St. Jerome labored in a cave in Bethlehem for decades, to translate the Holy Scriptures into the street language of his people, Latin. Meanwhile, he also wrote about disputed subjects of his day, sometimes intemperately.
We pilgrims who visited Bethlehem together in 2009 celebrated Holy Mass in St. Jerome’s cave. Also, we pilgrims who visited Rome together in 2006, or 2008, visited St. Jerome’s tomb: the high altar in the Basilica of St. Mary Major. Jerome rests just above a relic of the manger.
St. Jerome died 1600 years ago yesterday. Our Holy Father wrote us an Apostolic Letter to mark the occasion. The pope notes how artists have depicted St. Jerome as a model of devotion to God and His Scriptures. My favorite painter, El Greco, did a number canvases of St. Jerome. Pope Francis singles out this painting by Caravaggio:
I think the greatest depiction of the saint sits on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic did statues of Our Lady for both ends of the exterior of the Shrine of Immaculate Conception in Washington. But I think we find the sculptor’s masterpiece in front of his country’s embassy: St. Jerome, reading (see above).
St. Therese of Lisieux died on the 1,477th anniversary of St. Jerome’s death. She discovered her vocation to follow the little way of love by studying the Scriptures. As she explained in her autobiography, she came to understand her life by reading I Corinthians 13.
Some readers wonder: Does the Word of God teach me for whom to vote in the U.S. presidential election of 2020? Won’t some courageous priest just tell me who to vote for? Doesn’t the evil of procured abortion make it perfectly clear for whom we must vote?
I wrote an essay in 2008, explaining why Roe v. Wade is so dreadfully wrong. You don’t need to read the Scriptures or study the magisterium of the Church, in order to know how wrong it is. You just need to look at a sonogram.
Religion comes into it like this: we have a Christian duty to stand up for the innocent children in the womb, the largest, most-heinously oppressed class of all time. We cannot shirk that duty.
Everyone must determine for him- or herself, according to his or her individual circumstances, how that duty binds. We can offer conclusive arguments that abortion involves unjustly taking an innocent life. We can offer only speculative arguments about how this or that vote, in this or that election, will affect the situation.
I believe that clergymen have a right to free speech, like everyone else, provided we respect the proper times and places to say what we have to say. When we “have the floor,” so to speak, at the Sacred Liturgy, we do not have the right to get into disputed questions of politics, when no one on the other side of the question gets a chance to offer counter-arguments.
Speaking for myself as a voter, I did not come away from Tuesday evening’s debate seeing a clearly good option. Same thing happened four years ago: bad options. I wrote another essay in 2008, about how we have to try and keep politics in perspective; politics, after all, is inherently messy business.
What I think we have to keep in mind, and pray hard about this year, is this: The election of 2020 will unfold like no other presidential election that any of us can remember. Neither candidate will concede the election to the victor on election night, because exit polling will not tell us who won. No one really knows exactly when, or how, the outcome of this election will become clear. Maybe it never will.
May the good Lord pour down patience, kindness, and mutual respect into our hearts. We will need every ounce of Christian virtue we have, so that each of us can do our part to keep the public peace.
Father Mark White Blog 
It’s not about who but what i.e. the Party Platforms. I find neither of the candidates very impressive,
Fr. White, you write: “Some readers wonder: Does the Word of God teach me for whom to vote in the U.S. presidential election of 2020?”
I have not noticed this specific question posed by anyone in your blog’s comment section. But I did ask you to clarify your statement that: “…the act of voting in a presidential election can only be analyzed morally based on the intentions involved. That’s not proportionalism or sophistry; it’s the teaching of the Church.” (Comment under Fr. White’s blog entry on September 21, 2020)
You also claimed that people “must have an evil intention in order to sin.”
(Comment under Fr. White’s blog entry on September 21, 2020)
In several of my replies posted on September 21, 2020, I demonstrated that these claims [[without any kind of deeper explanation]] espouse “Anthropocentrism” (refuted long ago by Socrates) and “Consequentialism” (which was magisterially refuted in paragraph 75 of the Papal Encyclical, Veritatis Splendor).
I cited Pope Pius XI, who warns about the possibility of a “dereliction of the eternal principles of an objective morality.” Pius XI specifies that this kind of dereliction pertains to any system of “rights” and any system of “morality” that lacks a practical or theoretical appeal to the Natural and Divine Law.
Pius XI further clarifies that it is: “a sin against the destiny of a nation, a sin whose bitter fruit will poison future generations” to pretend that the rights of individuals and the rights of governments are not bound to honour “the eternal principles of an objective morality.” (Pope Pius XI, Encyclical against the German Reich, entitled: MIT BRENNENDER SORGE, Paragraphs 29-30)
Pope Pius XI is telling us that human creatures do not ultimately arbitrate the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Pius XI agrees with Socrates that that mortal-man is NOT the ultimate measure of all things… We do NOT determine for ourselves what a “mother” fundamentally is, or what a “father” fundamentally is, or what a “son” fundamentally is, or what a “daughter” fundamentally is. Even more, we do NOT assign the duties and responsibilities that are inherent to human, personal relationships, i.e., fatherhood, motherhood, sonship, daughterhood, etc. According to Pope Pius XI, this is not only important in “theory” it is also true in “practice.”
Fr. White, your October 1 blog post repeats the same subtle error that I have just mentioned. To your credit, you did provide that there is such a thing as “eternal principles of an objective morality.” You did so by admitting: “we have a Christian duty to stand up for the innocent children in the womb, the largest, most-heinously oppressed class of all time. We cannot shirk that duty.”
But then you add a convoluted clause to your affirmation:
“Everyone must determine for him- or herself, according to his or her individual circumstances, how that duty binds.” And then you add another clause: “We can offer only speculative arguments about how this or that vote, in this or that election, will affect the situation.”
Contrary to the convoluted teaching of McCarrick and his cronies who still run American seminaries, there are “duties and responsibilities” that are inherent to the status of being a created human person. These “duties and responsibilities” are NOT meted out according to the “speculations,” “circumstances,” and “determinations” of citizens and voters. They” are meted out by God Himself, according to “eternal principles” that He conceives in His Logos.
This is why every time a “Prenatal Child” comes to be, the very existence of that new life presents something of the “objective moral order” that practically bears upon the whole of society and every individual American voter.
You speak of a “right” that everyone has to determine for him- or herself, according to his or her individual circumstances” how they are “bound” to honour duties and responsibilities that have been assigned by God… But God is the only one who decides what is “binding” if we are talking about the Natural and Divine Law. Didn’t you study Thomas Aquinas in the seminary?! Or did Theodore McCarrick’s cronies distort the authentic teaching of the Church during your lessons on the “duties of religion”?! The particular kinds of “duties and responsibilities” we are talking about here [[which touches upon the relation between creatures and their Creator]] are in NO WAY contingent upon “speculations,” “circumstances,” and “determinations” of citizens and voters!
I don’t appreciate your lame insults. If you would like to make a political argument about which candidate it is better to vote for, you are free to do so. You have not done that. The voter will not encounter a referendum on the legality of abortion when he or she votes in the presidential election of 2020. That is the point I have made over and over again, and instead of addressing it, you just rant about eternal truths. There’s no dispute about eternal truths here. The problem is: making a judgment about a highly imperfect choice of candidates. Moral truths can illuminate that choice, but that requires some kind of reasonable political argument, some kind of logic that connects the moral truth with the political choice. Such a political argument will necessarily be speculative and contingent, but it still might be pretty convincing. As it is, you have not made such an argument. Why should someone vote for this candidate or that candidate? That’s the question. Not: should I kill an unborn child? We know the answer to that question.
I found this very helpful and clarifying.
From the writings of the Rev. Billy Graham
There are many ways to describe politics. Many of our forefathers, thankfully, were Christians. America was founded on Biblical principles; our laws based on Scripture. In the early days of our nation, politicians quoted the Bible so frequently that they didn’t even have to give references because most of the nation’s settlers knew the Bible.
The word politics has a wider meaning than merely a political party or party platform. Politics affects community life—our towns, our cities, our states and our country. Churches filled with Christians have a right to be concerned about where politics takes our nation.
The church has a spiritual ministry of bringing men and women into a right relationship with one another as well as with God. The church is not preaching the whole Gospel unless it emphasizes righteousness in our daily living through salvation found only in Christ. The common life of humanity is part of the church’s concern because it is part of God’s concern; and in these days, especially, it is important that people should be reminded that all life—political, social, economic and industrial—must be subject to the laws of God. This is why Christians need to be involved in who governs our nation and how its laws impact the future.
We have forgotten that our nation grew strong in an era when moral standards were emphasized; it has grown weak because we condone that which we once condemned. The secret strength of a nation is found in the faith that abides in the hearts, homes and families. We must return to the faith of our fathers.
(This column is based on the words and writings of the late Rev. Billy Graham.)
I did make an argument. My argument, which I have clarified more than once now, is that you are an Anthropocentrist and Consequentialist.
I compared your own stilted beliefs to the teaching of Pope Pius XI, who warns about the possibility of “a dereliction of the eternal principles of an objective morality.”
I charged that you and many other U.S. clergy have fallen into this error by believing that “…the act of voting in a presidential election can only be analyzed morally based on the intentions involved.” (Comment under Fr. White’s blog entry on September 21, 2020)
You voice the same error in your claim that a person “must have an evil intention in order to sin.” (Comment under Fr. White’s blog entry on September 21, 2020)
I have demonstrated several times now in my so called “rants” that THESE SPECIFIC CLAIMS of yours cannot possibly be the teaching of the Church. Anyone who is intellectually honest (who actually reads my comments!) will recognize that I am not merely raising a discussion about ‘Republicans and Democrats.’… (Nice job projecting a Red Herring onto my persistent line of inquiry, by the way!)
Based on your feedback up to this point, it is apparent that you are not humble enough to earnestly receive criticism. You will not even entertain the theoretical possibility that some of the things Mr. McCarrick’s cronies taught you in the seminary are a corruption of authentic Church Doctrine. This is to your own folly. Unfortuneatly, it is to the detriment of Christ’s Church and countless unborn victims!
*As an aside, you are notably biased in your commentary about sex abusers among the ranks of the clergy. You consistently ignore the glaring reality that the majority of predator priests are HOMOSEXUALS. Interestingly, you are also a fan of the watered-down 1960s nonsense of “Thomas Merton.” These facts alone should have clued me in at the outset that you are not willing to address the full scope of the problem of corruption in the clergy today.