"Faith isn't tested until we put it into action. Central to our faith is trying to find ways to encourage people to live out their full human potential."
With those words, Catholic Campaign for Human Development associate program director Tom Chabolla opened the first statewide meeting of California Catholic parishes involved in registering Catholic voters, held Aug. 28 in Sacramento.
The California Faithful Citizenship Campaign, a joint effort between Catholic dioceses and the Pacific Institute for Community Organization (PICO), was formed in response to the U.S. bishops' call for Catholics to participate more fully in the political process.
"The church has a role and responsibility of being involved in the social agenda to protect human life and human dignity," Chabolla told the assembled participants. And, he noted, participating fully in the political process is one way to exercise this responsibility.
Based on numbers, Catholics have the potential to greatly influence policies and practices. There are 19,000 Catholic parishes in the U.S., with Catholics representing nearly 25 percent of the population (30 percent in California), and the church administers the largest private health and educational systems in the country.
The goal of the Faithful Citizenship Campaign is to mobilize these numbers in order for parishioners to exert greater influence over the direction of local communities, the state and nation on a range of issues central to Catholic social teaching.
The non-partisan campaign is initially focusing on parishes in low-income communities with low voter turnout. Along with voter registration the project is focused on voter education, stressing the importance of exercising the constitutional right to vote.
"Where there is little voting, people have little voice," said Jim Keddy, PICO director. "We're trying to get people to understand that politics is an arena dominated by the use of power, and we're building power through changing the voting patterns in our communities."
The Faithful Citizenship Campaign uses parish and public records to closely monitor the voting turnout of participating parishes, focusing on national, state and local elections. With such data, parishes can present concrete evidence of their voting power to elected officials.
"This project is a marathon," said Jim McGlinchey, director of the Portuguese American Citizenship Project. He called local school board elections "much more important than national elections" because local elected officials and board members are the people who have a direct effect on the daily lives of community members. Thus, parishes who vote in large numbers can force these officials to pay attention to issues important to them. "All power is local," McGlinchey said.
College student Mario Valenzuela of Our Lady of Soledad Cochella in Indio told the participants that, through his experience lobbying state officials on college tuition hikes, he found that McGlinchey was right. Valenzuela said this point really made sense to him when a state official pulled him aside and told him that "young people don't vote," so their needs and concerns are not high on any politician's priority list.
"That statement made me realize that no matter how much we march and lobby, it doesn't matter," he said. "What matters are votes."
Valenzuela said he hoped to learn organizing skills he can use to impart the importance of voting on both his fellow students and his parish members.
The Faithful Citizenship Campaign is based on a successful voter registration model developed by the Portuguese American Citizenship Project, a non-profit organization working with Portuguese Catholic Churches on the East Coast. Over the last five years, a number of Portuguese parishes have dramatically increased their participation in voting and through doing so have achieved greater influence in their local communities.
The model fits well with Los Angeles' heavily immigrant populations, as McGlinchey explained. He said his initial research showed it wasn't just that many Portuguese parishioners weren't registered to vote; many had not become citizens although they were eligible for citizenship.
Thus, much of the initial work was helping parishioners overcome their fear and hesitancy of applying for U.S. citizenship. Parish priests made announcements during Mass urging people to become citizens and the Project provided legal support to guide non-citizens
through the process.
Many in the workshop audience said they face these same issues in their parishes, and were excited about ways to encourage people to become citizens.
"You are the key to changing the situation," Keddy told the participants. "Our challenge is to grow leaders to take an active role in organizing people to vote."
One young participant noted that although she is a parish leader in this effort she is not yet a citizen. She told other participants to not let citizenship status stop them from actively working to register voters.
"I tell them if you don't vote then you can't complain," she said. If they tell you they can't vote because they are not citizens, "I'm sure somebody in their family is."
Participating parishes at the conference included 10 from the Los Angeles Archdiocese: Our Lady of the Rosary of Talpa, St. Agatha, San Francisco, Our Mother of Good Counsel, and St. Dominic of Los Angeles; Blessed Sacrament of Hollywood; St. Athanasius, St. Lucy, Holy Innocents and Mt. Carmel Cambodian Center of Long Beach.
Also represented were parishes from the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and the Dioceses of San Diego, San Bernardino, Sacramento, Oakland, Stockton, San Jose, Orange and Fresno.
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