Gulf Pine Catholic

12 Gulf Pine Catholic • February 21, 2020 A PAC is a panel of professionals from your parish or school (usually an Attorney, CPA and Foundation Rep) that offers a 1 hour seminar on the importance of Wills and Estate Plans, their financial advantages, and Legacy Giving. WHAT IS A PAC? Dave Wyrwich Executive Director Catholic Foundation of Biloxi (228) 702 2113 dwyrwich@biloxidiocese.org 1790 Popps Ferry Road Biloxi, MS 39532 FOR MORE INFORMATION, QUESTIONS, OR TO SCHEDULE PLEASE CONTACT: WHAT IS A LEGACY GIVING? PROFESSIONAL ADVISORY COUNCILS (PAC) WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE PAC PRESENTATION? A Legacy Gift is a donation made by an individual through a will or other formal designation. Legacy Gifts are typically prepared with a financial planner and are meant to reflect the values and desires of the donor. As the name suggests, most donors want to leave a legacy or memory of their life through their posthumous giving. WHAT RESPONSIBILITY DOES THE PASTOR/PARISH HAVE IN HOSTING A PAC SEMINAR? The pastor/parish responsibilities would be to supply the names of trusted professionals to the Foundation, advertise and promote the seminar through pulpit and bulletin announcements, provide a room large enough to host a seminar of 10-20 people, and offer light refreshments for the seminar. All coordination of the presentations and materials are done through the Catholic Foundation with the professional from your parish or school. HOW CAN THIS IMPACT YOUR PARISH OR SCHOOL? PAC seminars are an excellent way to help educate parishioners about the advantages of Wills and Estate Plans and the legacy they can leave for their favorite parish, school or Catholic organization through their legacy gifts. On average, Legacy gifts are usually the largest gift a donor will make to any organization and can provide long term financial stability and growth. The purpose of these presentations is to offer a no pressure forum to learn about Wills, Estate Plans, and Legacy Giving. These 1 hour seminars are free, informative and offer a relaxed atmosphere where parishioners can ask questions and learn more about these important financial instruments. INTRODUCES Bishop: Single-issue politicking ‘distorts call to authentic discipleshipʼ By Catholic News Service SAN DIEGO (CNS) -- Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Diego, in a Feb. 6 speech at the University of San Diego, said “the drive to label a single issue pre- eminent” in the 2020 election “distorts the call to authentic discipleship in voting rather than advancing it.” Bishop McElroy called both abortion and the envi- ronment “core life issues in Catholic teaching.” “The death toll from abortion is more immediate,” he said, “but the long-term death toll from unchecked climate change is larger and threatens the very future of humanity.” He added, “There is no mandate in universal Catholic social teaching that gives a categorical priority to either of these issues as uniquely determinative of the common good.” Yet “the designation of either of these issues as the preeminent question in Catholic social teaching at this time in the United States,” Bishop McElroy said, “will inevitably be hijacked by partisan forces to propose that Catholics have an overriding duty to vote for candi- dates that espouse that position. Recent electoral his- tory shows this to be a certainty.” At their fall general meeting in November, when the U.S. bishops approved a series of videos to augment their “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizens” document, Bishop McElroy voiced his concern over a supplementary letter to their quadrennial guidance for voters that stated abortion is the preeminent teaching of the church. So doing, he argued, would open the door for people to ignore Pope Francis’ call to consider other concerns as equally important. He made the comments during a brief debate over Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago’s proposed amend- ment to include in the letter a paragraph from Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation “Gaudete et Exultate” ( “Rejoice and Be Glad” ) encompassing the church’s concern for the unborn, but also describing as “equally sacred” the lives of the poor and elderly people, human trafficking victims and others who are struggling to survive. Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput dis- agreed, saying the church’s pro-life teaching remains its preeminent concern. Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez responded that part of the paragraph was included but that the full paragraph was referenced in a footnote. The amendment to include the full paragraph was not approved. In his Feb. 6 address, “Conscience, Candidates and Discipleship in Voting,” Bishop McElroy cited ten issues he said Catholics should scrutinize. Beyond abortion and the environment, he listed immigration and refugees, euthanasia and assisted suicide, racism, work and workers’ rights, poverty and inequality, the promotion of marriage and family, nuclear disarma- ment, and the protection of religious liberty. “The comprehensiveness of Catholic social teach- ing points toward an understanding of justice, life and peace that refuses to be confined to narrow boxes or relegated to partisan categories,” Bishop McElroy said. “At the same time, this very comprehensiveness makes the prioritization of Catholic teachings difficult for vot- ers.” He added, “The question of preeminence is further clouded by a third compelling issue our country faces in this election cycle: the culture of exclusion that has grown so dramatically in our nation during the last three years. Racial injustice is on the rise, buttressed by a new language and symbolism that seek to advance the evil of white nationalism and create structures of racial prejudice for a new generation.” “This growing culture of exclusion does not emerge as a specific policy question in our contem- porary national politics; rather, it seeps into all of the most salient questions of life and dignity that our society faces and corrodes each one in turn,” Bishop McElroy said. “On virtually every question of human life and dignity, the growing culture of exclusion in our nation reinforces and propels cleavages that are highly destructive to all of the goals that lie at the center of Catholic social teaching. For this reason, many faith-filled Catholics believe that in this elec- tion cycle, the most compelling issue that arises from Catholic social teaching for American voters is the need to repudiate radically this culture of exclusion before it spreads further.” But in the end, Bishop McElroy noted, “it is the candidate who is on the ballot, not a specific issue. The faith-filled voter is asked to make the complex judgment: Which candidate will be likely to best advance the common good through his office in the particular political context he will face?” The bishop’s answer: a combination of pru- dence and conscience. “In the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church , ‘prudence is the virtue that disposes prac- tical reason to discern our true good in every cir- cumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it. ... It is prudence that immediately guides the judgment of conscience,’” Bishop McElroy said. “In Catholic social teaching, prudence is called ‘the charioteer of the virtues.’” Some Catholic leaders “have asserted that candi- dates who seek laws opposing intrinsically evil actions automatically have a primary claim to political support in the Catholic conscience,” Bishop McElroy said. But “the problem with this approach is that while the crite- rion of intrinsic evil identifies specific human acts that can never be justified, this criterion is not a measure of the relative gravity of the evil in particular human or political actions.” Among the examples he gave: “Contraception is intrinsically evil in Catholic moral theology, while actions which destroy the environment generally are not. But it is a far greater moral evil for our country to abandon the Paris climate accord than to provide con- traceptives in federal health centers.” Bishop McElroy added, “Catholic social teaching cannot be reduced to a deductivist model when it comes to voting to safeguard the life and dignity of the human person.” When voting, he said, “the constellation of substan- tial moral elements that are relevant to deciding which candidate is most likely to advance the common good during her time in office can only be morally compre- hended through the virtue of prudence. There cannot be faith-filled Catholic voting without the virtue of pru- dence, exercised within the sanctity of well-formed conscience.” Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Diego speaks at the University of San Diego’s Frances G. Harpst Center for Catholic Thought and Culture Feb. 6. Bishop McElroy said “the drive to label a single issue preeminent” in the 2020 election “distorts the call to authentic discipleship in voting rather than advancing it.” CNS photo/Ryan Blystone, courtesy University of San Diego