Pastoral Statements
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Pastoral Statements are teaching tools bishops use to articulate official Church teaching on matters of importance. Users are free to print these documents and their study guides for their personal and pastoral use.
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A People Made One—Released in May 1999, this Pastoral letter calls for increased ecumenical cooperation between Catholics and other faith traditions. You also will find helpful materials and news about current developments in ecumenism on the webpage of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. -
This series of brochures in Economic Justice in 21st Century Kentucky: Holding Ourselves Accountable constitute a pastoral letter from the Catholic Bishops of Kentucky. You can access each of them here in color or black and white versions. There are eight brochures, seven of which examine a major theme in Catholic social doctrine, and the eighth one is a resource brochure with suggestions for the use of the pastoral letter. In the Resources Brochure we invite users to share ideas with us that we can then share with others. Printed copies will be mailed to all Kentucky parishes and Catholic schools.There also are seven posters to use in advertising programs you are hosting. Each one has space at the bottom for the time, date, and place of the event. These 11X17″ posters will not print on all copy machines. Commercial copy companies, however, can print them if you download and save the file to a thumb drive and take the drive with you.
All are welcome to download these PDF files for personal use. You also can order additional printed sets of the color brochures, free. Call Karen at 502-875-4345 or email her at [email protected] and let her know how many sets you need and where to send them:
Faces of Poverty – In 1986, the bishops of Kentucky issued a pastoral statement on poverty and how it particularly affects Kentucky women. Due to it’s age, it had never been posted to our website prior to May 2020. It has been published here now for historical purposes and to highlight how the Church’s advocacy for the poor has remained consistent through the decades. Unfortunately, it also reminds us how persistent many of these problems have proven to be and how much work remains for us to do.
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Kentucky’s Advance Health Care Directives and Organ Donation: A Catholic Perspective—Following changes in Kentucky law in 1994, this document was released to inform Catholics of acceptable options in making end-of-life decisions. This newly revised edition (September 2005) provides clarification regarding Catholic teaching on end of life issues. The document includes a form approved for use in the Commonwealth of Kentucky to designate a health care surrogate and to donate organs.Catholics view organ donation as an act of charity, fraternal love, and self sacrifice. Transplants are ethically and morally acceptable to the Vatican. Ethical and Religious Directive from the Catholic Health Facilities, No.30 states: “The transplantation of organs from living donors is morally permissible when the anticipated benefit to the recipient is proportionate to the harm done to the donor, provided that the loss of such organ(s) does not deprive the donor of life itself nor the integrity of his body.” No. 31: “Post-mortem examinations must not be begun until death is morally certain. Vital organs, that is, organs necessary to sustain life, may not be removed until death has taken place. The determination of the time of death must be made in accordance with current medical practice. To prevent any conflict of interest, the dying patient’s doctor(s) should ordinarily be distinct from the transplant team.”
To donate your organs, do one of the following three things:
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Sign the back of your Kentucky driver’s license or identification card; get two witnesses to sign it
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Contact Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates for a donor card: (502) 581-9511 or (800) 525-3456
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Use the Organ Donation Form found in Kentucky’s Advance Health Care Directives and Organ Donation: A Catholic Perspective
Your next-of-kin’s approval will be needed at the time of your death.
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Reverence for Life: Conscience and Faithful Citizenship—”Catholic social doctrine is not limited to the defense and promotion of economic and political rights; human life issues such as abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, and the violence of war also fall within the scope of social morality.” -
Reverence For Life…A Need for a “Heart that Sees”—”On his recent visit to Austria, Pope Benedict XVI named abortion ‘a deep wound in society,’ a threat inflicted by ethical blindness. In a prophetic voice raised in defense of a fundamental right to life, the Holy Father stated: ‘I am acting as an advocate for a profoundly human need, speaking out on behalf of unborn children who have no voice. I do not close my eyes to the difficulties and conflicts that many women are experiencing, and I realize that the credibility of what we say also depends on what the Church is doing to help women in trouble.’ His address, ‘The Fundamental Human Right,’ also expressed a grave concern about movements promoting “actively assisted death.'”
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Choose Life—”In Pope John Paul II’s 1995 message, delivered in Rutherford, N.J., he calls on American Catholics ‘to be committed to the defense of all human life in all its stages,’ challenging all of us to renew our efforts to end state-sanctioned killing. Our new Catechism of the Catholic Church (1995) challenges us with seeking a ‘bloodless means’ to protect society from acts of violence, and not answer violence with yet more violence.”
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Reverence for Life—This pastoral statement is broader than Choose Life and discusses additional life issues in accordance with the Church’s consistent life ethic.
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