Joyful Song:
Pretty sure the Catechism speaks about sexual assault, undeclared and unending wars overseas, opposed to the illegal and immoral use of torture, violations against the poor, unborn, elderly, immigrants, racial discrimination, inciting violence, and many other serious concerns about the “winner” of the 2016 presidential election.
In “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” the U.S. bishops explicitly say:
- “As Catholics we are not single-issue voters.” (#42)
- A voter “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.” (#37)
- “A Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position [on abortion] may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons.” (#35)
Just because abortion isn’t the ONLY issue, does not mean abortion isn’t the FOUNDATIONAL issue for a voter to assess.
The Bishops are speaking about parsing candidates that hold equivalent abortion positions I believe.
THEN you can assess candidates other views and take those other issues into consideration.
But if you are a dead aborted child, what difference does “wars” make?
How are “violations against the poor” going to affect you if you were killed because you were aborted?
How does “immigrants, racial discrimination, inciting violence, and many other serious concerns” affect a baby that has been murdered by abortion?
These other concerns (“unending wars”, . . . “racial discrimination”, “inciting violence”) are real campaign issues. They are real campaign issues issues you weigh if BOTH candidates are equivalent on the abortion issue in my opinion.
And assuming both candidates have identical positions on abortion, THAT is when you can start taking other issues into account and even cast a vote for that pro-abort candidate (although I’d like to think at that point I would just abstain from voting for either one).
This is WHY abortion although
not the “only” issue,** is the “foundational issue”**.
- Abortion is the the foundational issue because personhood and life foundationally begins at conception
God bless.
Cathoholic
From Saint Pope John Paul II the Great in Evangelium Vitae . . . . .
. . . . The Church knows that this Gospel of life, which she has received from her Lord, 1 has a profound and persuasive echo in the heart of every person-believer and non-believer alike-because it marvellously fulfils all the heart’s expectations while infinitely surpassing them. Even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainties, every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can, by the light of reason and the hidden action of grace, come to recognize in the natural law written in the heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15) the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree. Upon the recognition of this right, every human community and the political community itself are founded.
In a special way, believers in Christ must defend and promote this right, aware as they are of the wonderful truth recalled by the Second Vatican Council: “By his incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every human being”.2 This saving event reveals to humanity not only the boundless love of God who “so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16), but also the incomparable value of every human person. . . . .
. . . . . the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations: “How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted? In the name of what justice is the most unjust of discriminations practised: some individuals are held to be deserving of defence and others are denied that dignity?” 16 When this happens, the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human co-existence and the disintegration of the State itself has already begun.
To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom . . . .
. . . . 58.
Among all the crimes which can be committed against life, procured abortion has characteristics making it particularly serious and deplorable. The Second Vatican Council defines abortion, together with infanticide, as an “unspeakable crime”.54
But today, in many people’s consciences, the perception of its gravity has become progressively obscured. The
acceptance of abortion in the popular mind, in behaviour and even in law itself, is a telling sign of an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense . . . .
. . . . The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognize that we are dealing with murder and, in particular, when we consider the specific elements involved. The one eliminated is a human being at the very beginning of life.
No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined. In no way could this human being ever be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor! He or she is weak, defenceless, even to the point of lacking that minimal form of defence consisting in the poignant power of a newborn baby’s cries and tears. The unborn child is totally entrusted to the protection and care of the woman carrying him or her in the womb.
