So many interesting things are happening on Malta's political front. It is really a new beginning in more senses than one. The Labour Party has a new leader and, by the time you read this, new deputy leaders. Now that Harry Vassallo and Joe Saliba have bowed out of the scene Alternattiva Demokratika and the Nationalist Party will soon have a new leader and general secretary respectively.

So many new, and not so new, faces are coming onto the political scene. But politics is much more than faces. It is more about issues and commitment. All political parties say that finding the best people to contest elections is becoming more and more difficult for many reasons, including the messy state of politics. Notwithstanding this, politics remain a noble vocation and opting out is not an option for Catholics.

This subject was recently addressed by Joan Rosenhauer, associate director of the Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops at a recent international gathering of journalists and communications professionals.

Rosenhauer described participation in the political process as a moral obligation and faithful citizenship as a virtue since both opposing evil and doing good are essential.

An important distinction should be made here between the role of the Church and the role of the individual Catholic.

The Church is not partisan. Individual Catholics are. The Church does not formulate political strategy. Individual Catholics do. The Church is not a political organisation but Catholics should be political individuals. The following two extracts from Pope Benedict's encyclical God is Love illustrate the issue:

"(The Church's social doctrine is meant) to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgement of what is just... The Church cannot and must not take upon itself the political battle to bring about the most just society. She cannot and must not replace the state...

"The formation of just structures is not directly the duty of the Church... it has an indirect duty... the purification of reason and the reawakening of moral force. The direct duty to work for a just ordering of society, on the other hand, is proper to the lay faithful... to take part in a personal capacity".

Rosenhauer also stressed the importance of a conscience well-formed by Catholic social teaching, referring to the US bishops' 2007 document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility.

"We should never be in a position where the party shapes us and we abandon fundamental positions of Catholicism," Rosenhauer said.

She made a very important distinction based on the teaching of Faithful Citizenship. While saying that a Catholic cannot vote to support a candidate's position on abortion or racism, he or she cannot use a candidate's opposition to abortion, for example, "to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity". In the light of this, Rosenhauer thinks that a Catholic may still vote for a pro-abortion candidate if he or she rejects that position, but has "other morally grave reasons" to support that candidate. She stressed, however, that the requirement of "morally grave reasons" is a "high bar".

Making these choices is a struggle in which every Catholic has to engage in especially in our society which is always becoming more pluralistic.