Our Sunday Visitor
October 24, 2004
INTO THE DEEP
Vote first for life
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
As we head into the home stretch of election season, polls show that the presidential race could be a close call among Catholics, and both parties are working to tip the scales their way.
Republicans have mounted a parish-based voter registration drive to mobilize the churchgoing Catholics who favor President George W. Bush because of his opposition to abortion, euthanasia, federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and gay marriage. Democrats have launched a website that touts John Kerry as the Catholic choice. The site plays up his opposition to the death penalty and defends his record of rejecting Church teaching in the areas of abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, cloning, and gay marriage by arguing that those teachings “should not be imposed on the population at large.”
Into the fray have come several Catholic voting guides, including one produced by Our Sunday Visitor and another compiled by Catholic Answers, a California-based apologetics organization. Both emphasize what America’s boldest bishops have been saying throughout the campaign season: that certain moral issues are so crucial – and so clear-cut – they must be a Catholic voter’s top priority. The guides counsel Catholics to support the candidates most likely to oppose abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and gay marriage.
The logic behind these guides is solid and straightforward. As Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis recently explained in a pastoral letter to my hometown, “These elements are so fundamental to the common good that they cannot be subordinated to any other cause, no matter how good.” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger recently affirmed that teaching, cautioning that a Catholic who supports a pro-abortion candidate because of his stand on abortion is “guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and is so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion.”
The Church takes a hard line on this issue because abortion, unlike war or capital punishment, has always been considered a grave evil by the Church. From the first-century author of the “Didache” to Pope John Paul II, Christian writers have maintained that the Bible forbids abortion. And the Catechism of the Catholic Church insists that the prohibition on abortion “must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority.”
Most practicing Catholics who support pro-abortion candidates say they do so for other reasons. But those reasons must be important enough to justify the intentional murder of innocents – and that bar is simply too high for a pro-abortion candidate to clear. As Archbishop Burke said, “There is no element of the common good, no morally good practice, that a candidate may promote and to which a voter may be dedicated, which could justify voting for a candidate who also endorses and supports the deliberate killing of the innocent, abortion, euthanasia, human cloning or the recognition of a same-sex relationship as legal marriage.”
No cause – not abolition of the death penalty or opposition to the Iraq war – excuses Catholics from their duty to defend the lives of the unborn and the elderly. And no plan to ease poverty trumps the importance of protecting the foundation of the family, the institution that gives poor children their best hope for economic success and social stability – traditional marriage.
When we head to the polls on November 2, we will each bring our own set of opinions and prejudices, life experiences and old loyalties. We will also bring a Catholic faith that transcends them all. That faith requires us to submit our judgment to an absolute standard of truth, a standard that does not change with the times or the candidates, a standard by which all of us will someday be judged.
Every vote counts. Cast yours for the culture of life.
Colleen Carroll Campbell is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.