October 29, 2014 – Excerpted from Put Out Into the Deep, Bishop DiMarzio’s column in The Tablet:

My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,

On Tuesday, Nov. 4, New Yorkers will go to the polls to vote for our Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller as well as members of Congress and State legislators. Citizenship confers on us all many rights and also burdens and some obligations. We, who are fortunate to live in a representative democracy, have a special religious obligation to take seriously our patriotic duty to vote.

My grandfather, who came to the U.S. in 1913, did not become a citizen until 1945, a pattern followed by many old immigrants. My grandmother waited until she was 85 to become a citizen. One of the proudest days of her life was when she took the oath of citizenship with me standing by her side. She could not wait to exercise her right to vote now that she was a citizen. Both were proud to be U.S. citizens.

When I became 18, my grandfather wanted to give me a voting lesson. He said, “Go into the booth, when you see an Italian name, pull down the leaver.” In the past, voting was an exercise in ethnic loyalty or voting for party loyalty. Today, however, we need to go beyond the past and be truly discerning Catholic voters.

Read the full text of the Bishop’s column on The Tablet website.

October 22, 2014 – Excerpted from Put Out Into the Deep, Bishop DiMarzio’s column in The Tablet:

My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,

As the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family came to a close last Saturday, Pope Francis beatified Blessed Paul VI at the concluding Mass, praising him as a “humble and prophetic witness of love for Christ and his church.” Pope Paul VI, the writer of “Evangelii Nuntiani” and “Humanae Vitae,” confronted the great need for evangelization in the modern world, noting that the Church exists to evangelize. It is certainly not a coincidence that Pope Francis chose to beatify Blessed Paul VI on the last day of Part I of the Synod on Marriage and the Family.

The official midterm report focused on the challenges and virtues of traditional families, expressing solidarity with Christian families around the world, and offered possible new pastoral approaches to a wide-range of family and relationship situations. We must remember the process of a synod, with its final working document now presented to the Holy Father, who will review the suggestions offered to him by the synod. Pope Francis will then write a Post-Synodal document, which has the full teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff. Can the Pope use all of the suggestions that he receives, and does he agree with them? That is an unanswered question, whose answer we will not know until the Post-Synodal document is released, most probably sometime before next year’s World Meeting of Families to be held in Philadelphia in September.

Read the full text of the Bishop’s column on The Tablet website.

October 15, 2014 – Excerpted from Put Out Into the Deep, Bishop DiMario’s column in The Tablet:

My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,

As we continue our reflection on family life, coinciding with the Synod of the Family, the definition of family is probably most important for us to understand. Pope Francis recently said, “There is no future without children.”

In his Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, St. John Paul II said, “When they become parents, spouses receive from God the gift of a new responsibility. Their parental love is called to become for the children the visible sign of the very love of God, ‘from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.’”

Spouses becoming parents presents new challenges for married life. The shared responsibility for child rearing today is much different than it was in the past. Thank God that our culture has changed so that both mothers and fathers take responsibility for the care and rearing of their children.

I have two nieces and one nephew who are married, and between them there are nine children. Both of my nieces have a set of twins, one boy and one girl each. So I have been able to observe the development of these children having baptized my own five nieces and nephews and now these nine great-nieces and nephews.

Read the full text of the Bishop’s column on The Tablet website.