Priests for Life Fourth National Elections Teleseminar
Monday, September 29, 2008
9 to 10pm Eastern Time
Fr. Frank Pavone: It is 9:00 pm Eastern Time and this is the beginning of our fourth national teleseminar to prepare for the elections. I’m Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, and we are delighted tonight to have all of you joining with us, those of you who are on the phone, those who are listening through your computers. There is more energy and excitement building for this election than there has for the entire time of this very, very long election season of 2008 and that is for several reasons that we will discuss tonight and that suggests several activities that we all have to be engaged in and of course many of us are engaged in. So we look forward to a very practical, very productive hour together and this teleconference as all the ones that we do is being recorded so that you will be able to not only listen to it again yourselves if that will be helpful but also to invite many others to it as well who may not be able this evening to join us live. We are as always going to be joined by some of our expert panelists, those from our own pastoral team and close collaborators and one of them who is with is tonight is Dr. Paul Schenck. He is a long time friend and collaborator of ours at Priests for Life and part of our Washington, DC outreach and the Director of the National Pro-Life Action Center on Capitol Hill, which I serve along with him and he will tell us more about that during this call. But I’d like to invite Paul to open us up this evening in prayer. Paul, good to have you with us.
Paul Schenck: Good to be here, let’s pray together looking to the Lord. Heavenly Father we thank you for this inspiring occasion when virtually thousands of those committed to the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human person from conception to natural death created in Your divine image and endowed with inalienable rights, primary among them the right to life, we pray tonight as we now consider our response to a momentous season in which our nation stands at a crossroads at which the citizens of this country will choose the leadership, will represent our commitment to that sanctity of human life. Tonight as we gather under the direction of Father Pavone, of Priests for Life, of the Gospel of Life ministries, and Missionaries of Gospel of Life all across the country, we pray for courage first and foremost; the courage of our convictions, the courage to present the truth without compromise. We pray for clarity so that all of the smokescreening that is taking place in popular media and in political commentary will be dispersed and we will see the truth as it is and we pray for commitment, commitment first and foremost to you Holy God, to your truth, and to human life. We pray that you will abide with us, lead us by your Holy Spirit, give us your wisdom, which is the practical application of knowledge. We pray this through Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, amen.
Fr. Frank Pavone: Amen, amen. Thank you Paul and I want to thank in advance our close associate, our staff member Christa Childs who is also at our Washington, DC office and helps us with the technology behind this teleseminar and the previous ones that we have done and I want to thank Dr. Alveda King who will also be part of this evening’s call and I don’t know if Alveda has joined us yet.
Alveda King: Yes Fr. Frank I'm here, thank you.
Fr. Frank Pavone: Well Aveda welcome, how are you tonight?
Alveda King: Thank you and hello everyone, just blessed and energized.
Fr. Frank Pavone: Energized, as are many people around the country and it’s such a great pleasure to have Alveda as part of the pastoral team full time. She opens many doors and is opening those doors for the cause of the unborn as she continues the effort to implement and make real the dream of her uncle Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So we will look forward Alveda to your reflections over the course of this evening’s conversation. Now brothers and sisters, let me give you a little bit of background and then we’re going to get into some of the substantive things of this evening. This is the fourth teleseminar that we’ve done and I know that some of you have been attending each and every one and I'm very grateful for that because this exercise is meant to build up teams across the country that will be able to carry out some time tested techniques to mobilize people in this year’s elections. We at Priests for Life have been working on elections for quite a few cycles now and it’s been fifteen years that I've been director of Priests for Life and we have really made the difference in some critical elections. We remember how close the elections were in the year 2000 and again in 2004 and we know that the people who mobilized throughout the country because of the abortion issue were the ones responsible for the outcomes of those elections. I mean, the statistics just show that by themselves.
If those who had voted specifically motivated by the abortion issue and it’s by no means a majority of the electorate and that’s one of the secrets of course in winning elections is that it’s a very small percentage of the electorate that actually makes the difference. But if you analyze the statistics and we did that in our first teleseminar we looked at some of the statistics you find that those who are motivated specifically on the issue of abortion have enough of a leverage across the nation to actually make the difference in close races. That is what has been happening and that is what can happen again in just a few weeks as our nation goes to the polls. Now that’s very encouraging and that’s critically important because we know that a lot of our fellow citizens have their primary focus in other areas which may or may not reinforce the cause of life. But the fact of the matter is we don’t need a majority. We need just enough of the people strongly motivated enough to make the difference. Now we focused also in our past teleseminars on the “Is this what you mean” campaign and although that is not our main topic tonight I do want to tell you that we’ve heard from many people around the country who are implementing this very simple technique of reading the words of the abortionists and challenging candidates by asking is this what you mean by abortion, especially if those candidates support legal abortion. Our team recently did this in Congress.
We visited the offices of some of the most pro-abortion members of the Senate and the House and we met with some of their top legislative aides, their top advisors on the abortion issue. We read them the quotes of the abortionists and showed them the pictures and we said, “When the Senator says abortion is this what he or she means? When you say abortion is this what you mean?,” and we saw some astonished faces and heard some interesting admissions that they had never quite been asked that question before, they had never seen those diagrams before. We are following up now with each and every one of those offices to get an answer to that question and we will publicize those answers to the constituents who elect those individuals. Furthermore then we went on with some of our further teleseminars and what we did was we made available the information about voter registration and in doing all of this by the way my friends, those of you who are joining us on computer will see that the main source for all the practical tools we’re speaking about is in the lower right hand corner of the teleconference page that we gave you the information to log in to and that is the button that says political responsibility. That goes to our website by that name, www.PoliticalResponsibility.com, and that is a site where you will find some of the tolls that we already discussed in the past conference calls, the information on voter registration and how to conduct voter registration in the parishes, how to assist others to register to vote, and then we also talked last time especially about the voter guide that we have prepared for the presidential race.
Now I must tell you I was here at my New York office today and my staff is telling me they simply cannot keep up with all the requests for this voter guide even though we have it there on the website and people can download it and print it themselves. We even have a professional printer’s version of the document and people are printing it for themselves, but nevertheless, getting them printed here by the tens of thousands and they just go out the door faster than they’re coming out from the printer, which is a good sign. People are taking this tool and running with is and it’s so very simple because the tool is made in such a way that it’s legally approved for distribution in churches and we’re going to address some of the questions that have been sent to us here in regard to what happens when pastors and bishops don’t want these things distributed. Let’s talk about that a little bit during our time here tonight. But the voter’s guide is there and then since the last teleconference we’ve added a second voter’s guide and I want to bring that to your attention right now.
When you’re on that PoliticalResponsibility.com page which again you can access from the big button on the lower right hand corner of the teleseminar page, I want you to notice when you go there the presidential voter’s guide first comparing the candidates’ positions on a range of issues but then you scroll down a little bit and you will see a second guide and what this is, is a voter’s guide which compares the positions of the party platforms and that’s critically important because when we put candidates into office we’re also putting parties into power and to put a power into power is to put into power a world view, is to put into power a specific philosophy for our nation, a philosophy that touches on things like religious freedom and the meaning of marriage and the meaning of human sexuality and the value of human life and lots of other things. So we decided to take the most recent, of course the 2008 party platforms from the Democratic and Republican parties, and laid them out by quoting them directly on certain key issues and that voters guide is right there and can be downloaded right now if you click right on the text and get that particular piece of information to distribute in whatever circles you’re able to distribute it.
So that brings us to tonight and what we want to talk about is reviewing some of the things about mobilizing voters because now it really comes down to a numbers game and I want to have both Paul and Alveda say a word about this in a moment. But friends the fact of the matter is this, we’re people who believe in principle. We believe in clear ideas about what’s right and wrong. We believe in the Gospel and we like to talk about it. But when it comes now down to what has to happen in the next few weeks it really is a numbers game and in the end what’s counted on election night is not the ideas that people had, the opinions that they’ve voiced, the reasons why they voted for or against the particular candidate, nor the moral attitudes. What’s counted is one thing and one thing only and that is the votes that are actually cast so that the person who votes for a candidate because they spent months and months wrestling with the moral issues and reading the bishops’ documents and coming down to a principled decision, that vote counts as much as the person who cast the vote because they like the way the candidate looked or the sound of their voice. So it’s really what we’re saying here is not that the principle doesn’t matter of course it does. What we’re saying here though is we need to refocus our energies and say, “Look now’s not the time for long philosophical debates with people regarding the election. Now is the time to mobilize as many people as we can to go and cast those votes.” That’s what matters right now. We can argue, we’ve got years and years to argue with people but right now you want to look for the people who are already sympathetic, who are already thinking and believing the way you do. You want to reach them, the ones in your prayer groups, your Bible studies, sitting next to you in church, the ones that are already in your pro-life organizations or your pro-life email lists, all the people that are already sympathetic to us and say, “Are you registered, are you ready to get to the polls? If you’re going to be out of town do you have your absentee ballots?” All those practical things, now that’s what counts, mobilizing those voters and let me invite Alveda to say a word to this and then also Paul.
Alveda King: Well Father Frank and to all of the listeners I fully agree with you and actually in many elections that I've seen over the years (I've been actually elected to office myself in very close elections) it was that turnout, people registering who had not registered before, the undecided voters to get that information into the hands of the votes as to whose position is what on that very important issue life and to not get in arguments with people but to just inform people and to urge people to vote. The absentee ballot is critical. There’s early voting in many states and all that information should be available on our Priests for Life website and so if you get the people motivated, energized, and out to vote that is very key. This is a very close election. It continues to be and we should not be distracted by all of the other things that are happening but to just really remember how important the issue of life is and I believe that if we do that we’ll see the fruits of that. That’s very, very important. So what we have to do is first know ourselves how to lead people into registering to vote. That information should be in your church vestibule. The pastor, if he will allow you or your priest, if they will allow you to have the information right there in the church vestibule as to how to register to vote, how to get an absentee ballot, who stands where on the issues, how they voted, all of that is very critical. So thanks Father Frank.
Fr. Frank Pavone: Thank you Alveda. Paul?
Paul Schenck: Well I think one of the things we have to keep before us from today on for the next five weeks is that we can take nothing for granted and here’s what we take for granted. We assume that the pastor is going to do the right thing, the youth minister is going to do the right thing, the director of religious education, the pro-life volunteers are all going to do the right thing and yet Father’s on the phone now and I'm going to make a confession, in 26 years of ministry, twice, two times an election day came and went and my day was so distracted by the ministry at hand that I missed voting. Now I'm telling you that not to discourage but rather to point out that you can make no assumptions. You’ve got to mobilize, you’ve got to inspire, and you have to remind everyone within your sphere of influence. I had a retired colonel from the Armed Forces, from I believe it was the Army, a colonel who said that in their training they were told that every single member of the Forces had direct influence on the thoughts and actions of between 5 and 15 people at any given time, at any given snapshot of their lives, any minute of the day, any day of the week, any month of the year. They had a direct influence on the thoughts and actions of between 5 and 15 people. So very often we think well what can one vote do, how does one vote count? Well, if you are committed you are a person who representing 5-15 people, not only their thoughts, but their actions at any given time and it’s not difficult to expand that sphere of influence. So what I'm saying here is no one can take anything for granted or make any assumptions about the thought and actions of others. If you have people directly around you that you are working with, that you are praying with, that you are working out with at the gym, you’ve got to remind them, inspire them, and facilitate the execution of their civic and moral responsibility in choosing the right leadership for the country.
Fr. Frank Pavone: Thank you Paul. Friends, if you’ve just joined us welcome to our teleseminar. We have Dr. Paul Schenck. We have Dr. Alveda King with us and we are looking at the teleseminar page you’ll see in the lower right hand corner there’s a big button that says Political Responsibility. That’s where I'd like us to go now for me to show you something else. We have looked already at the two voter guides which are on the page, the presidential candidates’ position and then the positions of the parties taken from their platform. But then I'd like you to scroll down a little bit further. Go underneath the video box (I invite you to watch that at your own leisure, it’s a powerful video). But then right under the video box I want you to look at the links that are there. The first one says “chronology of state voter registration deadlines”. Now the voter registration deadlines are coming up in most states. Many states begin October 6 closing out the opportunity for registering voters. The point is again through your email list, through any groups that you have influence with and bring it to the attention of the pastor. Your state’s voter registration deadline, people should be made aware of it especially those who have moved since the last election, those who have married since the last election, they should make sure they’re registered to vote in the proper place for this year. That’s the dates are on that document and you have them right there, you can download the document right now.
Right underneath that link you see another document that says “state early voting information”. Now that document has the dates of the early voting for those states that permit it and for some believe it or not it begins as early as tomorrow that you can vote prior to election day. You don’t even have to have any reason that you’re going to be out of state on the Election Day itself. Now again, the rules vary from state to state and that’s why a document like this is important. It will show you the dates on which early voting if your state permits it actually begins. A little bit further down, a few links down after that, you’ll see a link that says “state election information”. Any details you needed about the voting laws, policies, privileges, and deadlines in your state you can find by simply clicking on that link. In fact let’s go there for a moment now and again we’re on the Political Respsonsibility.com underneath the big video screen. You’ll see about seven links down “state election information”. You see a page there that simply has each of the 50 states in alphabetical order and it has not only a website but it has phone numbers and you can get any information you need about your state’s laws regarding elections on that particular webpage.
So this is for your convenience and again pastors should be announcing when early voting starts in their communities. They should be publicizing this in their church bulletin. If you have any influence at all over what goes into those bulletins, if you yourself have websites, newsletters, send it out on your email list, “Hey early voting begins today in our state. Let’s mobilize as many people as possible to vote early.” These are all helpful and important things. Now I said that on this conference call we would also be talking about some of the things to keep in mind in the final stages of an election things really go crazy. Both teams and elections remember are not contests primarily between two candidates. They’re contests between two teams and it’s the team that’s better mobilized, better energized, better equipped that ends up turning out more voters for their candidate. As the teams get closer to the finish line, especially if the race is close as it is in so many races, people will try everything and they’ll pull out all the stops and one of the things that happens is there is a psychological warfare that goes on. People will try to, one team will try to distract the other or try to discourage the other and one of the way that’s done is through the careless use of poll numbers. I want to share a story that happened from the 2004 elections just to give you a sense of what I'm talking about. I remember the morning of the 2004 election I was in Florida in those days before the election and on Election Day itself. I woke up in the morning and saw the USA Today newspaper and it said, the headline was “Key states swing towards Kerry,” and that was the headline, “Key States Swing Towards Kerry,” and it says, “Well you know the key states in the polls are beginning to show movement in Kerry’s direction.” Here we are on Election Day! And then I spent the whole day mobilizing voters and going around different parts of Florida speaking about the elections and as we came into the late afternoon I was called by one of my colleagues from another part of the country and I said, “Happy Election Day,” and he said, “Oh well you know I'm not so sure,” because by the end of the afternoon people were saying Kerry seemed to have an advantage. There were all these exit polls, things were really tilting in his direction, and I said to this person on the phone, it was not a person who lacked knowledge and skill and expertise in the political area, I said, “Look, pay no attention. Let’s use these next few hours to mobilize as many voters as possible. Let’s stay focused.” Then a couple hours later I was at the airport getting back to fly back to New York and there on CNN was Senator Ted Kennedy and he was being interviewed and he was saying, “Oh we’re very happy about Kerry’s victory tonight,” and the interviewer was Wolfe Blitzer said, “Well excuse me Senator but Senator Kerry hasn’t been elected yet,” and he kind of paused a moment and he said, “Well we’re very confident tonight, things seem to be going in that direction,” and on and on it went. It was a rather premature celebration. I flew back to New York. By the time I landed in New York it was very clear that President Bush was in fact getting the advantage.
The point I'm making is very simply this, that in these final weeks before election day, there’s going to be a lot of psychological warfare and we have to keep carefully focused, especially when we hear polls. We need to keep in mind that there are so many different distinctions in polling. You can hear for example that in any particular race the polls are favoring candidate A or candidate B. But you often do not hear an explanation of who it is that is being polled. In other words you can poll the general population as to what they think about a candidate without paying any attention to whether those people you are polling are actually registered to vote. Again, on election night, people’s opinions are not what’s being counted. It’s the actual votes and to cast a vote you have to be registered. Not only do you have to be registered, but another distinction in the polling population is are you talking about likely voters because there are voters who are registered who are not necessarily likely voters. Then you have voters who are registered who have never missed an election since they’ve been registered. So you have registered voters, you have likely voters, and then of course the question of the key states when it comes to the presidential race at least and the makeup of Congress, certain states have more influence than others. Of course, the polling in those particular states is going to matter much more.
One of the websites many of you may be familiar with already that I find very helpful in the midst of all this is simply called Real Clear Politics, www.RealClearPolitics.com, and it provides a lot of helpful guidance. But please keep those things in mind in regard to polls. Paul I wonder if I can invite you to speak about this whole phenomenon of the psychological warfare because it’s all a matter again of encouraging the troops and you know, if you’re in a close contest one of the things you want to try to do is depress turnout among your opponents; all kinds of things like that will be attempted in the coming weeks.
Paul Schenck: And just as you say Father they’re not accidental. In fact where we are in Washington, we’re on Capitol Hill. We’re just a stone’s throw from the Capitol and from the Democratic National Committee and from the Republican National Committee and they employ and spend millions of dollars (and that’s not overstated) millions of dollars on professional services that will disseminate this information to the media through leaks, through spokespersons who will continuously attempt to undermine and dispirit their opposition. Both parties do this. One is not exempt and the other one you know carrying this on. This is part of politics just as you said. This is two teams and the two teams are out to win the game and they’re going to use everything possible to win that game. So discouraging the opposition and thereby suppressing voter turnout for the other party is part of the game plan. So they have professionals that work in virtually every district in the country. They are especially deployed to states that are toss ups where the vote could literally go one way or the other and for the most part interestingly enough many of those states are the states where Barack Obama did not win the Democratic nomination, didn’t win that state. In fact Hillary Clinton did, and that just shows, that just emphasizes how much those states are toss ups. They can go one way or the other because in fact they didn’t even fall along the fault lines that the two parties give to us now.
So there are professionals who know their business and they are out there to discourage deliberately to suppress voter turnout. So if we’re going to see a pro-life majority turn out on Election Day it’s going to be up to us to not only counter but overcome that deliberate suppression and the way we do that is not just to remind but to facilitate, to make it possible for pro-life people, people who take their faith seriously, and people who care about the outcome of this election … particularly -- where our mission and ministry’s focus is -- at the United States Supreme Court. But getting back to the matter at hand we have to make it possible by providing either transportation, certainly a reminder, information, that’s necessary not only for one person but for each of those I spoke earlier about each of us having 5-15 people that we directly personally affect their thoughts and their actions. So keep in mind that each person you affect has 5-15 people that they personally affect and you can see the incredible ripple effect to this as the numbers keep multiplying and that’s why you said Father in the 2004 election there was such a dramatically different outcome than what was being predicted even by the major news sources.
Fr. Frank Pavone: And the major news sources on Election Day, after the election they were saying, “Where did all these value voters come from?” and they always get it wrong and they’re getting it wrong again this time where they fail to recognize the vast numbers of the American people for whom the basic values that we care so much about and work so hard to preserve are in fact the motivating forces behind who they vote for and the media keeps missing it and they still haven’t learned their lesson and they’re still going to be surprised on November 5th of this year. I want to point out again something very practical, a tool, my friends, that we want to invite all of you to use starting tonight and it’s this. Go again to the Political Responsibility.com webpage and those of you who are just following us by phone by all means when you have the opportunity and as soon as you can at your computers go to this website and you’ll see what we’re referring to here. On the top of the page over in the left hand column where it says political responsibility center and the few key links there, you’ll see “Political Responsibility Home”, this is the upper left hand part of the page, “register voters”, and then the third link says “volunteer” and I'd like you to click on that page for a moment and they’re you’re going to see “volunteer form” and it has a bunch of questions. Here’s what the form is about.
One of the best things we can do for that circle of people that we influence that Paul was referring to is say to them, “How much time do you have between now and the end of Election Day, November 4th to volunteer to help mobilize voters?” Now they may not know exactly what it is that you’re asking them to do but this form will help us connect them with the kinds of activities that are needed. Now you may already know what the activities are in your community and let’s give a few concrete examples. First of all, the campaigns themselves; as much as we can we ourselves and people that we know should be encouraged to work for, to volunteer for the campaign of their choice because they’re going to need help especially in the final weeks and days handing out literature and making telephone calls encouraging people to vote for their candidate. Find out the campaign headquarters, give them a call, pay them a visit. Say, “Hey what kind of help do you need and when do you need it? We’ll be glad to volunteer.” To volunteer for the campaigns of your choice, critically important, and secondly, whether it’s the campaign or other organizations, for example the state affiliates and local affiliates of various groups like National Right to Life for example will be doing major lit drops. They will need hands and feet. They will need people who can give some hours to handing out literature on the public street, the sidewalks, and in various locales. Again, the outcome of elections can turn on this. The outcome of elections can literally be influenced by how many pieces of literature we’re able to place in people’s hands at that last moment. It’s an amazing – see all of us were on this conference call and we’ve been thinking about the election for a long time. We’re thinking about them tonight but for so many of our fellow citizens their mind will be made up on the weekend before Election Day or Election Day itself and very often it’s the last thing they hear about a candidate in a race that tips their decision.
You know, they may have heard all the arguments back and forth, the pros and cons, and then on Election day, or the day before, somebody puts a flier in their hand like that voters’ guide that we just showed you on our website, somebody puts a flier in their hand and they read a sentence about the candidate, “Oh I didn’t know they supported that, oh,” and so it’s either a positive or a negative for them and if that’s the last thing that they hear about that candidate, no matter how many months they’ve been hearing all kinds of things from both sides, that last thing is what can sway their vote. What I'm saying is this, on this volunteer form, people can indicate what it is that they’re able to do, whether it’s handing out those fliers, how much time they have, can they perhaps help to bring somebody to the polls, can they write some letters maybe that will post on blogs, and that’s an important thing to do. I'll talk about influencing how people think in the election. You know, so many of these news websites now, they enable you to comment on a news story at the end of a story. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that before. It’s a lot of fun if you do it and you can get on these discussions that everybody going on the website can speak. But you’ll see on this volunteer form a lot of other concrete activities, now you may know already what’s going on in your community and in that case, connect people with it. But if you’re not so sure and yet you have people that you know want to help out in some way, shape, or form, have them fill this form out online, this volunteer form, and our staff will help connect them with the group, with the people that are going to be distributing literature and so forth. Now we cannot connect them directly with the campaigns and that’s a limitation we have simply because of our 501(c)(3) status under the law. But you can certainly connect them with the campaigns and so again, I reiterate that as an important thing that we need to be doing. So again, PoliticalResponsibility.com, upper left hand corner you see the link that says “volunteer”. Alveda, any thoughts on this particular point that we’re making?
Alveda King: Father Frank I was listening to those points and it’s so important because people are, as we’re saying, I'm definitely not saying vote for this person or this person. I've been known to say God’s not a Democrat or a Republican and I've said that many times and some things are so universal and so basic that no matter what your political party is, who you like, who you think is the most handsome or whatever, there are some things that are just basic and we have to be focused in order to know what is important. We all know how important life is to everyone and to just make that a priority to be informed, be educated, get the information. I cannot stress that enough. Another distraction that people get, friends and family, I think you kind of just said that, some people already know who they’re gonna vote for and so that one person you may know is so adamant about whomever it is, you don’t need to spend three weeks trying to change that person’s mind because there are so many other people who have not yet been informed, who don’t know what the candidates represent and there are so many people that we can still reach, there are so many people actually who need to still register or get that absentee ballot and so we don’t need to have a lot of coffee table talk and around the kitchen table arguments because those are all distractions as well. So now it’s time to educate, inform, enable, and empower people to make the very best decision possible when they’re ready to vote and I can’t emphasize that enough.
Fr. Frank Pavone: Now friends I want to show you another link. As many of you head up pro-life groups or other kinds of groups as well and we have a link on tonight’s teleseminar page that is especially helpful for people who head up groups whether they’re large or small and no matter what kind of group they are, we’re not just talking about political groups. We’re not even just talking about pro-life groups. Any kind of organization in which you exercise leadership, if you look at the teleseminar page itself, the one that says “Welcome to the conference”, on the lower right hand section where there are the various links, under the Political Responsibility button you’ll see three other links. I want you to look at the one in the middle that says “Election Activities” and go there for a moment (www.ProLifeVoter.org) and what you’re going to see, I'll give you a second to click on that link that says “election activities”. What you’re going to see is a special webpage that we have prepared for leaders of groups and later this week in Washington I'll be speaking to a group of national leaders and will share this page with them as well. You see it says for Christian and pro-life organizations, helping your members prepare for the election.
Now a lot of people wonder if I'm a tax exempt group, what can I really do, what am I able to do under the law? I'm not sure what to say, how to say it. I don’t want to get involved in any legal disputes or get any problems. This webpage is for you because not only do we tell you what you can do, we give you the words in which to do it and say it. If you look down you scroll down that page a little bit you’ll see a number of key links. The first one, put a link on your website, and then it’ll give you a couple of options of links that you can make for example to the prayer campaign or to the Political Responsibility site and because it’s all nonpartisan information it’s perfectly ok to put this on the website of a (c)(3) organization. The second link, place a few sentences in your newsletter or mailing. There’s still time, anything that your groups are sending out in the month of October, if you go to that link then you’ll see another page that has three other links, “click here for items for Catholic groups”, “click here for items for Christian groups of other denominations”, “click here for the generic version of these items”. If you click that third link, the generic version and then you will see little paragraphs that can be put in a newsletter, on a website, you have the wording here which directs people to some key ideas that they should have and it’s as simple as putting on your website, “Brothers and sisters please be sure to vote November 4th – general election.” Something like that, as simple as that; it’s a not endorsement, it’s a reminder about the process. The third link there, going back to the page for “Christian and pro-life organizations – helping your members prepare for the elections”, there’s a link that says group volunteers. We just spoke about that. “Find information on voting laws in each state”, we talked about that. “Promote the prayer campaign”, great way to get people to pray between now and then is have them say that prayer that we composed for the election and if you click on that link, go to the page, Prayer Campaign.org is our national prayer campaign and there’s another link on the bottom, “A prayer for a nation” that we prepared with respect to our leaders and we’ll say that as we close out of tonight’s call. “Promote our political and radio shows on Political Responsibility” is another way and then you’ll see the next to the last link “more detailed recommendations for group leaders”. If you click that for a moment, any of you again who are heading up groups large or small on this page you see links to articles or text boxes that you can place in newsletters or websites or email that are going out between now and Election Day. You see “suggestions for letters to the editor” and again most of these would be online posting those comments at the end of a news story for example on various websites. “Other ideas about using the internet”, “voter registration”, although as we said many of those deadlines are coming up very fast, “legal guidance”, what can you do legally, “materials to distribute”, and then “the 72 hour plan”, the last three days before Election Day, really devoting ourselves to driving people to the polls, getting on the email, getting on the phone, doing everything possible to influence people in those last few days.
This page contains legally sound helpful and practical advice for any group of any size and then if you go back to the page, the main page with this “election activities” suggestions, the last link on there is “detailed recommendations for pastors” and again it will talk about practical things they can do right in these final weeks. Now brothers and sisters it’s all up to you. It’s really in your hands. So many of you are so fired up, so ready to do the work and here we’re giving you some of the practical tools to do it. It really is now in our hands all of us together to make the difference that we can make.
Let me deal with some of the questions that have come in because some of you are asking questions online as we have this teleseminar and you see in the lower left hand portion of the teleconference page the little box where you can submit questions and feel free to submit them. We’ll put answers up on our webpage even if we don’t get them now and Paul and Alveda you can help us here as well with some of these questions that have come in.
One of them says, “The bishops in our state have said that we cannot include guide bulletins or distribute them in parking lots. What do you recommend? I'm planning to distribute them the weekend before the election and take the consequences.”
Well let’s be clear here about what some of these bishops are trying to do. They are trying to keep their institutions over which they have responsibility, their parishes and their dioceses, out of legal trouble. All well and good if you’re trying to keep yourself out of legal trouble you want to follow the right guidelines, etc, etc, fine. But that is only in reference to the activities and expenditures of the churches of the diocese. It doesn’t have anything to do with activities and expenditures undertaken by private individuals or third parties or other organizations and that’s why for example you know you as private citizens or as groups of private citizens can go right outside the church and if you’re standing on the public sidewalk, nobody has a legal right to stop you from handing a flier to one of your fellow worshippers or fellow citizens, nobody. It’s not any disrespect either to the church or to the bishops to hand out that. If we listen to what they’re saying we come to the opposite conclusion, that they want us to be active in the process and they want us to inform our fellow citizens. Paul, any follow up comment to that?
Paul Schenck: Well first of all I think we always have to ask what exactly is being said here because very often we take these statements to be open blanket statements about virtually all activity and just as you’re saying Father there is permissible activity that is completely recognized and then there are activities that cross the line. I think it is important to point out that there is no criminal sanction for violating a 501(c)(3). All it means is that the federal government may or may not recognize that activity as non-profit activity and there may be a tax required of that. Now that’s not our business because the churches and the dioceses and the institute that we interface with have the ultimate responsibility. So we’re not going to ever ask them or make them do something that’s going to compromise that. But these things are often overstated and they are made far more expansive than the IRS or federal law ever made them. So we really have to ask the question what’s really being said here and this information is available through Priests for Life, just what is permissible and what isn’t and the activity we’ve talked about tonight is all perfectly permissible under IRS regulations.
Fr. Frank Pavone: Yes you know there is a sad thing going on in some places where the diocese says, “Listen, you can only use materials that are produced by the Catholic Conference or by the diocese,” and then they turn around and don’t produce any. Some of them do but unfortunately most of them don’t and so you’re left with a situation where you can’t use this material from this group or that group and by the way we’re not going to provide any of our own. I don’t see the reasoning behind that. But remember, they’re not talking about what you as individuals can distribute or cannot distribute. They’re talking about what they want to do through the official channels of the organization. So that’s a good question to respectfully ask. I had to do that just today in regard to one diocese. I had to say, “Look you don’t want to distribute any group’s materials, so please tell me what materials are you creating of your own,” and that is nothing wrong with asking that question and to really indicate that one way or another we want to inform our fellow citizens and our fellow Christians.
Well we’re coming close to the end of our time here. There’s one question that says, “How do I respond to individuals who believe poverty has more importance than pro-life issues?” You really respond to them this way: Why are we against poverty? We’re against poverty precisely because of the value of life. Why do we have to help the poor? Well because they have a right to food and clothing and shelter. Why do they have a right to those things? Because they have a right to live; if you take away the right to live you’ve undermined the very reason that you should be concerned about poverty. It’s not as if – people talk about these issues as if it’s one issue over here or one issue over there. No, pro-life is the very heart and soul and core and foundation of all the other issues including poverty and health care and education and world peace and national security and the economy. Our greatest economy is human life, our children. Well I want to say a prayer – go ahead Alveda, I was just going to ask you to give a final thought.
Alveda King: Well Jesus did not kill the poor. He said that he prayed for the poor. So we’re supposed to take care of the poor and certainly aborting the poorest ones who are the little babies. I just thought about that as you were explaining that. Praise the Lord.
Fr. Frank Pavone: Praise the Lord. Well friends I want to thank you all. The final link down on that teleconference page is a link that says “donate” and I know that many of you donate to Priests for Life. Please help us if you can in an extra way as we push towards the finish line for this election season. We are going to go all out. We are not going to let anything stop us but the more help that you can give us the better and you can donate right there online at the lower right hand side of the conference page that goes right to our donation page. Please keep in touch. It’s going to be very crucial in the coming weeks for all of us to keep in contact. You know how to reach us through that PoliticalResponsibility.com website. You see all the links and all the forms and our staff will get back to you and we’ll have another teleconference before the elections. Please keep watch for when that will be and let me now invite you to join us in his prayer which is from our election novena.
“O God, we acknowledge you today as Lord, not only of individuals, but of nations and governments. We thank you for the privilege of being able to organize ourselves politically and of knowing that political loyalty does not have to mean disloyalty to you. We thank you for your law, which our Founding Fathers acknowledged and recognized as higher than any human law. We thank you Lord for the opportunity that this election puts before us, not only to exercise our duty not only to vote, but to influence countless others to vote, and to vote correctly. Lord, we pray that your people may be awakened. Let them realize that while politics is not their salvation, their response to you requires that they be politically active. Awaken your people to know that they are not called to be a sect fleeing the world but rather a community of faith renewing the world. Awaken them that the same hands lifted up to you in prayer are the hands that pull the lever in the voting booth; the same eyes that read your Word are the eyes that read the names on the ballot, and that they do not cease to be Christians when they enter the voting booth. Awaken your people to a commitment to justice, to the sanctity of marriage and the family, to the dignity of each individual human life, and to the truth that human rights begin when human lives begin, and not one moment later. Lord, we rejoice today that we are citizens of your kingdom. May that make us all the more committed to being faithful citizens on earth. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. “And may Almighty God bless you all, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
I want to thank Dr. Alveda King, Dr. Paul Schenck. Thank you both for being with us tonight. Thank you Christa Childs for the technical assistance of putting this teleseminar together, thank all of you brothers and sisters joining us from around the country and some of you from other parts of the world. Thank you our international friends for your prayers for the United States of America at this critical time. Pray that our citizens will have wisdom to elect the right kind of leaders, the right kind of leaders especially for the cause of life. Once again brothers and sisters thank you for your support of Priests for Life. You are Priests for Life. You are our family. You are going to be the victory this year and in future years. Politics is not our salvation. It’s just one piece of the puzzle but this is going to be a piece I'm convinced that this year will lead us closer again to the victory over abortion. God bless you all. Thanks for joining us. Let’s keep in close contact over the next few weeks especially. We’ll talk again soon.
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