In a recent post of mine, Morning’s Minion offered the following comment:
I’m afraid Alex, well intentioned as he is, simply does not understand what proximity to the evil act means. Voting for a politician who supports abortion when you clearly do not share that intention, and when that politician’s influence on the actual incidence of abortion is strictly limited, is perfectly licit. The non-negotiability applies to the specfic act of directly-procured abortion itself, and formal cooperation with it, Especially given the circumstances in the US, the voter’s cooperation is of the remote material nature, nothing close to formal (assuming the intent is not there, of course). And yes, a voter’s assessment of the abortion issue does entail prudential judgment. Making a decision to vote for X because X will nominate judge Y who will overturn Roe v. Wade which will lower the abortion rate involves a number of steps that lie in the realm of uncertainty. It’s a valid position, but it’s not the only one.
Well, apparently, I am in pretty good company in my “misunderstanding” as to the meaning of “proportionate reasons.”
When it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.
What are “proportionate reasons”? To consider that question, we must first repeat the teaching of the church: The direct killing of innocent human beings at any stage of development, including the embryonic and fetal, is homicidal, gravely sinful and always profoundly wrong . . . .
What evil could be so grave and widespread as to constitute a “proportionate reason” to support candidates who would preserve and protect the abortion license and even extend it to publicly funded embryo-killing in our nation’s labs?
Certainly policies on welfare, national security, the war in Iraq, Social Security or taxes, taken singly or in any combination, do not provide a proportionate reason to vote for a pro-abortion candidate.
What is a proportionate reason to justify favoring the taking of an innocent, defenseless human life? That’s the question that has to be answered in your conscience. What is the proportionate reason? . . . It is difficult to imagine what that proportionate reason would be.
When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons strictly defined.
Since abortion and euthanasia have been defined by the Church as the most serious sins prevalent in our society, what kind of reasons could possibly be considered proportionate enough to justify a Catholic voting for a candidate who is known to be pro-abortion? None of the reasons commonly suggested could even begin to be proportionate enough to justify a Catholic voting for such a candidate. Reasons such as the candidate’s position on war, or taxes, or the death penalty, or immigration, or a national health plan, or social security, or aids, or homosexuality, or marriage, or any similar burning societal issues of our time are simply lacking in proportionality.
There is only one thing that could be considered proportionate enough to justify a Catholic voting for a candidate who is known to be pro-abortion, and that is the protection of innocent human life. That may seem to be contradictory, but it is not.
Consider the case of a Catholic voter who must choose between three candidates: candidate (A, Kerry) who is completely for abortion-on-demand, candidate (B, Bush) who is in favor of very limited abortion, i.e., in favor of greatly restricting abortion and candidate (C, Peroutka), a candidate who is completely against abortion but who is universally recognized as being unelectable.The Catholic voter cannot vote for candidate (A, Kerry) because that would be formal cooperation in the sin of abortion if that candidate were to be elected and assist in passing legislation, which would remove restrictions on, abortion-on-demand. The Catholic can vote for candidate (C, Peroutka) but that will probably only help ensure the election of candidate (A, Kerry). Therefore the Catholic voter has a proportionate reason to vote for candidate (B, Bush) since his vote may help to ensure the defeat of candidate (A, Kerry) and may result in the saving of some innocent human lives if candidate (B, Bush) is elected and introduces legislation restricting abortion-on-demand. In such a case, the Catholic voter would have chosen the lesser of two evils, which is morally permissible under these circumstances.
If one had a properly formed conscience admitting the grave evil of abortion and euthanasia, as the Church teaches, and does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and euthanasia, but votes for the candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation which can be permitted, Cardinal Ratzinger states, if proportionate reasons are present, e.g., the candidate would limit abortions.
Note that ["proportionate reasons'] does not mean simply weighing a wide range of issues against abortion and euthanasia and concluding that they cumulatively outweigh the evil of taking an innocent life. Rather, for there to be proportionate reasons, the voter would have to be convinced that the candidate who supports abortion rights would actually do more than the opposing candidate to limit the harm of abortion or to reduce the number of abortions.
“Proportionate reasons” has a very specific meaning in Catholic moral teaching. A proportionate reason [to vote for pro-abortion candidates] would be the desire to avoid supporting an equally grave or graver intrinsic evil, and not just for any reason at all. An intrinsic evil is an evil that cannot be morally justified for any reason or set of circumstances. So, for example, capital punishment is not a proportionate reason. A candidate’s stand on economic issues is not a proportionate reason.
This could not mean . . . that support for a pro-abortion . . . candidate could be justified by his support for economic proposals, whether of a ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ character. The protection of life is greater than the protection or redistribution of wealth [CCC #2197-2198]. Cardinal Ratzinger had already affirmed the priority of protecting innocent life when he stated that ‘not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.
Cardinal Ratzinger’s remark would have to mean that support for a pro-abortion or pro-euthanasia candidate could only be licit where the alternative was more detrimental to the defense of innocent life. A candidate who supports legal abortion with a number of restrictions would be proportionately better than a candidate who supports abortion “on demand.”
But the crucial questions – largely missing from press coverage of the cardinal’s letter – remain: When is this morally justifiable? What are the “proportionate reasons” that would lead a pro-life voter to conclude that a pro-abortion candidate’s unacceptable position on the life issues can, in effect, be bracketed?
I can imagine one such situation: when the choice is between two pro-abortion candidates, and a voter opts for the pro-abortion candidate of a pro-life party in order to keep that pro-life party in control of Congress. That was the case in my own Congressional district for years. But that is not the situation that Catholic voters face in the current presidential contest or in most Congressional races.
When Cardinal Ratzinger’s comments are viewed within the general context of all his declarations, it’s clear that he thinks few justifications would suffice to outweigh participation in the evil of the politician’s pro-choice position and votes. In an address to European politicians on March 30th of this year, Pope Benedict stated, “As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. Among these the following emerge clearly today: the protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family — as a union between one man and one woman based on marriage…; and the protection of the rights of parents to educate their children.”
Oh, and I can produce more quotes if need be.
October 13, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Bishop Galante’s statement comes closest to the way I approach the issue, that is, when I do decide to even vote. His position, at least as it is reflected in this snippet, seems to realize that issues are connected, that there is a bigger picture involved than simply abortion vs any other issue. Using Galante’s reasoning, however, I have been compelled to vote against “pro-life” Republicans a number of times, precisely because I do not think (and I am in good company too on this matter) that simply saying you’re against abortion is actually going to limit the number of abortions that occur.
Most of the other quotes you have here do not explain their assertions but simply say that the are true, e.g. Myers and Gracida. I don’t find them convincing.
The fact is that the hierarchy, on all levels, is doing a great disservice to the Church by not clarifying the issue in a helpful way. If the Church is really forbidding the faithful to vote for a “pro-abortion” candidate (and I agree with the person above who questions the use of that term), then it needs to do so clearly. If it won’t do so because it respects the freedom of conscience, then it needs to state this clearly. If it won’t do so because it would appear that the Church is telling people how to vote and that is not acceptable from the state’s point of view (like in the United States), then I say the Church should do what the Church wants to do regardless of what the state thinks.
October 13, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Sorry, the “person above” who questioned the term “pro-abortion” was from the other thread.
October 13, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Constantly, you and your ilk are attempting to divide the Church over this one issue—to drive others away from the Faith, simply because we do not agree with you that the campaign against abortion is the defining issue of modern Catholicism–any more than opposition to capital punishment, or opposition to unjust war is, or opposition to exploitive socio-economic systems are.
The only thing that can serve to excommunicate a Catholic from his Church is denial of a dogma of the Church. When a foetus is “en-souled” is a question of natural law, not a matter of faith. Although the Church DOES have a right, indeed, a “mission” to “discover” better natural law and to preach a better alignment of it with faith, she DOES NOT have the right to overrule individual conscience, PARTICULARLY when that “conscience” has been formed with reference to previous teachings of the Church herself. You see that so well when it comes to capital punishment and “just war” doctrine, but you absolutely refuse to see it as regards abortion, as you and radical Right wing Catholics like you pursue your campaign to excommunicate and curse those of us who refuse to agree with you and who cite ancient texts which are more agnostic than you are regarding what constitutes “human life.”
Perhaps you’d do well to heed what Gary Wills says were the opinions of those doctors of the Church St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas regarding this matter:
is abortion murder? Most people think not,” Wills writes. What follows on that is perhaps the most lucid and relevantly learned concise discussion of abortion as a moral/theological question as you’re likely to read anywhere. Once again, Wills’ deep mastery of the primary sources and his respect for them as a believer himself lend his argument a compelling authority. He points out that Catholic opposition to abortion is a recent development.
“Abortion is not treated in the Ten Commandments — or anywhere in Jewish Scripture. It is not treated in the Sermon on the Mount — or anywhere in the New Testament. It is not treated in the early creeds. It is not treated in the early ecumenical councils.” For that reason, Augustine, whose knowledge of both Jewish and Christian scriptures was encyclopedic, wrote, “I have not been able to discover in the accepted books of Scripture anything at all certain about the origin of the soul.”
Similarly, Thomas Aquinas, “lacking scriptural guidance,” relied upon Aristotle’s natural philosophy. “So he denied that personhood arose at fertilization by the semen. God directly infuses the soul at the completion of human formation,” Wills writes.
“Much of the debate over abortion is based on a misconception, that this is a religious issue, that the pro-life advocates are acting out of religious conviction. It is not a theological matter at all. There is no theological basis for either defending or condemning abortion. Even the popes have said that it is a matter of natural law, to be decided by natural reason. Well the pope is not the arbiter of natural law. Natural reason is.”
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-rutten10oct10,0,3157373.story?coll=la-books-headlines
I don’t think anybody wishes to disagree with you that abortion is intrinsically wrong or that its prevalence in our society doesn’t constitute a grave moral evil—a cultural sickness, if you will. However, the sin of abortion, or the sin of countenancing SOME abortions, in order to avoid still graver evils, such as the killing or abandonment to die by the relatives of raped women in Darfur, is NOT so serious a sin as to warrant separation from the Body of Christ. Your saying so is like the claim by the murderous, bloodthirsty abolitionist of the 19th century, who were willing to kills hundreds of thousands of people so that the “peculiar institution,” which was perishing of its own economic consequences, could be eliminated precipitously, at enormous cost.
You may or may not know it, but the Catholic Church of the time opposing paying that enormous cost, and was, in the long run, proved prescient, because the Reconstruction of the South, combined with the pauperization and terrorizing of the former slaves in the “Jim Crow” South, led to further and greater national catastrophes, eventuating in the enshrinement in our political culture of the militarism and the antagonism to social democracy (in favour of a cherishment of hierarchy) that so characterizes the still-racially-embittered modern South. As many Roman Catholic hierarchs of the time insisted, it would have been preferable to “let our erring brothers depart in peace.” It would be better for the Church if people like you maintained a cooler head and stopped trying to divide her over it.
October 13, 2007 at 5:30 pm
The truth is that Ratzinger wrote something that went against the grain of popular conservative Catholic teaching in this country on voting (that the pro-choice candidate could be supported so long as the reason for support was not the pro-choice stand and there were proportionate reasons). The conservative Catholic intellectual establishment then went into automatic obfuscation mode, interpreting away the alien teaching, mutilating it so that “proportionate reasons” is impossible to meet, or makes no sense (such as “Catholics may only ever vote for the pro-choice candidate when he is more pro-life than the pro-life candidate”).
October 13, 2007 at 5:38 pm
No, anon, that’s not the truth. Apparently, your false understanding of the issue comes from the MSM, rather than the bishops of the Church or by reading what then Cardinal Ratzinger actually said.
October 13, 2007 at 6:12 pm
First, John Paul is entirely correct, and I don’t see what he is saying as here as directly related to your point.
Second, where a lot of these people go wrong is an assuming that the election of pro-abortion candidate A would have a material effect on abortion. As Bishop Gracida says, (from the quote you provide) “The Catholic voter cannot vote for candidate (A, Kerry) because that would be formal cooperation in the sin of abortion if that candidate were to be elected and assist in passing legislation, which would remove restrictions on, abortion-on-demand” Note the big IF. John Kerry could not possibly have passed or assisted in passing such legislation. Nor can you answer it in the negative: the other 2 candidates could not have passed legislation to undo the effects of abortion on demand. And within this set-up, it is entirely possible that the social and economic policies passed by Kerry would have had a bigger effect on reducing abortion than Bush (as happened under the pro-abortion Clinton administration). Here’s a pertinent example: I am pretty sure that S-CHIP does more to actually stop abortions than the partial birth abortion ban.
Once the “if statement” no longer holds, the whole line of reasoning breaks down. Yes, the death penalty and economic issues could not become proportional issues if abortion is on the line. But abortion is not on the line, except through a long sequence of remote effects (you can support this line of thinking quite legitimately, but you cannot force it upon your fellow Catholics). And the war in Iraq is certainly a valid proportional reasoning not to vote for Bush in these circumstances (I would say it is a compelling reason).
The “experts” you quote I don’t think much of– Weigel and Torraco… please! What’s more peculiar is that some bishops would adopt should shoddy reasoning. Thankfully, it’s a small number of bishops; indeed, a tiny minority.
I would note one bishop who seems to have changed his mind on the issue: Chaput. In 2004, Chaput said Catholics could not vote for Kerry, More recently, he had this to say:
“”Do I think there are people in the last election who voted for a prochoice candidate and did so sincerely after reflection and prayer? Yes, I do. Did they do wrong? No, they followed their conscience. But that serious reflection and prayer, that’s really important, and not just being swayed by party sympathies or that’s the way you always vote. It has to be about the issues.”
“You can have good Catholics who say that they’re not for the criminalization of abortion, or they want to take gradual steps toward eliminating it by convincing the public that this is a bad thing. Those are all legitimate political positions-as long as you’re really moving towards the goal of protecting unborn human life. You at least have to have the goal.”
As with so many other things, this seems an overly-American problem. Do you see bishops in Europe taking a strident line against not voting for parties that support abortion? No. And this in jno way diminished the European Church’s staunch opposition to abortion. I would sumbit that this issue is overly-influenced by the evangelical outlook, and its ties to the Republican party, Some of the list above want the Catholic Church to align itself with the Republican party. Sorry, will never happen.
October 13, 2007 at 6:30 pm
MM-
A few quick points.
First, PJPII’s quote should be read as more of a Cf. I thought about putting the quote at the end, but that struck me as disrespectful.
Second, you’re twisting Bishop Gracida’s words. He clearly stated that a faithful Catholic could not vote for Kerry, and seeing as how Kerry voted against a ban on partial-birth abortions and for several other proabortion pieces of legislation over the years, there is no “if” involved. Indeed, the kind of reasoning you’re engaging in is exactly the the type of reasoning roundly condemned by those I’ve quoted.
Third, it’s funny. When the bishops are outspoken against the Iraq war, a prudential matter, you think they’re enlightend., but when they bear witness to the truth about voting for a proabort, they’re engaging in “shoddy reasoning.” As for Archbishop Chaput, I would appreciate a link, so that I can read his words in context for myself.
One thing we do agree on: this is an American problem. This is about a large percentage of American Catholics who are unwilling to do what is necessary to defend innocent life. Instead, they spend an enormous amount of time defending the voting habits of radical proaborts like John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, both of whom are staunch enemies of unborn children. Just for once, I would like to see some of my liberal friends here, or someone at Commonweal or America, write a piece condeming the Democratic Party for its radical proabortion stance. Instead, all I hear are excuses for why it is licit to vote for those who actively participate in the wholesale slaughter of unborn children. That’s hardly something to be proud of, and not something I would want to try to justify before a rigtheous and Holy God.
October 13, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Alex, I agree with you that a large number of American Catholics hold an unacceptable position on abortion, but that’s a problem worldwide. What is distinctive about the American situation is the either/or mentality of the Republican/Democrat system and the mindless rhetoric on both sides. In your last paragraph alone you said so many things that are simply overstated or for some kind of emotional effect.
Instead, they spend an enormous amount of time defending the voting habits of radical proaborts like John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, both of whom are staunch enemies of unborn children.
Pro-choice Catholics might do this, but these people aren’t even worth your time; you dismiss them. The people you are concerned about seem to be the pro-life Catholics who, in good conscience, vote for pro-choice politicians. These Catholics rarely make excuses for the voting habits of folks like Kerry, and you know this. These Catholics are voting for candidates like Kerry IN SPITE of their pro-choice voting records, and they oppose these candidates’ stands on abortion. For you to say they “make excuses” for these politicians is unfounded.
Just for once, I would like to see some of my liberal friends here, or someone at Commonweal or America, write a piece condeming the Democratic Party for its radical proabortion stance.
I’m guessing here, but I think magazines like America and Commonweal aren’t into condemning particular political parties in the same way that they are not into endorsing particular political parties. They talk about issues mainly and not parties. That said, I think you’d be surprised at the critiques of the Democratic party that you would find in both of those magazines. They aren’t as black-and-white partisan as you might think.
Speaking for myself, and I am no Democrat, I don’t find it helpful to write a piece condemning the Democratic Party in particular for their stance on abortion. It’s a no-brainer for me. In my thinking, its better to bring attention to the way in which all political parties, especially the big two which are the only two in some people’s minds, all do their part to uphold the existing system which is firmly rooted in the culture of death. The Democrats explicitly endorse abortion; the Republicans (mostly) explicitly oppose it while doing nothing in real life to oppose it and start wars to defend and promote our “culture and way of life” which, we all know, is a culture of CHOICE. While I certainly oppose abortion, I think it is much too close to the heart of American life and what this country is all about, and we are not likely to see a real end to abortion anytime soon.
Instead, all I hear are excuses for why it is licit to vote for those who actively participate in the wholesale slaughter of unborn children.
Statements like this are utter nonsense. As if many of these pro-choice politicians are on a crusade to make sure millions of babies are killed? “Senator Kerry, will you pass me the scalpel”? No. I understand where the emotion comes from, and why you would want to phrase the problem in those terms. Abortion is evil, yes. But statements like this are not helpful, and as Catholics we should be wary of them.
October 13, 2007 at 10:47 pm
There is a small set of people who regularly comment on the Commonweal blog. Their views on abortion are so predictable that it is really not necessary to read the threads on that subject to figure out what they will say about it. One of the less frequent contributors to the monlogue there recently summed up the “standard dotCommonweal discussion of abortion” by noting these characteristics:
…the apparent inability of we enlightened folks to understand why other Catholics might actually think the fetus worthy of legal protection.’ Bad form, I guess. One can almost feel the sighs of exasperation at ‘those people.’
…the cerebral and sanguine nature of the discussion. Clearly fetal death is #11 on our top ten list. Somehow I get the impression that the ‘dominant discourse’ hereabouts frames prolife advocacy as more disturbing than abortion. What’s wrong with this picture?
…the absence of seamless garment voices. It is well known (and accurate) that many Catholic conservatives were (and hostile) to the consistent ethic of life. It is less well know (but certainly my observation and experience) that many Catholic progressives are somewhere between indifferent to hostile themselves and often employ the concept merely as a way of hammering prolifers on their ‘hypocrisy.’
I consider this a more than fair summary–fair enough that it was immediately denounced as “out of line” by a regular participant on the Commonweal website.
October 13, 2007 at 11:34 pm
What do the commenters on the Commonweal blog have to do with the magazine itself, which is what was criticized above?
October 14, 2007 at 12:45 am
What do the commenters on the Commonweal blog have to do with the magazine itself, which is what was criticized above?
Speaking as one who was banned from the Commonweal blog for refusing to toe the party line, I would say that there is a direct relationship between the magazine and the leftist Catholics who regularly sing its praises on the blog. Of course, I could be wrong because I will not spend good money to read leftist nonsense with a Catholic spin. Why do that when I can get it for free on blogs (including your posts on this blog)?
October 14, 2007 at 12:50 am
I would guess that you were banned for other reasons. From the diversity of comments at Commonweal, it’s clear to me that there is no “party line.” And you admit that you have not read the magazine, so your opinion of it means little.
October 14, 2007 at 12:51 am
Here is a very long and thoughtful post on this matter by Sherry Weddell on “open book” on Aug 19, 2005 at 10:42:09 AM (http://amywelborn.typepad.com/openbook/2005/08/national_impact.html):
“Listen, last summer, Catholics in Colorado were in the preposterous position of having our three bishops in three different dioceses all take different stands on the voting issue.
In May of 2004, I, living in Colorado Springs, had been told by my bishop, in a public pastoral letter, that to vote for a candidate supporting any of the 5 “non-negotiables” would be to commit a mortal sin. (I should add that I have been told by local pastors that our Bishop later “nuanced” his stand verbally in large public meetings that he was holding around the diocese. But that didn’t have the public impact of his first letter and didn’t make it into the national news. Unfortunately, I was out of the country at that point and didn’t get to attend any of these events myself.)
Meanwhile, my cousin, living 25 miles south in the Diocese of Pueblo, has been urged to discern using the US Bishops’s voter’s guide and could, in theory, vote for any candidate in good conscience.
At the same time, a good friend, who lives 40 miles north just across the boundaries of the Archdiocese of Denver had been told something else again by Archbishhop Chaput. My old buddy, Mark Shea, had been told something else by his archbishop in Seattle. If I had stayed in Seattle, would I not be in a state of mortal sin for exactly the same action that would require confession in Colorado Springs?
Here’s the deal. An action can’t be an automatic mortal sin only in Colorado Springs and not in the rest of Colorado. An action can’t be an automatic mortal sin only in Colorado Springs and not in the rest of the world!
The orthodox Catholics of Australia (where I spent election day, 2004) weren’t concerned about committing a mortal sin should they vote for a candidate that supported abortion (almost all candidates in AU did at that point and every registered voter is required by law to vote so you simply can’t abstain!). How could I be held under penalty of automatic mortal sin and Clara, our AU director, not be simply because our respective ordinaries differed in their understanding of this particular issue?
And what if my bishop dies tomorrow and our next bishop has a very different take on the matter? In the election of 2004, it was automatic mortal sin in Colorado Springs but in the election of 2008, it’s not?
And you can’t champion the right of an ordinary to make unilateral prudential judgments on the application of Church teaching that are binding on the consciences of the Catholics in their dioceses only if those statements are the kind you agree with. It does cut both ways. The prudential judgment of a Utener or Weakland becomes just as binding as those of a Sheridan or Burke or Olmstead.
Bishop Wuerl, whose seriousness about the Church teaching is beyond dispute, is apparently very aware of these realities and the enormous confusion it can cause for faithful Catholics and is trying to address them. After reading the CNS article carefully, it is also obvious that he clearly regards the “informal” method of behind the scenes discussion as both more faithful to the fullness of Church teaching and more effective than creating some formal voting mechanism. As Wuerl pointed out “All the bishops, in fact, have a duty to promote and defend the unity of faith and discipline common to the whole church.”
The Church’s authoritative teaching on the intrinsic evil of many things (not simply abortion) does oblige us all but the practical application of that teaching in a specific historical situation requires prudential judgment. The prudential judgment of a bishop, even of a Pope, is just that – prudential judgment – and must be distinguished from normative Church teaching.
You’d have to be something of an expert to read a bishop’s pastoral letter and know where formal Church teaching ended and prudential judgment began unless the Bishop goes to great lengths to make it clear, and most of us didn’t have the expertise to do so!
I certainly didn’t have the background to distinguish at first – I knew something was wrong but I’m not an expert in moral theology so I couldn’t put my finger on the problem. Fortunately, I had the chance to consult two orthodox, world-class experts on the topic while in Australia – Bishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney and Dr. Tracey Rowland of the JP II Institute in Melbourne, who was a huge fan of then Cardinal Ratzinger, who, I am told is also a huge fan of hers. It was they (along with my old partner in crime, Michael Sweeney, OP) who clarified the issues for me.
They made a few things very clear:
1) Both Fisher and Rowland emphasized that Church teaching is “very underdeveloped” in this area. Bishop Fisher had attended a top level symposium in Rome on Evangelicum Vitae 73 in February of 2004.
Bishop Fisher said that at this symposium two top notch, orthodox theologians presented completely opposite views and neither could be considered “wrong” in light of current Church teaching (although Fisher privately agreed with one over the other). The bishop noted that only about 9 scholarly works exist on the subject of voting as a cooperation in evil and that he has read them all. There is, as yet, no authoritative interpretation of Evangelicum Vitae 73 to guide us.
2) The prudential judgments of a few bishops is not the development of doctrine (and therefore universally obliging) although some Catholics in the US began to talk as though it was.”
October 14, 2007 at 12:55 am
The Chaput column is discussed in this commonweal blog post.
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/post/index/926/Archbishop-Chaput-and-the-2004-Election
The article discussed is for subscribers only.
I think Ms. Weddell’s discussion on this is perhaps the wisest view.
October 14, 2007 at 4:54 am
Alex– you still don’t get the distinction between voting for a person and complicity in the act themselves. Yes, I think bishops who condemn the Iraq war deserve praise. Likewise, bishops should be unequivocal in their condemnation of abortion. But if a bishop came out and said no Catholic could vote for a politician who supports the Iraq war, I would oppose this reasoning strenuously.
October 14, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Even if you believe that a Democratic candidate will do more to reduce the number of abortions in the United States than a Republican candidate because of the Democrat’s support for social programs such as S-CHIP…
… how can you justify voting for that person if at the same time he/she supports providing public funding for abortion, reversing the Mexico City Policy, restoring US funding to the UN Population Fund (shown to be complicit in coerced/forced abortions and sterilizations in developing countries), etc.?
Given that the vast majority of Dems (at least on the national stage) seem to hold these hard-core pro-abortion stances, it seems incredibly difficult to muster enough proportionate reasons to justify voting for them.
October 16, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Alexham,
In response to all of your quotations, I would point to the conclusions of Cardinal Avery Dulles and Professors Germain Grisez & Finnis. Their orthodoxy and fidelity to the magisterium are beyond reasonable dispute and their scholarship and intellectual powers far surpass those clerics you have quoted. Both conclude that there are any number of reasons that could justify voting for a candidate that supports an intrinsically evil law/policy that threatens the lives of millions. Dulles says that a legislator could legitimately vote for a funding bill that includes funding for abortions if the legislation also included funding for worthwhile projects and efforts to remove the abortion funding provision had failed. Finnis, Grisez and Boyle conclude that it can be licit to vote for a canddiate who supports nuclear deterrence, which they judge to be intrinsically immoral because it includes the threat to massacre millions of innocent civilians.
Here is the quote from Cardinal Dulles:
To vote for an appropriations bill that includes some provisions for funding abortions would not be so gravely sinful as to warrant excommunication under Canon 1398. The vote might arguably be licit if the funding for abortion were only incidental and could not be removed from a bill that was otherwise very desirable.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/issues/zdulcom.htm
As for Finnis, Grisez and Boyle, the reference is to their book Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism, which cannot be accessed online.
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