Yes. And this does not mean that one cannot vote for a politician who supports abortion, so long as this is not the reason one is voting for said politician. This has been said, proven, documented, sourced, and cited so many times I can’t understand why we’re still discussing it. The Bishops said so, okay?! NOPE! This is an easy out.
Some will now say that there exists no reason good enough to ever vote for a pro-choice politician over one who (says he) is pro-life, no matter if Ivan the Terrible ran on the Republican ticket. I say that this line of thinking is either: (1) naive post-hoc resolution of cognative dissonence, or (2) genuinely disingenuous. How convenient that your own political views should line up so neatly with the party that waves the abortion flag with such enthusiasm. And if the Republicans do terrible things and stand for morally repugnant principles – well, your conscience is clear, brother, because it was the only vote you could cast, right?
Nah.
If you’re a Republican – man up to it; admit that you’re a Republican becuase you want to be; don’t create a false Church teaching to hide behind.
As for me, I’ll vote for whoever I believe will do the most good for the humanity, not whoever utters the magic words. If you don’t like it, PM me and I’ll give you my name and the phone number of my Bishop, so you can call and make sure I can’t get Communion.
I’m not trying to be cute here, and this post isn’t directed at anyone in particular, but it is exasperating that, the level of discourse has sunk so low that we could actually be debating whether not to vote Republican imperils one’s mortal soul. C’mon people, snap out of it!
Sorry, had to delete some of your post due to space issues.
Why do people vote party instead of looking at the moral issues? That has always confused me.
However, in my minute opinion, any Catholic/catholic who is pro choice or voted for this pro abortion President because of “other” issues than abortion is not Catholic. Also, as far as I am concerned, any Catholic who voted for the present POTUS has indirectly supported abortion, whether their conscience let them blank out the seriousness of the abortion issue or not.
I would suggest you go to this website and read all of the article, part of which I have posted below.
ewtn.com/library/BISHOPS/ZPELLNEW.HTM
A ZENIT DAILY DISPATCH
Cardinal Pell on True and False Conscience
A Catholic conscience cannot accept a settled position against the Church, at least on a central moral teaching. Any difficulties with Church teaching should be not the end of the matter but the beginning of a process of conversion, education and quite possibly repentance. Where a Catholic disagrees with the Church on some serious matter, the response should not be “that’s that; I can’t follow the Church here”; instead we should kneel and pray that God will lead our weak steps and enlighten our fragile minds, as Newman recommends in Sermon 17 — “The Testimony of Conscience.”
Of course, Newman’s view of conscience is profoundly counterintuitive to modern ears. For Newman, conscience is objective, hard work, a challenge to self, a call to conversion, a sign of humility; and this sits uncomfortably for those who see freedom as the right to reject what is unpalatable. Many will say: “You can interpret conscience this way if you want to — I’ll even defend your right to do so! But my own view is very different.”
The only answer to this is to explain and to defend the existence of moral truth. In theory, this should not be too difficult. After all, everyone agrees that there is a basic truth of the matter in cases of social justice, children’s protection, the immorality of torture, lying and cheating in public life, and so on.
But the twist is that many people who accept moral truths in some area of life reject moral truth especially in areas such as sexual morality, and perhaps also in life issues such as abortion and euthanasia. Moral truth is a great ally when it is on your side; but when it grates against your own convenience it can be tempting to treat it as an anachronism. But either there are or there are not moral truths, and if there are, these will have something to say about unpopular matters as well as more fashionable causes. …
The Pope argues that in their consciences human persons encounter moral truth, freely embrace it, and personally commit themselves to its enactment. This account (see “Veritatis Splendor,” 54-64) builds upon Newman’s theory of conscience as man’s free adoption of God’s law. Conscience is neither apprehending an alien law nor devising our own laws: rather, conscience is freely accepting the objective moral law as the basis of all our choices. Thus forming and following a Christian conscience is a dignifying and liberating experience; it means not resentfully following God’s law but freely embracing it as our life’s ideal. …
This specifically Catholic view rejects the mistaken primacy of conscience doctrine and clearly asserts the primacy of truth. The Pope writes: “In any event, it is always from the truth that the dignity of conscience derives. In the case of the correct conscience, it is a question of the objective truth received by man; in the case of the erroneous conscience, it is a question of what man, mistakenly, subjectively considers to be true. It is never acceptable to confuse a ‘subjective’ error about moral good with the ‘objective’ truth rationally proposed to man in virtue of his end, or to make the moral value of an act performed with a true and correct conscience equivalent to the moral value of an act performed by following the judgment of an erroneous conscience” (“Veritatis Splendor,” 63).
for those who do not let me ask you this, would you travel to the Vatican and present your opposition to the Vicar of Christ? tell him he is mistaken? no one said being Catholic is easy