Cardinal Burke: Catholics Can't Vote Pro-Abortion Canadates

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Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship
A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States
November 14, 2007
  1. Catholics often face difficult choices about how to vote. This is why it is so important to vote according to a well-formed conscience that perceives the proper relationship among moral goods. A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter’s intent is to support that position. In such cases a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil. At the same time, a voter should not use a candidate’s opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity.
  2. There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.
  3. When all candidates hold a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, the conscientious voter faces a dilemma. The voter may decide to take the extraordinary step of not voting for any candidate or, after careful deliberation, may decide to vote for the candidate deemed less likely to advance such a morally flawed position and more likely to pursue other authentic human goods.
  4. 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. These decisions should take into account a candidate’s commitments, character, integrity, and ability to influence a given issue. In the end, this is a decision to be made by each Catholic guided by a conscience formed by Catholic moral teaching.
 
The three fonts of morality always apply:
  1. intention
  2. moral object
  3. consequences
A voter must have a good intention. It is always wrong to vote with the intention of promoting a grave evil, such as abortion or euthanasia or injustice to the poor, etc.

It is always wrong to commit any intrinsically evil act. For example, voting for a referendum or constitutional amendment to legalize or broaden the legalization of abortion or euthanasia would be an intrinsically evil act.

However, voting for a candidate (a person, not a law) who has various political positions, some good and some bad, is not in itself evil. The vast majority of so-called pro-life politicians are actually in favor of legalized direct abortion in some cases, such as rape, incest, or the life of the mother. If both candidates are pro-abortion, to some extent, one can certainly vote for the candidate who will do the most good and the least harm.

The third font of morality requires us to consider the reasonably anticipated good and bad consequences of our actions, and to avoid any act whose bad consequences can be reasonably anticipated to morally outweigh any good consequences.

The Pope stated: “pastors should remind all citizens of their right and duty to use their vote to promote the common good”. Voting to promote the common good might sometimes allow for a vote in favor of a candidate whose position on abortion is not entirely in accord with Catholic teaching, depending on intention and on the evaluation of the good and bad consequences of the vote.

Therefore, the Catholic voter may vote, with good intention, so as to do the most good and the least harm, as long as the vote itself is not intrinsically evil. And that vote might include voting for a candidate whose positions on abortion, euthanasia, and other grave matters of morality are not entirely in accord with Catholic teaching.
 
Its really simple if you fast forward and look at the issue in hindsight.

Who remembers what position the pre-confederate Jefferson Davis took on import tarrifs? Nobody.
Who remembers what OTHER things the Ku Klux Klan believed? Nobody.
When someone says “Adolf Hitler” is the first thing that comes to mind “the German leader who pretty much invented the national freeway system?” No.

When you are on the wrong side of THE major human rights issue of your era, nothing else that you did right will be remembered to history. You will forever be remembered as a villian.
If I give you a name and say he opposed the Civil Rights Act, what do you think?
How about those who were opposed to women’s suffrage?
Jim Crow law legislators?
Communist Revolutionaries?

Fair or not, history remembers these as bad guys. MANY civil war southerners had character and virtue beyond what was typical in most northern leaders - except for that little bitty chattle slavery issue. I used to have trouble understanding how an entire region of this country could swallow such an evil principle. Now I know. I live among the exact same sort of folks today.
 
The politicians find a weasel way to say they favor abortion. Some claim to be personally opposed, but want to support the right to choose. The right to choose what? If that right includes taking the life of an unborn child, I cannot support that politician.

As has been said many times before, we have met the enemy and he is us. I have seen bumper stickers advertising candidates with strong pro-abortion positions. Where? In Catholic church parking lots. People often ignore the abortion issue to vote for politicians who have other positions the voters like. If we don’t stand for life, I have no idea what our values should be. There are no rights more important than the right to live.
 
Ron_Conte said:
The three fonts of morality always apply:
  1. intention
  2. moral object
  3. consequences
A voter must have a good intention. It is always wrong to vote with the intention of promoting a grave evil, such as abortion or euthanasia or injustice to the poor, etc.

It is always wrong to commit any intrinsically evil act. For example, voting for a referendum or constitutional amendment to legalize or broaden the legalization of abortion or euthanasia would be an intrinsically evil act.
Click to expand...
Intention is not willy-nilly; it must flow from a *well-formed *conscience, which Catholics, and everyone else, are *obliged *to cultivate.
However, voting for a candidate (a person, not a law) who has various political positions, some good and some bad, is not in itself evil. The vast majority of so-called pro-life politicians are actually in favor of legalized direct abortion in some cases, such as rape, incest, or the life of the mother. If both candidates are pro-abortion, to some extent, one can certainly vote for the candidate who will do the most good and the least harm.
Click to expand...
If one candidate holds that only a very limited number of abortions should be legal (less than 1% of those occurring today, according to Guttmacher), and the other holds that the number today should be legal, and it looks like the former will vote in the direction of limiting the evil and the latter will vote for expanding or maintaining the number, that really trumps the latter’s views on other issues, does it not? Only if the former candidate is seriously gung-ho on euthanasia or something equally intrinsically evil could one ignore the difference in their views on abortion.
The third font of morality requires us to consider the reasonably anticipated good and bad consequences of our actions, and to avoid any act whose bad consequences can be reasonably anticipated to morally outweigh any good consequences.
Click to expand...
We cannot consider good and evil *alone, *we must consider the proportionality as well. Sure, the latter candidate above may be all for school vouchers, but can we ignore his stance on unlimited abortion because he favors school vouchers?
The Pope stated: “pastors should remind all citizens of their right and duty to use their vote to promote the common good”. Voting to promote the common good might sometimes allow for a vote in favor of a candidate whose position on abortion is not entirely in accord with Catholic teaching, depending on intention and on the evaluation of the good and bad consequences of the vote. Therefore, the Catholic voter may vote, with good intention, so as to do the most good and the least harm, as long as the vote itself is not intrinsically evil. And that vote might include voting for a candidate whose positions on abortion, euthanasia, and other grave matters of morality are not entirely in accord with Catholic teaching.
Click to expand...
According to what the Pope wrote before his ascension to that position, "When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favour of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which *can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons." *(emphasis added)

One must be very clear about the proportionality of the reasons because without that prioritizing, a Catholic could justifiy voting for just about any supporter of legalized abortion for any reason. This person could justify voting for Giuliani because of his stance on the Iraq War, that person could justify voting for Pelosi because of her stance on MMGW, and so on and so forth. In each case, the voter is sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of unborn children a year for action in another area. Is the voter’s point of view on another issue that important that it be put in place of the lives of those most innocent, to put their issue into place when so many will be unable to benefit from it due to ignoring their plight?
 
Ron_Conte said:
The three fonts of morality always apply:
  1. intention
  2. moral object
  3. consequences
Click to expand...
This is not accurate. The third “font” is the circumstances, which includes the consequences but is more than that as it would include (e.g.) those things influencing a person to make a specific choice.
However, voting for a candidate (a person, not a law) who has various political positions, some good and some bad, is not in itself evil. The vast majority of so-called pro-life politicians are actually in favor of legalized direct abortion in some cases, such as rape, incest, or the life of the mother. If both candidates are pro-abortion, to some extent, one can certainly vote for the candidate who will do the most good and the least harm.
Click to expand...
This of course is the heart of the issue: is the above claim true? It is certainly accepted by those who want to vote for someone who agrees with, say, their position on immigration (health care, the environment, economic policy, …) but inconveniently also supports abortion on demand.

This is the “proportionate reason” position where, in the absence of clear guidelines, pretty much any reason can be (and is) considered proportionate. It would seem, however, that we have been given guidelines that are clear enough to show we should reject this argument. 100% wrong is undeniably worse than 1% wrong and immigration et al are not issues proportionate to abortion.
The third font of morality requires us to consider the reasonably anticipated good and bad consequences of our actions, and to avoid any act whose bad consequences can be reasonably anticipated to morally outweigh any good consequences.
Click to expand...
The anticipated consequences are really part of the intent and the circumstances (including the actual consequences) do not change the moral nature of the act.

The comments by St. Francis on this topic are excellent.

Ender
 
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