The Top 10 reasons for hope are . . . and none of them have to do with social justice.

You, me, our families, our neighbors, our co-workers, friends and people from all walks of life: We are the Catholic vote. Together, we can protect life at all stages from the culture of death.

Not the change you expected? Don’t gamble away your vote Tuesday.

Dear Catholic Voter:

Our radio ads are running everywhere.

In Nevada, Michigan, Virginia, Wisconsin and Illinois . . . voters are hearing from you.

In the race to replace retiring Rep. Bart Stupak with pro-life doctor Dan Benishek, Michigan voters are hearing from us.

In the hotly contested Nevada Senate race to defeat Harry Reid, voters are hearing from CatholicVote.org;

In Virginia, where pro-life candidate Robert Hurt is running to defeat the founder of the left-wing group Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good — voters are hearing from us;

In Illinois and Wisconsin, we are running more ads to help elect pro-life candidates Sean Duffy (WI) and Bobby Schilling (IL) in two of the most watched races in the country.

Together we made the decision to get involved in supporting specific candidates. Helping educate our fellow Catholics is important, but we chose to go further. We want to elect the candidates best positioned to help us renew our country and our culture.

That’s why we’re on the air all week urging voters to make the difference on Election Day.

Click here to see the rest of the update. An observation: CatholicVote.org’s endorsement page (see here) doesn’t mention Robert Hurt, even though the Virginian rated a mention in Mr. Burch’s letter. However, it does endorse another Virginian, Keith Fimian, in Virginia’s 11th Congressional district. Perhaps CV runs ads against pro-abortion incumbents while running ads in favor of candidates it endorses?

In any event, CatholicVote.org is working hard to “uphold the rightful duty and responsibility as Catholic laity to apply the teachings of the Church in public life.” One way it does this is producing widely acclaimed videos. The following posts will feature two of its latest. Catholic voters have a duty to exercise their citizenship responsibility (see John Mallon at CV’s blog). According to a new New York Times/CBS poll, they are, indeed, beginning to do exactly that (see Joshua Mercer at CV’s blog and Thomas Peters at American Papist).

Catholic Vote, recognized for its creative, well produced and thought-provoking ads, promises more of the same, especially as election time draws near, and Catholics are called to make informed decisions as to who should represent us in government. While this ad doesn’t strike me as up to the standards of its past work, that is a pretty high standard. I look forward to seeing its next releases.

CatholicVote.org celebrates its two-year anniversary with a new Web site and another glossy, attention-grabbing ad.

Now, let’s go out and buy as many as we can (see American Papist)! What better way to prove we were right, to show America how dear this woman was to all the world and to honor this saintly nun (CatholicVoteAction.org Blog). What better way to show our country the strength and grace of The Catholic Church and to spread the good message of The Church as exemplified by the life of Mother Teresa? As far as a simple, conventional method that’s every bit as powerful as anything in this Internet driven, social media crazed culture . . . nothing!

Worth every cent . . . and then some! The Mother Teresa stamp now is available from the U.S. Postal Service. Time to buy them up!

Dear CatholicVote Friend,

Can you answer this question?

Does President Obama’s new healthcare law fund abortions or not?

Last week the Obama administration announced they would be pouring hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars (our money!) into high-risk insurance pools in Pennsylvania and New Mexico where taxpayer funded abortions would be covered.

And then they got caught.

The National Right to Life Committee exposed the plan, prompting pro-life groups and legislative leaders to demand answers. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responded by promising not to use the funds for abortion. This time.

Sign our petition to the Catholic Health Association to help us make sure this doesn’t happen again!

Cardinal DiNardo speaking on behalf of the Catholic Bishops responded saying: “We welcome this new policy [preventing abortion coverage] . . . while continuing to be gravely concerned that it was not issued until after some states had announced that pro-abortion health plans were approved and had begun to enroll patients.”

The Cardinal emphasized that the episode makes clear that a new law (not an Executive Order) is needed to strictly prohibit all funding for abortion.

Let’s face it, the nearly 2000-page health care law is so complicated it is virtually impossible to keep up with the new authorities and regulatory agencies that could be manipulated to funnel your money to abortion providers.

So something must be done.

Taxpayer dollars must NEVER be used to fund the destruction of innocent human life.

Some groups claiming to be faithful to the Church continue to claim that the new health care bill does not fund abortion. But last week’s episode proves there are loopholes, and we can’t rely on promises from the Obama administration to keep our money out of the hands of abortion doctors.

Our petition to the Catholic Health Association calling on them to get behind the Protect Life Act continues to add new signatures every day.

Join over 56,000 people that have already signed our petition!

If the Catholic Health Association claims to be Catholic, then they must be held accountable.

Help us turn up the heat. Sign our petition today. …

- Your Friends at CatholicVote.org

Roy Betts, a spokesman for the Postal Service, told CatholicVote.org last week (click here to read more from CV):

The stamp will be dedicated September 5 [at] the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. Feel free to post information about the stamp, the image and the dedication ceremony on your website. Thanks!

The push to stop the stamp was nothing more than anti-religious and, specifically, anti-Catholic bigotry. So, it’s never too late to show support for a great cause like this. If you haven’t signed the petition, please do (by clicking here). CatholicVoteAction.org has done a great job with the Stamp Out Bigotry Web site. In fact, the more people sign in the days ahead, the better the chance of making this a forever stamp. Why not? As one commenter put it, Mother Teresa’s spirit and work are enduring.

Most importantly, be sure to buy and use the Mother Teresa stamp. The Postal Service is like any business — if you buy a certain product a lot, it will keep making it! Show your devotion to the Church through one of its modern servants, Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Coming soon, on an envelope in your mail! Mother Teresa’s spirit endures in many forms including, in the very near future, a new U.S. post stamp.

Another slant on Earth Day: Celebrating God’s greatest creation! The people get it!

In this case, it’s CatholicVote.org turning the liberal paganism of Earth worship around on its illogical head to make some actual sense of the Earth Day, whose advocates are vigorous population control freaks. It is buying up billboard and bus signage space around the country to promulgate the pro-life message by using the secular line of thinking. Pretty brilliant to use their words to promote the most precious aspect of God’s creation on Earth:

Human Life!

It is more than disturbing that “environmentalists” choose to protect and prioritize anything living except the unborn. You cannot celebrate the Earth and not celebrate the Creator — and that which He created in His Likeness. As CatholicVote’s Brian Burch said in a statement: 

Our goal is to use Earth Day to get Americans to think more deeply about what it means to truly respect the Earth and creation. Prevailing environmental attitudes too often view humans as the enemy of nature. We believe the human person is God’s greatest creation, and the Earth’s greatest resource. Building up a culture of life is the single most important way to build a culture that respects the environment.

If we truly care about building a world that respects the environment, we must begin by building a moral culture — one that understands pollution not just in materialistic terms, but in spiritual terms too. In fact, moral pollution does more to harm the environment than inefficient cars or greenhouse gases.

If we are wasteful and reckless with the environment, maybe it is because we are wasteful and reckless with each other — including the unborn.

Here’s what Pope Benedict wrote in a recent encyclical:

If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology.

It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves.

CatholicVote.org has bought space for these ads in Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle for starters. You can read more the Earth Day Pro-Life campaign from Joshua Mercer at the CatholicVoteAction blog, here. 

According To CatholicVote’s Burch: “Let’s remember: Transforming pagan feasts into Christian celebrations is what our faith has been doing for 2,000 years.”