Welcome to Monday. Sisters work to ensure citizens are able to exercise their right to vote. Catholic pacificists say Pope Francis' latest encyclical moves away from just war theory. NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters says Amy Coney Barrett already has her mind made up and it is reliably conservative.

Sisters registering as many people as they can to vote

Having her volunteers register voters three days a week for the last two months in Youngstown, Ohio - not to mention the training and preparation beforehand - has been a lot of work, but Humility of Mary Sr. Ann McManamon said it's worth it.

McManamon is just one of many Catholic sisters across the United States who are working to ensure citizens are able to exercise their right to vote. They work for legislative changes to make voting easier, they register voters and they work the polls on Election Day.

Sr. Marie Lucey, a Sister of St. Francis of Philadelphia, is one of those working to get out the vote. She's the associate director of Franciscan Action Network, which made three videos this year to encourage people to vote.

"We don't have a good history of voting in this country," Lucey said. "We either take too much for granted, or people think their vote doesn't count. But voting is a right and a responsibility."

More background:

The Reflective Voting Guide, produced by 11 congregational justice and peace promoters, sought to emphasize one point above all: Discerning whom to vote for is not a one-issue matter.
Amazon's documentary, "All In: The Fight for Democracy," explores the history - and current state of - voter suppression in the United States.
#Every30Seconds is a national campaign that aims to engage Latino young adults and empower them to vote in the upcoming elections.

Catholic pacifists praise pope's move away from just war theory

Past and present leaders of Pax Christi International hope the Catholic Church will formally set aside its long-held teachings on just war theory with the release of Pope Francis' new encyclical Fratelli Tutti, in which the pope wrote it is "very difficult" to invoke the theory today because of the brutality of modern combat.

In Fratelli Tutti, Francis says that nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and new technological combat systems "have granted war an uncontrollable destructive power over great numbers of innocent civilians."

"We can no longer think of war as a solution, because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits," he states. "In view of this, it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a 'just war.'"

"I feel like what he was doing was moving the just war tradition further and further into the background, to put it on the shelf, where it belongs," said Marie Dennis, who served as a co-president of Pax Christi from 2007 to 2019. "It was progress in a very real way."

More background:

All of NCR's coverage of Fratelli Tutti can be found here.

More headlines

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett will try to convince us that she is open-minded, when the only reason her supporters are so excited is that they know her mind is made up and it is reliably conservative, writes NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters.
ICYMI: The U.S. Supreme Court is temporarily allowing drugs used to medically induce abortions to be mailed or delivered without requiring the recipient to make a doctor's visit during the coronavirus pandemic.
At Global Sisters Report, Judith Best, a School Sister of Notre Dame, writes about a monument called "Kindred Spirits" at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation that reminds her of mutual compassion after bitter hardships.

Final thoughts

Join us at 1:30 p.m. Central on Wednesday for a Facebook Live conversation on coronavirus, health care and the election. Executive editor Heidi Schlumpf will speak with NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters and Ralph McCloud, director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Follow us on Facebook for the latest news and events.

Until Tuesday,

Stephanie Yeagle

NCR Production/Online Editor

[email protected]

Twitter: @ncrSLY

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