When the dust settles after the election we may want to look back and see just what happened.

Is there going to be a “Catholic vote”? Should there be such a thing? Do Catholics heed what their bishops say about Catholic social teaching when deciding whom to vote for?

Separation of church and state is one of the hallmarks of our republic, and that phrase is stretched and pulled in myriad ways. From “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” we’ve derived tax exemption for religious projects, the provision of religious articles to prisoners who are practitioners of Wicca, a hypothetical “wall of separation” that regulates crèches on civic properties, and, of most concern in an election year, the rule that church officials who wish to retain tax exemption for their endeavors must not endorse or condemn particular parties or candidates.

In recent decades, the bishops of the United States, conscious of their responsibility to teach on moral issues, have wrestled with their need to provide non-partisan guidance, as voters tried to bring their Catholic sensibilities to bear on political decisions. In the most recent election year they produced the latest in a series of documents, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” a detailed and nuanced guide to what they considered the key issues in the election.

“Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” and its condensed versions set out key themes for Catholics to consider. The first was the consistent ethic of life: the dignity and infinite worth of every human from conception until natural death. This took in issues from abortion and euthanasia to embryonic stem-cell research and capital punishment, unjust war, genocide, torture and weapons of mass destruction. Another was the importance of the family, based in the marriage of a man and a woman ordered to the procreation and care of children. With reference to Christ’s mandate to care for the least of his brothers and sisters came an option for the poor and vulnerable, with the rights of all to food and shelter, education and health care as well as other human rights. The dignity of work and the rights of workers; global solidarity—the responsibility to be peacemakers, to share our bounty with those suffering hunger and illness, provide asylum to refugees, and to stand up for human rights around the world; and caring for God’s creation, being good stewards of the planet on which we live, were all included as elements of church teaching.

The bishops did not say that all these issues had equal weight. It spoke of the “intrinsic evil” of such acts as abortion and said, “As Catholics we are not single-issue voters. A candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support. Yet a candidate’s position on a single issue that involves an intrinsic evil, such as support for legal abortion or the promotion of racism, may legitimately lead a voter to disqualify a candidate from receiving support.” Moreover, “While people of good will may sometimes choose different ways to apply and act on some of our principles, Catholics cannot ignore their inescapable moral challenges or simply dismiss the Church’s guidance or policy directions that flow from these principles.” On the other hand, the document—which was accepted by a majority vote of all the bishops of the United States—said clearly, “There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.”

Interestingly, as of this writing some 50 bishops of U.S. dioceses—about 25 percent—nevertheless wrote articles or letters or gave media interviews in which they told Catholics that they should not vote for a candidate who supported legal abortion, in some cases specifying that as the Democratic candidate. A smaller number of bishops reiterated the call to consider a range of issues.

It is foolish to think that one can check one’s religion at the entry to the voting booth. A Catholic eating a hamburger does so as a Catholic, and certainly a Catholic casting a vote does so. Whether he or she casts that vote in full knowledge of Catholic teaching on the issues at stake, and whether or not he or she chooses to vote in accord with that teaching, are questions of conscience and questions for sociologists to study and debate.

The bishops who crafted “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” and those who have written and spoken out about the election are taking responsibility for teaching their flocks what the church teaches on the important issues of our day. Is anyone listening?

“Oh, bother,” as Winnie-the-Pooh would say.

The country’s financial mess seems to be getting worse and worse as our federal legislators dither; some suggest that using the word “bailout” was their big mistake. And of course everyone wants a piece of the pie, so the legislation is being festooned with tax credits, tax incentives, and similar goodies.

One of the reasons the bailout or “rescue” legislation is having so much trouble is that it’s being defined as rescuing Wall Street from its own excesses. Politicians are trying to communicate the fact that the credit problems of the current crisis affect “Main Street”—small businesses—as well as big corporate entities.

And people are inclined to forget that what happens on Wall Street affects ordinary Americans: more than half of us have investments in individual stocks or mutual funds, most of them representing our retirement savings.

I just made the mistake of checking the balance in my 403(b) account (that’s like a 401(k) for employees of not-for-profit entities), into which I’ve faithfully put a little bit of every paycheck for the past twenty-five years or more. After watching my nest egg grow pretty steadily over the years with only a few bumps, it’s distressing to see that the total has taken a substantial dip—more than twelve percent since last year, despite the fact that I’ve continued to make deposits into the account. I guess it’s a good thing I like my job.

Years ago when I first realized that I should put some of that 403(b) money into stocks and bonds to keep up with inflation (I’d first put all my funds into a risk-free interest accumulation account), the representative of the firm that holds my savings warned me that there was only one thing to be said about the stock market that is always true: “It will fluctuate.” And it does, and it has, and I hold balanced stock-and-bond mutual funds to let the professionals try to make the best of that, and for the most part they’ve done well by me. I’m certainly not going to panic and bail out now, but will sit tight and hope that what has come down will again go up. But it is scary when the sums aren’t so big to begin with.

Of course I want to blame someone. I want to blame the corporate executives whose annual salaries are many times the amount I’ve been able to save during my working life and are way out of proportion to the earnings of their employees. I want to blame the unscrupulous lenders who lured people into mortgages they couldn’t afford for houses they couldn’t afford, on the false premise that inflated home prices would continue to rise. I want to blame the financiers who sliced and diced and “securitized” those mortgages so that the risk was disguised and spread to institutions where it didn’t belong. I want to blame somebody for the jobs being lost, the savings that are evaporating, the anxiety of elderly people dependent on dividend income, the loss of trust in the American dollar that’s going to hurt us around the world. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, and there’s little doubt that greed is at the heart of this fiasco.

Most of us grew up equating capitalism and free markets with democracy and apple pie. But Catholic social teaching has also warned against unfettered capitalism. Capitalism can be a very good thing, but the little guy, the worker, the small investor, needs some protections. The current crisis is, I suspect, the result of government deregulation or no regulation of sectors of the financial markets. Some parts of our financial system, notably traditional banks, have been regulated since the Depression, and people with their savings in FDIC-insured accounts are, in a saying now ironic, as safe as houses.

I think it’s a safe bet that a fix is going to be provided for Wall Street. But I want it to come with strings attached—oversight, regulation, transparency—some sticks, not just the carrots of tax incentives. And let’s throw in some direct help for the ordinary folks. Foreclosures aren’t good for homeowners, lenders or neighborhoods: let mortgages be restructured so that people can stay in homes they’ve been making payments on. If recession is as inevitable as it looks, provide as much cushioning as possible for the poor and the middle class (extending unemployment insurance and expanding the food stamp program, for example) instead of those who can get by nicely on their own. The trickle-down theory hasn’t worked too well when it comes to monetary gain, but it does seem to be a law of bad times that when there’s systemic trouble the poor take the hit. Can we change that?

I don’t have the answers. The system is going to be well shaken; I hope it shakes out in a way that helps the people who need help.