The Work cannot impose political criteria

I never speak about contingent issues in politics, and I have explained that I act this way because my mission is exclusively spiritual. But there is another reason: the Directors of the Work can never impose on their brothers or sisters any political or professional – in a word, temporal – criterion.

A duty of the episcopal hierarchy

In the Church, only the ordinary ecclesiastical hierarchy has the right and duty to give Catholics guidance on political matters and to point out the need (if they think there is such a need) to adopt a particular position on issues of public life.

When the hierarchy intervenes in this way, moreover, it is not a form of clericalism. All well-educated Catholics should know that one part of the bishops’ pastoral mission is to issue directives in public affairs, whenever the Church’s good requires it. And they should also know that, by divine law, this faculty belongs to the bishops alone, for only they, in communion with the Roman Pontiff, have the public task of ruling the Church: Spiritus Sanctus posuit episcopos regere Ecclesiam Dei,²² the Holy Spirit appointed the bishops to rule the Church of God.