Can a Catholic be faithful and vote for Obama?

David — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:55:36 +0000

In this last week before the election, I’ll add my voice to the din. Senator Joe Biden, the Democratic VP nominee and a professed Catholic, says that one can be “personally opposed” to abortion, and yet be pro-choice. It is becoming ever more clear that the Church does not agree with this position. The USCCB has recently put forth a document that says the one can vote for someone who is pro-choice as long as one is not voting that way because the candidate is pro-choice and that there must be proportionate moral reasons besides. The problem here is this: what in our political landscape could possibly be worse than supporting the legal murder of ~1.5 million unborn children in America every year?

Several bishops have already said that the USCCB is being too lenient in its document by not explicitly condemning pro-abortion politicians, even if not by name. Archbishop Raymond Burke, former Archbishop of St. Louis and currently serving in the Vatican as Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, specifically labelled the Democratic Party as the “party of death” for its open support of abortion and other anti-life stances. Few American bishops and priests seem willing to be that outspoken, though it does seem that they are speaking up more than they have in past elections.

The Holy Father and other bishops have confirmed that a Catholic politician who votes to advance abortion “rights” are automatically excommunicated and therefore forbidden to receive Holy Communion. How then, as orthodox Catholics, can we vote for those same politicians with a clear conscience? If an election were between two pro-choice candidates (say, an election between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani), perhaps we could vote against the one that is more obviously pro-abortion and at least feel like we were trying to advance the pro-life movement. However, when one candidate stands for virtually unlimited abortion “rights” and the other if for heavily restricting, if not outlawing abortion outright, the choice should be clear that voting for the blatantly pro-abortion candidate is unacceptable.

That does not mean that one must vote for the other major party member, if he/she supports issues that may raise ire amongst Catholics (such as support for the Iraq war). One is free to vote for an acceptable third-party candidate or write in someone (like Rep. Ron Paul). This, I think, is a matter of conscience in the sense that the Church has not said that we must vote in whatever way that will defeat the pro-abortion candidate. The message I take from that is that it is more important who we vote for than who we vote against.

My question was this: Can a Catholic be faithful and vote for Obama? I would have to answer in the negative, given his extreme pro-abortion “rights” positions. While some of his social policies may be palatable to Catholic social justice (perhaps even more so than McCain’s), his support for abortion offsets any good positions that he may hold otherwise.

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Can a Catholic be faithful and vote for Obama?