Welcome to Faithful Citizenship 2012
Get Informed. Go Public.

In Election Year 2012, Iona College renews its commitment to forming persons for a different kind of political engagement. This commitment is grounded in the principles of religious freedom and political participation and the understanding of our nation's challenges as both political and profoundly moral.

Faithful Citizenship. Get Informed. Go Public invites faculty and administration, students and guest experts to address the complex problems we face as a nation in Election Year 2012, and importantly, to model citizenship as a process of engagement with one another and the political process. The call-to-action for Faithful Citizenship is to join together in the task of charting a way forward for our society in a manner that upholds public life as everyone's moral responsibility. All of us, each and everyone, are the goal of public life as well as its leading participants.*

Participation in public life as a moral obligation is a hallmark of the Catholic tradition. In November 2007, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the pastoral statement, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: Reflections on Catholic Teaching and Political Life. The statement called for a "renewed kind of politics" that focuses more on moral principles than on the latest polls... more on the needs of the weak than on benefits for the strong... more on the pursuit of the common good than on the demands of narrow interests." **

As a leading academic institution in the Catholic intellectual and social justice traditions, Iona College responded to the bishops' call to embrace civic engagement as a moral responsibility with the "The Faithful Citizenship Symposium: A 2008 Election Year Series." In Election 2012, we will again engage our campus and the wider community in a dialogue on the issues of the economy, healthcare, environment, immigration, foreign policy, and digital communications.

The call to "Get Informed. Go Public" holds us responsible as faithful citizens for exercising both our constitutional freedoms and our moral principles.