n observation that speaks volumes of our society: In the hospital where I work, nestled between the operating room, where I strive to cure disease, and the surgical intensive care unit, where I struggle to keep the sickest patients alive, is the so-called “Women’s Option Center.”

I walk past it many times each day, and each time, I weep.

bama and McCain are firing it up now, with the national conventions and announcements of VP running mates. Of course, all of this is merely Ra-Ra-Ra pep-rally stuff, with lots of big talk… I’m anxious for the debates, when the issues are more thoroughly dissected and where the finer details are discussed (i.e., how are ya gonna pay for that?).

Of course, what’s become clearer and clearer is that the two major parties — as different as they are — share one thing in common: Neither bears much resemblance to God’s politics.

God’s Politics — That’s the title reverend Jim Wallis gave to his book that describes the way the Bible instructs Christians to vote. In a nutshell, God’s politics combines the more traditionalist societal attitudes of the “conservatives” with the economic and social justice concerns of the “liberals.” The subtitle describes it well: “God’s Politics: Why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn’t get it.”

Much of the book would sound familiar to anybody who heard the Religious Right before… but there is one important difference, and it’s a big one: God’s politics, as Wallis describes it, views poverty to be a moral issue, and therefore budgets and social service programs and party platforms related to these are all moral issues. This is such an important foundational point for God’s politics that three-quarters of the book is devoted to poverty and social justice.

Of course, any orthodox Catholic should know this — but putting it into practice is another story.

everal years ago, Catholic Answers published its Voters’ Guide for Serious Catholics, which delineated five non-negotiable issues that should guide our selection of candidates. These were abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide, fetal stem-cell research, human cloning and homosexual “marriage.” Miserere.org promptly issued a response entitled, “Make it six non-negotiable issues,” which identified another moral issue that should (must!) guide our choice of political leaders: Concern for the poor, elderly, children, infirm and handicapped.

While our article was met with very mixed reviews (including some vehemence by some in the Christian Right, who as Republicans, did not think care of the poor or infirm should justify increased taxes), it turns out that we’re in some good company now. Wallis’ latest book is entitled The Great Awakening and is about reviving faith and politics in a post-Religious Right America. He and other social activists have made the rounds on not only Christian but also Republican talk-radio stations. People are starting to wake up. When Wallis said, “Poverty is a moral issue. Therefore budgets are moral documents,” formerly anti-taxation moderators admitted, “I never thought about it that way before.”

Sadly, little of this will make its way to the presidential debates. But if you’d like to read more about God’s politics and the role of government in social justice, you might enjoy the following:

• A responsibility to care — Mike Huckabee talks about children, poverty and the role of government in this interview with Jim Wallis.
• A new moment dawning — A solution to poverty will take both liberals and conservatives and those who are neither.
• Faith-based fraud — Political manipulation of religion only compounded the crime of political neglect of the poor.
• Vote Out Poverty — An initiative by Call to Renewal and Soujourners magazine that aims to cut poverty in the United States by 50% in 10 years and to end extreme global poverty. Also reference their Voting All Your Values voters’ guide.
• Poverty USA — The Catholic Campaign for Human Development’s campaign to raise poverty awareness and to end poverty in the United States.

Jim Wallis, author of the well-received God’s Politics, recently posted the following interesting commentary on his Beliefnet blog:

I’ve been reading through the extensive comments on my blog post on abortion reduction and the Democratic Platform. As usual, the comments span the spectrum. But I found it puzzling that those who are so adamantly against the Democrats on abortion (as I have also been) seem so satisfied with the Republicans just repeating that abortion should be illegal, while the abortion rate never changes, even under Republican rule. The Republican position often feels cynical to me — privately admitting that a total ban on abortion in America will never happen, but using it every four years to get the votes of people who genuinely care about saving unborn lives (as I do).

I would encourage those critics to listen to the comments of Doug Kmiec, a Republican judicial appointee of Ronald Reagan, a Catholic intellectual, and Chair & Professor of Law at Pepperdine University, who cares deeply about abortion but now thinks the Democrats have a good chance to reduce the abortion rate. During a conference call that Sojourners hosted this week with evangelical and Catholic leaders, Doug said, “What this does is commit the Democratic Party to supply real support for the child and for the woman facing this question in terms of pre- and post-natal healthcare, in terms of income support, the kind of support like paternity leave, family leave and an improvement in the accessibility in adoption. These are tangible things and very much related to Catholic social teachings.” He also sees a positive step in the Democratic Platform language in the affirmation of abortion reduction and the practical solutions that would support that goal; rather than just repeating a symbolic ban. I agree with him.

Sojourners is on record in support of a ban on partial birth abortions and other restrictions but we don’t believe that simple bans are possible or even the most pro-life solutions. Support for women caught up in difficult situations and tragic choices is a better path than coercion for really reducing the abortion rate. Yes, I agree there is never a “need” for abortion except in the case where the health of the mother is threatened. But until we can reach out to women who “feel” the need for abortion and support them in alternative choices, we will never change the shameful abortion rate that both sides seem content to live with while they just attack each other. It is time to move from symbols to solutions.

Meanwhile, McCain and Obama both gave interviews at a pastor’s forum, which included questions about abortion as well as other social justice themes. An analysis of the interviews is also available on CNN, detailing the candidates’ different approaches to answering the same tough questions. Time magazine focuses on the candidates’ views on abortion.

The following article is by Father Clifford Stevens and appeared in the July-August 1996 issue of Catholic Heritage by Our Sunday Visitor. The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessèd Virgin Mary is August 15 and is a holy day of obligation.

he Assumption is the oldest feast day of Our Lady, but we don’t know how it first came to be celebrated. Its origin is lost in those days when Jerusalem was restored as a sacred city, at the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine (c. 285-337). By then it had been a pagan city for two centuries, ever since Emperor Hadrian (76-138) had leveled it around the year 135 and rebuilt it as Aelia Capitolina in honor of Jupiter.

For 200 years, every memory of Jesus was obliterated from the city, and the sites made holy by His life, death and Resurrection became pagan temples.

After the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 336, the sacred sites began to be restored and memories of the life of Our Lord began to be celebrated by the people of Jerusalem. One of the memories about his mother centered around the “Tomb of Mary,” close to Mount Zion, where the early Christian community had lived.

On the hill itself was the “Place of Dormition,” the spot of Mary’s “falling asleep,” where she had died. The “Tomb of Mary” was where she was buried.

At this time, the “Memory of Mary” was being celebrated. Later it was to become our feast of the Assumption.

For a time, the “Memory of Mary” was marked only in Palestine, but then it was extended by the emperor to all the churches of the East. In the seventh century, it began to be celebrated in Rome under the title of the “Falling Asleep” (”Dormitio”) of the Mother of God.

Soon the name was changed to the “Assumption of Mary,” since there was more to the feast than her dying. It also proclaimed that she had been taken up, body and soul, into heaven.

That belief was ancient, dating back to the apostles themselves. What was clear from the beginning was that there were no relics of Mary to be venerated, and that an empty tomb stood on the edge of Jerusalem near the site of her death. That location also soon became a place of pilgrimage. (Today, the Benedictine Abbey of the Dormition of Mary stands on the spot.)

At the Council of Chalcedon in 451, when bishops from throughout the Mediterranean world gathered in Constantinople, Emperor Marcian asked the Patriarch of Jerusalem to bring the relics of Mary to Constantinople to be enshrined in the capitol. The patriarch explained to the emperor that there were no relics of Mary in Jerusalem, that “Mary had died in the presence of the apostles; but her tomb, when opened later . . . was found empty and so the apostles concluded that the body was taken up into heaven.”

In the eighth century, St. John Damascene was known for giving sermons at the holy places in Jerusalem. At the Tomb of Mary, he expressed the belief of the Church on the meaning of the feast: “Although the body was duly buried, it did not remain in the state of death, neither was it dissolved by decay. . . . You were transferred to your heavenly home, O Lady, Queen and Mother of God in truth.”

All the feast days of Mary mark the great mysteries of her life and her part in the work of redemption. The central mystery of her life and person is her divine motherhood, celebrated both at Christmas and a week later (Jan. 1) on the feast of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. The Immaculate Conception (Dec. 8) marks the preparation for that motherhood, so that she had the fullness of grace from the first moment of her existence, completely untouched by sin. Her whole being throbbed with divine life from the very beginning, readying her for the exalted role of mother of the Savior.

The Assumption (Aug. 15) completes God’s work in her since it was not fitting that the flesh that had given life to God himself should ever undergo corruption. The Assumption is God’s crowning of His work as Mary ends her earthly life and enters eternity. The feast turns our eyes in that direction, where we will follow when our earthly life is over.

The feast days of the Church are not just the commemoration of historical events; they do not look only to the past. They look to the present and to the future and give us an insight into our own relationship with God. The Assumption looks to eternity and gives us hope that we, too, will follow Our Lady when our life is ended.

The prayer for the feast reads: “All-powerful and ever-living God: You raised the sinless Virgin Mary, mother of your Son, body and soul, to the glory of heaven. May we see heaven as our final goal and come to share her glory.”

In 1950, in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII proclaimed the Assumption of Mary a dogma of the Catholic Church in these words: “The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heaven.” With that, an ancient belief became Catholic doctrine and the Assumption was declared a truth revealed by God.

See also: Catholic Encyclopedia.