every day together at 10:30 a.m., regardless of anything else going on (deadlines, etc.) we make it a point to stop and do this as a staff.

5)      I do a Holy Hour each week in prayer for the work of my organization, for each and every staff member and their families specifically as well.

6)      Throughout the day, I have a running dialogue with God….he’s my Leader and anything tough that comes up, I share it and ask for support from Him, and anything that goes well, I share it and celebrate by giving him thanks.

These practices really boost my confidence and sense of peace no matter what craziness the world may deliver up.

I hope this is helpful to someone, in some way.  I love your show and really appreciate your great work.  You are in my prayers!

by Fr. Frank Pavone

Jesus Christ is Life. To stand with him is to stand with life, and to stand against whatever destroys life. Being “pro-life,” therefore, is not merely a “personal belief” or a political ideology. Pro-life action is not merely a hobby or an “extra-curricular” activity.

Pro-life is a spirituality, a way of relating to God, an integral dimension of the Christian Gospel. There is, in the end, only one Gospel. It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the Gospel of Life. The work of announcing and applying that Gospel to the concrete circumstances of our culture of death is deeply rooted in the commitment we already have as Christians. It is an aspect of discipleship.

At Priests for Life, we have developed and articulated this spirituality since 1991. It is a spirituality not only for priests, but for all the baptized, and the Church has allowed us not only to train people in it but to have them publicly profess promises to live it as Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. In nearly a thousand cities, people are taking this training and professing these promises.

This spirituality that draws deeply from the lives and teachings of three great pro-life warriors whom I was privileged to know personally: Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Cardinal John O’Connor.

The spirituality is biblical, prophetic, liturgical, Eucharistic, ecumenical, and Marian. It is marked by a spirit of joy, a serene confidence, a deep compassion, a radical solidarity with the vulnerable, a strong courage, a constant readiness for public witness, and a passion for justice. The missionaries do the pro-life work they are already doing, but in a way more deeply rooted in the Church.

Here’s what the promises say. Try them on for size!

“I, (name), in the presence of God the Father, the Creator of all Life, Jesus Christ the Son, the Resurrection and the Life, and the Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of Life, and in the presence of this gathering of the People of Life, do joyfully promise, for the rest of my life, to live as a Lay Missionary of the Gospel of Life. I promise to defend my brothers and sisters whose right to life is under direct attack, and to be, especially for the unborn, the voice they do not have. I promise to pursue union with God in all things, and holiness of life which will foster my love for the weakest among us. I further promise to engage in pro-life work, according to the spirituality and virtues of the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, and to collaborate with their work to the best of my ability and within the context of my own vocation. I am confident that the Victory of Life has already been won through the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, and as the Church proclaims, celebrates, and serves the Gospel of Life, Christ will transform the Culture of Death into the Culture of Life.”

Find out more at www.missionariesofthegospeloflife.org.