As a coda to last year’s USCCB document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” the New York Catholic bishops yesterday issued a statement on voting, and voting wisely. “Our Cherished Right, Our Solemn Duty” poses a series of questions citizens should use to evaluate candidates, while laying out non-negotiable moral parameters.

Following are the highlights [my emphasis]:

We Catholics are called to look at politics as we are called to look at everything–hrough the lens of our faith. While we are free to join any political party that we choose or none at all, we must be cautious when we vote not to be guided solely by party loyalty nor by self interest. Rather, we should be guided in evaluating the important issues facing our state and nation by the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the teachings of His Church.
. . .

It is the rare candidate who will agree with the Church on every issue. But as the U.S. Bishops’ recent document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” makes clear, not every issue is of equal moral gravity. The inalienable right to life of every innocent human person outweighs other concerns where Catholics may use prudential judgment, such as how best to meet the needs of the poor or to increase access to health care for all.

The right to life is the right through which all others flow. To the extent candidates reject this fundamental right by supporting an objective evil, such as legal abortion, euthanasia or embryonic stem cell research, Catholics should consider them less acceptable for public office.

In keeping with the theme of filling Ordinary Time with music from other liturgical seasons, here’s Orlando di Lasso’s “Omnes de Saba Venient.” 8 parts, big epic, ringing chords (like di Lasso’s Easter motet “Aurora Lucis Rutilat“)–what more could you want? Only 95 days more days until Epiphany!

For obvious reasons, most people are focused on the danger the financial crisis poses to their vital private interests. But some commentators, looking at the larger picture, argue that the long-predicted end of American dominance (and the advent of a multipolar world) has now begun with a vengeance. John Gray writes in The Observer:

Having created the conditions that produced history’s biggest bubble, America’s political leaders appear unable to grasp the magnitude of the dangers the country now faces. Mired in their rancorous culture wars and squabbling among themselves, they seem oblivious to the fact that American global leadership is fast ebbing away. A new world is coming into being almost unnoticed, where America is only one of several great powers, facing an uncertain future it can no longer shape.

Perhaps I read Gray’s piece with a jaundiced eye, but I think there is a strong note of unseemly glee in his analysis. It’s hard to sort out insight from wishful thinking when people with pronounced antipathy to the U.S. predict disaster.

But still, Gray is a thoughtful and perceptive man who may well be right. And it is indeed worrying that America’s leaders seem wholly unprepared for the future he foresees.

“For he will give his angels charge of you, to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up . . .” (Psalm 91:11-12)

On Angels

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seems.

Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for the humans invented themselves as well.

The voice–no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with the lightening.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draw near
another one
do what you can.

—Czesław Miłosz (1974)

Over on the New York Times’ technology blog, Steve Lohr sat down with Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel, to discuss education. Refreshingly, Barrett isn’t convinced that technology is the answer to the country’s education crisis:

“We’re bailing out Wall Street, we’ll be bailing out Detroit soon, we’re bailing out the agricultural sector with high subsidies at a time of record crop prices,” Mr. Barrett said. “Where is the public outrage that the U.S. education system is failing our kids?”. . .

The keys, Mr. Barrett said, are high expectations, improved teacher competence and measuring results. On the touchy issue of measurement, he said it is necessary, but national testing remains politically off-limits. “The Republicans oppose anything called ‘national,’ and the Democrats oppose anything called ‘testing,’ ” noted Mr. Barrett, a Republican. . . .

“PCs aren’t magic,” he said. “Good teachers are.”

Matt Alderman provides an interesting theological argument from tradition that I’d never thought of. I don’t think it’s foolproof, but I do think there’s something to it:

“Drink wine, and you will sleep well. Sleep, and you will not sin. Avoid sin, and you will be saved. Ergo, drink wine and be saved.”

– Medieval German proverb