Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
As Christians, we are called by our baptism to participate in public life and to contribute to the health and happiness of our nation and our state, including at the ballot box and especially on issues of faith and morals. I first and foremost express my sincere gratitude to the clergy, consecrated religious and lay faithful across the Commonwealth of Virginia, and locally in the Diocese of Arlington, for their faithful witness to the Gospel of Life and for raising awareness about the threats posed by Ballot Questions 1 and 2 this election season. Our unprecedented “Catholics Vote No” initiative played a crucial role in mobilizing the faithful in each of our parishes, missions and schools directly reaching hundreds of thousands, faithfully forming consciences, and driving voter participation throughout Northern Virginia through personal appeals, public communications and prayer and fasting. I commend and sincerely thank all who mobilized to ensure the Catholic voice was clearly heard across our diocese.
Tragically, a majority of Virginians voted this election season to insert an extreme and limitless legal right to abortion into our Commonwealth’s constitution. A majority also lamentably voted to strip objectively good and true language from our state’s constitution that upheld the truth that marriage is a sacred institution uniting one man and one woman. Despite this defeat, faithful Catholics may be consoled by the certainty that each one of us gave God our best efforts, and that he will not allow those efforts to be in vain. We know the truth, and no temporary political defeat changes this reality. Thus, we do not despair. We resolve to continue speaking the truth with love and, together, we persevere in faith and hope.
As a result of these changes to our state constitution, it is all but certain that health and safety regulations pertaining to abortion will be eliminated. Worse still, unregulated abortion, even of healthy babies up to birth and for any reason, will be possible. Fathers and mothers will be excluded from irreversible, life-altering decisions involving their underage daughters, and even non-physicians may operate unlicensed abortion businesses. Commercial surrogacy will remain free to exploit vulnerable women and violate the rights of children, and the “sex” and “gender” language in our revised state constitution will perpetuate false and life-threatening gender ideology in our daily lives.
These are troubling realities that we must confront together, confident in God’s goodness and in his willingness to pour out his grace to convert the minds and hearts of all people. Righteous change often includes setbacks, occurs slowly, yet is finally achieved in surprising and unpredictable ways.
As Catholics, we must continue and strengthen our commitment to all our brothers and sisters by speaking the truth in love and by accompanying all those in need, especially mothers experiencing difficult or unexpected pregnancies. Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington will continue to serve mothers and all who seek help, including through the Mary, Mother of Mercy Medical Clinic, showing them in word and deed the love of Christ. Our Gift of Life financial assistance ministry, our parish-based Gabriel Project pregnancy support, and our diocesan pregnancy and adoption programs have transformed lives and outcomes for countless men, women, and children, and by the grace of God they will continue to do so. Project Rachel After Abortion Care, meanwhile, stands ready to serve men and women in need of healing from their participation in abortion, offering compassionate and confidential spiritual care without judgment. As she does in every time and place, the Church strives to heal whatever wounds men and women suffer. Yet, as critical as these diocesan ministries are, we should frankly recognize that they are a necessary response to political and legal injustices that must eventually be corrected through better politics and through authentic, life-affirming law and policy.
We are “one nation under God,” and this remains true even when faith and morals are defeated at the ballot box. As people of faith resolved to live by God’s divine and natural law, we recognize that fundamental truths, such as the human right to life and the sacredness of marriage, can never legitimately be put to a vote, even in a democratic nation.
Across America, as here in Virginia, advocacy and courage are now needed more than ever. We must look to God for the future presidents and governors, justices and judges, and lawmakers and policy advisors who will champion the reforms American law needs: to abolish the scourge of abortion, commercial surrogacy, and related evils, and to restore the dignity and sacredness of the marital bond in law and therefore in culture. The conversion of nations, states and peoples is only ever possible by the grace of God, to whom we turn with confidence and hope now and always.
