Why are you so defensive and angry about this? The apologist spoke the truth and was in accord with what Ratzinger said.
No, he didn’t.
The trouble is, any time the pope says something that might every so slightly be construed as a gray line, people latch onto it as if it were the be-all, end-all.
But that doesn’t justify misrepresenting the Church’s teaching. In fact this
is a gray area, but conservative Catholics desperately want it not to be.
We have to really look at what “justified in certain circumstances” actually means. If every single candidate was for abortion, euthanasia, etc. then these would constitute as “certain circumstances.”
That’s your judgment. It’s the judgment of some U.S. Catholic bishops. It is not the teaching of the Church as a whole and not what Ratzinger said.
I’m sure there are other examples of “justifiable circumstances”,
Precisely.
such as, if their are two candidates one who is for abortion, but is mislead and doesn’t understand the evil that is abortion, but is sincere in wanting the good of the country and is against war while the other candidate may be against abortion, but is ready to drop the atom bomb on every enemy country, believes in torturing people to get information, wants to restart the cold-war, etc.
OK–you’ve given the game away here. One has to weigh these things, and this is, to use that term beloved of conservative Catholics when discussing
other issues, a “prudential” decision. The fact that abortion is an intrinsic evil only means that you
cannot support a candidate’s pro-choice position per se, and there must be *grave *evils involved in choosing the other candidate.
Grave and intrinsic evils are not the same thing. An evil can be very grave indeed
circumstantially.
My own judgment–academic since I am not an American citizen–is that if I
had to choose between Obama and Romney, I’d choose Obama. But if I were an American citizen, I don’t think I’d vote in this election, at least not for either of the major candidates. (And since, if I chose, I’d choose Obama, that means that the choice not to choose would actually be a choice for Romney, not, as many conservative Catholics claim when American citizens take the same stance I’m taking, a choice for Obama. See how twisted this gets? In other words, the position I hold, theoretically–which I know to be held by others who
are American citizens–is that Obama is generally the better candidate but that he cannot be let “off the hook” for his prochoice position, his murderous drone attacks, and his failure to close Guantanamo–I mention those three in what I take to be their order of evil, though the first two are pretty close to each other in my book.
I simply can’t imagine voting for a candidate whose public persona as a politician (I am not judging his personal character taken as a whole–no doubt he has many virtues) is so morally vacuous as Romney’s. I can’t see where he ever takes a position that is even remotely based on moral principle. The most one can say of him is that he’s sane, intelligent, and pragmatic, which are of course all excellent qualities in a politician but need to be combined with at least some moral sense.
In most probable situations, this would not be the case. In most cases, voting for a candidate who supported intrinsically evil acts would be a mortal sin. The apologist was correct in his response.
That doesn’t make sense, because the apologist didn’t say “in most cases.” You appear to be admitting that the apologist was substantively incorrect, but justifying this by the need not to give cover to what, in your view, is
usually a sinful choice. This is simply immoral.
And the problem is that you’re imposing your
prudential judgment on when there are “proportionate reasons” to vote for a pro-choice candidate. I respect the fact that some Catholic bishops have essentially done this–they are successors of the apostles and if I were a Catholic under their jurisdiction I’d follow them, as I try to follow my own bishops (for all their dubious apostolicity in Rome’s eyes) when they do not plainly contradict the historic Faith. (My own diocesan bishop is a very godly man, and highly orthodox in a generic “mere Christianity” evangelical kind of way–obviously he’s not wholly orthodox by Catholic standards. So that’s easy to do in his case, even though I disagree with him on certain issues, such as Israel/Palestine.) But you aren’t a bishop or even, as far as I can tell, a priest. And Fr. Serpa, although a priest, has no jurisdiction over the questioner that I know of. The answer was both substantively false and pastorally inappropriate.
Edwin
