The Church will never tell us who to vote for. They will however tell us what positions a person holds that disqualify them from receiving support of a Catholic . Support for unrestricted taxpayer-funded abortion on demand is such a position.
I’m not judging anyone. I’m stating the obvious- if one publicly declares they are going to reject church teaching then we should take them at their word .
It’s interesting that the USCCB’s Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship does not say that. You would think that if this were the position of the Church, the bishops would clearly say so in their national voting guide. Instead they say Catholics cannot vote for someone who’s position is pro-choice if their reason for voting for that person is to support that position.
The modern secular version of “separation of Church and State,” is entirely different from what the Founding Fathers meant!. Do you support the Freedom of LIFE, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness?? If you don’t believe in Abortion yourself then HOW can you support someone that DOES! Other issues do not carry equal weight. One can’t work, vote. have a family, eat or even breath if one is killed in the womb by our “legal” status. Abortion would NOT be legal today if politicians had not fought for it to be. Your right, we do need to educate first ourselves, and then our children in the true beliefs of the Catholic Faith. The sanctity of human life, the protection of Marriage, just to begin with. Who we elect as president makes a huge difference in how our country goes. We’ve been heading towards the cliff for decades now and the culture of death is about to overcome us. Lets do what we can to turn that around and begin the Culture Of Life anew!! God Bless, Memaw
We see Catholics One again falling back on yanking several lines out of faithful citizenship and claiming their personal interpretation of these lines is the sum total of church teaching on supporting pro-abortion candidates. We have, in this thread alone, posted voluminous documentation to substantiate the fact that Cathoilics are not allowed to vote for pro abortion candidates. We have posted numerous quotes from the magisterium explaining that the faithful citizenship statement in question is referring only to a situation where one can support a pro-abortion candidate if their opponent is more poor abortion than they are -but it is ignored for those trying to rationalize their support of evil
Pray tell me just what is the difference. God Bless, Memaw
This phrase “do not carry equal weight” has been misunderstood. What it** should mean** is this: If you are faced with a decision that would, on one hand, end abortion, or on the other hand, achieve some other good, the choice should be made to end abortion. But that is not how it is being applied. It is being applied to mean that any decision that has the slightest chance of bearing on abortion should be given priority over a decision that has a much higher chance of achieving some lesser good. Thus you have the situation where we are told that we must vote for a madman who says he is pro-life over any candidate who is pro-choice. This is an example of a proportional reason to vote for a candidate who is pro-choice, since that would be remote material cooperation with evil, which is not automatically sinful. And by the way, the concept of remote material cooperation cited by Cardinal Ratzinger was not invented by him just then. It was already a long-established principle in Catholic moral teaching. Cardinal Ratzinger was simply reminding us of that concept in the context of the present question.
Can you not imagine the difference between wanting people to smoke cigarettes and being unwilling to make cigarette smoking illegal? I know that abortion is much more serious than cigarette smoking, but I use this example just to illustrate the difference between wanting people to do something vs. declining to make that same thing illegal.
Is Donald Trump exempt from the Magisterium in his praise of Planned Parenthood? PP doesn’t refer women to Crisis Pregnancy Centers so they can choose life - they refer women to abortionists. A Planned Parenthood cheerleader can’t be pro-life.
Can you post something other than your opinion to back up these assertions. As I have said repeatedly in this thread alone we have posted voluminous documentation to support our view. All we get in return are statements that either the quotes we post from Bishops,Cardinals and Popes are merely their personal opinion or that one’s personal interpretation of what they said contradicts what they said
You don’t have to “yank out several lines” from Faithful Citizenship. You can take the entire document. You won’t find anywhere in that document the strength of the statement you are making. On the other hand, your citation of individual bishops, writing in contexts other than official Church teaching, is a lot more like “yanking” from the quotes the ones that support your personal interpretation. I think the combined considered work of all the bishops acting together is more reliable as Catholic teaching than any quotes of individual bishops acting on their own.
I’m no-trump fan and I think is pro-life credentials are very weak. But they’re much stronger than either of the Democrat candidates . If faced with the choice between someone who says he is pro-life and someone who says they will do everything to make sure abortion remains legal in all circumstances in this country I will go with the former.Is Donald Trump exempt from the Magisterium in his praise of Planned Parenthood? PP doesn’t refer women to Crisis Pregnancy Centers so they can choose life - they refer women to abortionists. A Planned Parenthood cheerleader can’t be pro-life.
Yet every bishop we have quoted disagrees with your personal interpretation of this document. In fact you cannot find a single bishop who agrees with your personal interpretation of this document
To which specific “opinion” do you refer? Is it the interpretation of “do not carry the same weight”? What evidence do you have that my common sense interpretation is erroneous?
Of course, I am referring to several essential lines from a document that was approved by the vast majority of American bishops that speak directly to the issue at hand. If the teaching was as clear as you claim it to be, then I would think the bishops would have stated so in their guide. They didn’t. As a result, I am led to believe that what the prohibition on voting for pro-choice candidates is not Church teaching.
No, I think only Chaput’s statement disagrees with* Faithful Citizenship*. The others are in contexts where it is only your interpretation of their statements that makes it look like they disagree with Faithful Citizenship. And why are you so loath to admit the validity of Faithful Citizenship ?
Even if that former candidate is a madman who you believe has a good chance of destroying the country?
What pro-life credentials? It’s absolutely contradictory to praise PP, a major provider of killing babies, and then turn around and qualify that praise with “except for abortion”? So, he’s ok with PP killing babies as long as they’re not doing so with taxpayer funds? I fail to see how he’s pro-life by any conceivable concept of the term.
No, it’s not good to go with someone who is bent on destroying the country, and it’s not proportionalism, either. You are right.