Catholics and Evangelicals To Bush: Save Your Moral Legacy

As President Bush prepares to give his final State of the Union address Monday, prominent Catholic and evangelical leaders challenged the president to use the next year working to salvage his moral legacy on war, torture, poverty and global climate change.

In a media briefing organized by Faith in Public Life and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, Fr. Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA; Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action; Rev. David Gushee, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights; Sister Anne Curtis, Leadership Team, Institute for the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and Rev. Paul de Vries, board member of the National Association of Evangelicals, urged Bush to close the glaring divide between his “compassionate conservative” rhetoric and the reality of public policies that have left behind the poor and most vulnerable.

Fr. Larry Synder of Catholic Charities USA, said his organization helped nearly 8 million people last year and requests for basic needs such as food and shelter have increased at an alarming rate. “The federal government must do its part,” he said. “Agencies like Catholic Charities can’t do it alone.” He called Bush’s veto of children’s health insurance legislation (SCHIP) “unacceptable” and emphasized that “all human beings should be able to live with dignity and respect.” Catholic Charities USA is leading a national Campaign to Reduce Poverty, which has a goal of cutting poverty in half by 2020.
Sister Anne Curtis, representing over 4,300 Sisters of Mercy serving around the world, spoke about her recent trip to Lebanon and Syria with a Catholic Relief Services’ delegation that visited Iraqi refugees in those countries. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, there are now almost 2 million Iraqi refugees internally displaced in Iraq and over 2 million in Syria and Lebanon.
“We came face to face with the humanitarian consequences of the war in Iraq,” Sr. Curtis said. “I felt great shame and sorrow as a citizen of the U.S. President Bush has a moral obligation to end the war, aid the refugees and provide the necessary funding for humanitarian assistance.”
Listen to the full media briefing here.