The Conscience of a Catholic Politician

As Catholics, we have a clear moral obligation to our fellow man. Whatever our role in life, we can find ways to help those in need. We have an obligation to protect the most vulnerable among us—the poor, the sick, the elderly, the unborn. And we have an obligation to respect the sanctity of all human life.

This is something that transcends politics; it transcends partisanship and borders. It’s about protecting humanity and giving a sense of hope and dignity to all.

Each of us is a product of our past. My wife of more than 38 years, Fran, and I grew up together in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Our parish priests and the nuns who taught us our Catechism certainly helped to shape our moral conscience. Our town had a culture of social activism and involvement that was—and still is—unique.

We learned that each one of us has the chance to make a difference in this world—an obligation to help one another. And I’ve learned throughout my career in public service that faith matters—that you cannot separate it from your work in the public arena. To truly make a difference, you must act on that faith and on your moral obligations.

The biggest regrets in my life have been the times I did not act—the times I was timid or thought that someone else would step up and do something about an injustice or a social wrong. My friend and colleague Henry Hyde has expressed it very well. He spoke about the end of one’s life and the final judgment:

The sins of omission will be what weigh you down; not the things you have done wrong, the chances you’ve taken, but the things you have failed to do. The times you stepped back, the times you did not speak out.

Then he quotes St. Ambrose: “Not only for every idle word, but for every idle silence must we all render an account.” When we look at the crisis of AIDS; of poverty; of young children literally starving to death in the world or not getting adequate medical care; children who are stuck in abusive homes—it’s our failure to act that really is the gravest sin.

As a United States senator who tries to follow his faith, I have a unique opportunity—and obligation—to stand up and speak out and find solutions to the problems we face, whether it’s getting food to the world’s most hungry; getting desperately needed, life-saving AIDS drugs to dying children in Africa and Haiti; giving a voice to the unborn; or safeguarding children and families with better health care and safer roads.

More than a decade ago, Fran and I took a Senate Intelligence Committee trip to Haiti. That trip—our first of 15 visits to this desperate nation—changed our lives forever. We saw unspeakable poverty, misery, and disease. We left Haiti knowing that we had to do something. And so we started looking for someone who was doing good work there—someone whom we could help. After a few visits, we came across a priest by the name of Rev. Tom Hagan, founder of an organization called Hands Together.

Father Tom is a humble man, a very ordinary man, but he’s done some extraordinary things. Before moving to Haiti, he was perfectly comfortable as the chaplain at Princeton University. It was a good life—a pleasant life in a pleasant environment. At one point, Father Tom traveled to Haiti, and it changed him. He saw terrible things there that overwhelmed him: abject poverty, filth, squalor, disease—a world very different from the idyllic campus at Princeton.

The amazing thing about Father Tom is that after he saw this unimaginable world of despair in Haiti, he didn’t run and hide. He didn’t choose the easy road. He said, “I have to help these suffering people—I have to do something.” So he moved to Haiti and, starting from scratch, he set up shop in the worst slum in Port-au-Prince. He built a school and a clinic and started a feeding program that now provides thousands with a daily nutritious meal.

On one of our trips to Haiti, Father Tom told us a story about some mothers he came across who were mixing mud with spices and putting these mud pies out into the sun to bake. They were feeding these pies to their children because they had nothing else for them to eat.

When we came back to Haiti about six months later, Father Tom said to my wife, “I want to show you something, Fran. See that place over there? That’s where I found the moms making those mud pies. Now, there’s a school.” At that very same place, Father Tom gives the children who were once eating mud both healthy food and a sound education.

Today, with all of the different programs he has in place, Father Tom feeds and educates at least 4,500 children. Yes, those kids still go home to squalor and shanty-like homes made of concrete and cardboard. And yes, Father Tom knows that he can’t solve the overwhelming poverty in Haiti, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to improve the individual lives of so many. So far, his work has been successful.

While Father Tom’s story is extraordinary, in order to make an impact—in order to make a real difference—we don’t all have to move to another country. It is far simpler than that. Fran—a very insightful woman (you have to be when you are the mother of eight children!)—explained it once very well.

We were traveling back from one of our trips to Haiti. A member of my staff who came with us left feeling troubled and helpless because the problems there seem insurmountable. But Fran took her aside and explained that it isn’t about your ability to solve everything or fix all of the problems of a desperate world. Rather, it is about doing what you can in your own way—however big or small—to help ease the suffering.

The fact is that we all have to help in our own ways because the suffering in our world is simply overwhelming:

  • 650 million children live in extreme poverty.
  • More than 10 million children under the age of five die each year from preventable and treatable diseases and ailments—including diarrhea, pneumonia, measles, and malnutrition.
  • Of the 130 million babies born every year, about four million die in the first four weeks of life—that’s 450 newborn children dying every hour.
  • Malnutrition contributes to 54 percent of all childhood deaths. Every four seconds, a child dies from starvation and related causes.
  • 2,000 children under age 15 are infected with HIV each day.

These are lives we can save—that we have a moral obligation to save. Fran and I have held babies in our arms who were dying from treatable diseases. We’ve played with orphaned children who lost their parents to AIDS. And we’ve talked to parents who’ve watched all of their children—one by one—succumb to this deadly scourge.

But in witnessing all of this tragedy, we’ve also found hope. On one of our visits to Haiti a couple of years ago, we met a little five-year-old boy named Francois. He was lying on a concrete floor of the Sisters of Charity orphanage, tubes stuck in what was left of his tiny veins. He weighed no more than 15 pounds. The kind nuns and priests were doing all they could to comfort him, but he was within a day or two of dying from AIDS. You see, little Francois didn’t have the life-saving antiretroviral drugs that he needed so desperately to survive.

Fran and I returned to that same orphanage a year later where we met another little boy—David. Like Francois, David has AIDS. And, though six months prior to our visit David, too, lay dying on that same concrete floor, a miracle happened. Antiretroviral drugs were made available to David at that orphanage, and they brought him back to life. David is a happy, healthy little boy, who laughed and played and followed us all around the orphanage.

David is our hope. We can save millions of children like him if we just get those drugs and treatments to the people who need them most. You can’t go to these AIDS-devastated countries, and other regions where children are starving and dying, without coming home needing to do something. We owe it to Francois and the thousands and thousands of children just like him who never had a chance.

There are other children who have never been given the opportunity to live: those whose lives have been taken through abortions.

I am very proud of my 100 percent pro-life voting record and the laws we’ve written to protect the unborn, like the Laci and Connor Peterson law. The president signed my bill into law almost two years ago. This law is about justice—it’s about recognizing that when a pregnant mother is violently attacked, there are, in fact, two victims: the mother and her unborn child. Before it went into effect, there was no federal law that punished criminals for the assault or murder of an unborn child. Even though more than half the states had such laws for criminals who committed those heinous acts, the federal government lagged behind in protecting the innocent.

We took a stand and did something about it. We said that this was just plain wrong—that it was morally reprehensible. People who violently attack unborn babies should be punished, and when acts of violence against unborn victims fall within federal jurisdiction, we must have a penalty—we must have justice.

I fought for years in the Senate to ban the gruesome practice of partial-birth abortions. It was indeed a historic day when we saw the president sign that ban into law once and for all.

Other areas where we’ve worked to protect life involve children’s issues—something I care about passionately. We changed our nation’s adoption laws so that the safety of the child is always paramount. Because of those efforts, thousands of foster children are being adopted into safe, loving, stable homes and are being kept out of violent, turbulent settings.

We’ve also changed the law to encourage the use of newer, safer, more effective drugs for our children when they are sick. A few years ago, nearly 80 percent of the drugs on the market were never tested for use by children. I was astonished and said that we had to do better. Together with Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut), we wrote three different laws that have helped to ensure that more drugs than ever are being developed today specifically for our kids. Because of those laws, more than 100 new drugs—ranging from pain relievers to asthma medication—have been tested for children. Pediatricians tell me how this is revolutionizing children’s health care.

I’m also very pleased that we have been successful in making our roads and highways safer. Every year, more than 40,000 Americans—adults and children—die on our highways. We need to protect our families when they are traveling, and I am proud of my legislative efforts to make school buses safer for kids; to reform our drunk-driving laws; to increase seatbelt use; and to put safety information on vehicle sticker prices, so that consumers can make informed decisions when they buy a car. All of those efforts are saving lives.

Each of us, regardless of our vocation in life, has an obligation to deal with the crises of humanity—whether it’s the AIDS epidemic or the plight of young children dying of starvation, of treatable, preventable diseases; or simply because they don’t have good, clean water. We have an obligation to bring this responsibility home to people so that they understand—so that they can step up and speak out and do something to help the least among us.

Recall the words of Isaiah:

I want you to share your food with the hungry and bring into your own homes those who are helpless, poor, and destitute. Clothe those who are cold and don’t hide from relatives who need your help…. Feed the hungry! Help those in trouble! Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you shall be as bright as day (58:7-8).

Let us hear those words, and let us respond.

Author

  • Mike DeWine

    Richard Michael "Mike" DeWine (born January 5, 1947) is an American lawyer and politician who has been Ohio Attorney General since 2011. DeWine has held numerous offices on the state and federal level, including one term in the Ohio Senate, four terms in the United States House of Representatives, one term as Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, and two terms in the United States Senate from 1995 to 2007.

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