The other day I saw a bumper sticker that read “Catholics for Obama”. I must say that I was surprised not because the person was supporting Obama, but because the inference was that Catholics should support Obama. When I got home, in my in-box was an e-mail that had a link to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship – a Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States”. In reading that document, I developed a greater understanding of the obligation that we as Catholics have regarding the political process.
The document from the USCCB on faithful citizenship puts the responsibility on us as Catholics to make political decisions with a well informed conscience. In order to do this, we are urged to carefully study the issues and to take advantage of the Church’s guidance in this study. The document ends with certain goals that I will list at the end of this article. However, more importantly, the document gives insight into some issues that have found their way into the media lately. We have read where some bishops have sent word to certain Catholic elected officials regarding their position supporting abortion and its effect on the right of that elected official to receive Holy Communion. After reading the document, I now know why.
WHY THE CLERGY IS INVOLVED
The document at paragraph 15 states: “Clergy and lay people have complementary roles in public life. We bishops have the primary responsibility to hand on the Church’s moral and social teaching. Together with priests and deacons, assisted by religious and lay leaders of the Church, we are to teach fundamental moral principles that help Catholics form their consciences correctly, to provide guidance on the moral dimensions of public decisions, and to encourage the faithful to carry out their responsibilities in political life. In fulfilling these responsibilities, the Church’s leaders are to avoid endorsing or opposing candidates or telling people how to vote.”
The Clergy leads the way in teaching moral principles that help all Catholics to form their consciences correctly. Further Catholics receive from the Clergy guidance on the moral dimensions of political life. This seems simple, however we as Catholics often face a moral dilemma because we seldom find candidates with positions on all the issues that are consistent with the teachings of the Church. So we often have to choose between the lesser of two evils. That is, unless the evil so deeply flawed that it is always in opposition to the authentic good of persons. This is called intrinsically evil. Speaking of intrinsically evil actions, the bishops say, “They must always be rejected and opposed and must never be supported or condoned. A prime example is the intentional taking of innocent human life, as in abortion and euthanasia.” The bishops go further to say, “It is a mistake with grave moral consequences to treat the destruction of innocent human life merely as a matter of individual choice.”
Whenever I am faced with moral choices, I take the matter seriously, and I would suspect that most Catholic Christians do also. The fact that the bishops have been so clear in telling us that we face “grave moral consequences” by contributing to the destruction of innocent human life appears to leave us with few options when it comes to selecting candidates to support.
The choice of candidates to support and vote for is often not easy or clear. Sometimes it takes weighing the positions and comparing them to each other. The prime example of this is an argument put forth by the pro-abortion folks in their attempt to counter the pro-life folks. They question how one can claim to be pro-life and thus anti-abortion while at the same time supporting the death penalty. Many Catholics who are both anti-abortion and anti-death penalty often ask the same question. The curious thing is that many of those that are pro-abortion are against the death penalty, and here is where careful consideration of the positions of all of a candidate’s positions is essential. You often find that a pro-abortion, anti-death penalty candidate is not really pro-life, but rather is against the death penalty because of some other factor like race. The bishops address these tough cases by saying that, “In making these decisions, it is essential for Catholics to be guided
by a well-formed conscience that recognizes that all issues do not carry the same moral weight and that the moral obligation to oppose intrinsically evil acts has a special claim on our consciences and our actions.”
The bishops warn not to be single issue voters. We as Catholics have a responsibility to look at a candidate’s position on many issues. Many of those issues are found in the list of desirable goals below. However, the bishops advise, “…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.” The goals that the bishops advocate are to:
• Address the preeminent requirement to protect the weakest in our
midst—innocent unborn children—by restricting and bringing to an end
the destruction of unborn children through abortion.
• Keep our nation from turning to violence to address fundamental
problems—a million abortions each year to deal with unwanted
pregnancies, euthanasia and assisted suicide to deal with the burdens of
illness and disability, the destruction of human embryos in the name of
research, the use of the death penalty to combat crime, and imprudent
resort to war to address international disputes.
• Define the central institution of marriage as a union between one man and
one woman, and provide better support for family life morally, socially, and
economically, so that our nation helps parents raise their children with respect
for life, sound moral values, and an ethic of stewardship and responsibility.
• Achieve comprehensive immigration reform that secures our borders,
treats immigrant workers fairly, offers an earned path to citizenship,
respects the rule of law, and addresses the factors that compel people to
leave their own countries.
• Help families and children overcome poverty: ensuring access to and
choice in education, as well as decent work at fair, living wages and
adequate assistance for the vulnerable in our nation, while also helping to
overcome widespread hunger and poverty around the world, especially in
the areas of development assistance, debt relief, and international trade.
• Provide health care for the growing number of people without it, while
respecting human life, human dignity, and religious freedom in our health
care system.
• Continue to oppose policies that reflect prejudice, hostility toward
immigrants, religious bigotry, and other forms of discrimination.
• Encourage families, community groups, economic structures, and
government to work together to overcome poverty, pursue the common
good, and care for creation, with full respect for religious groups and their
right to address social needs in accord with their basic moral convictions.
• Establish and comply with moral limits on the use of military force—examining
for what purposes it may be used, under what authority, and at what human
cost—and work for a “responsible transition” to end the war in Iraq.
• Join with others around the world to pursue peace, protect human rights
and religious liberty, and advance economic justice and care for creation.
It is up to all of us to weigh the significance and importance of these issues while determining the position of the various candidates on these positions. Some positions are so important that to support a candidate that opposes that position puts us in a morally precarious position. Some of us take voting way too lightly and support candidates for all the wrong reasons. The Bishops have given us clear and understandable guidelines. I commend them for that and encourage all to “Vote Responsibly”.