Bishop Sheridan takes his office and the faith seriously, to wit:
“Any Catholic politicians who advocate for abortion, for illicit stem cell research or for any form of euthanasia ipso facto place themselves outside full communion with the church and so jeopardize their salvation,”
See the full article here .
Bishop Sheridan’s well-intentioned and otherwise welcome announcement has one flaw. It is not intrinsically evil for a Catholic to vote for a pro-abortion politician if both candidates are pro-abortion. I know Catholics in Blue-zone-areas who face this situation regularly.
If one candidate opposes partial-birth abortion, and the other supports it, for instance, it is quite moral for a Catholic to vote for the former and minimize damage. We are not required to withdraw from the duties of citizenship simply because the culture around us has gone off the deep end.
Nevertheless, any bishop who faithfully proclaims the Church’s teaching that pro-abortion politicians may not receive Holy Communion, is to be applauded for that much. Let us pray that Bishop Sheridan’s courage moves others in the jelly-spined USCCB to step up to the plate and simply do their job.
Bishop stands for right to life
Two weeks ago, Bishop Michael Sheridan of the Diocese of Colorado Springs, Colorado wrote a Pastoral Letter explaining why Catholics must enjoin a well-formed conscience with their voting decisions. The press is just now starting to cover it.
Whether…
Beregond,
I disagree with your analysis for ‘blue-zone’ areas.
If there are two candidates and both are pro-abortion, then you should write in a candidate and vote for that person. This is the only option, given our duty not to withdrawl from participation in citizenship.
Jeff
There’s nothing wrong with writing in a more pro-life candidate, Jeff, but it’s not the only option. In many cases, a vote for the least-bad candidate is acceptable, according to the principle of “double effect”.
The Vatican’s recent instruction for Catholic politicians confirms this by indicating that such compromises are also permissible to legislators. If you haven’t read the document’s details yet, check it out.
RC – Which document? The Pastoral Letter from Bishop Sheridan or another? I have the Pastoral Letter (I live in Colorado). If another, please post link. Thanks
Here’s the Doctrinal Note CDF issued on Catholics in public life in 2002: I guess it’s not quite ‘recent’. Paragraph 4 has the part I’m thinking of:
“As John Paul II has taught in his Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae regarding the situation in which it is not possible to overturn or completely repeal a law allowing abortion which is already in force or coming up for a vote, ‘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.'”
RC – I think that paragraph is useful but not what I was responding to with Beregond’s post – i.e., that when choosing between two pro-abortion candidates, Catholics must choose one or the other. I suggested that another option is to write-in a pro-life candidate.
I think your note is more to do with a Catholic politician bargaining to lessen the effects of an existing abortion law, which I agree is the first step.
Thanks
The Doctrinal Note referenced by RC does not anywhere teach against Catholics voting for the lesser of evils in a situation where both of the major candidates are not pro-life, with good reason.
It would make no sense for Rome to allow politicians to work to limit whatever abortions they can, and not allow voters to do the same. Certainly it wouldn’t be consistent with the moral tradition of the Church, such as Thomas Aquinas, who has articulated clearly that double effect is a legitimate and good moral principle.
Writing in a pro-life candidate is an option some may choose if they want. But to require that of voters would essentially require that they remove themselves from the process, by requiring them not to vote for the candidates who have a chance of winning.