Gabrielle Giffords Endorses Clinton

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They don’t say it is ok to elect such a person.
They don’t say you can’t.
You just cant use their stance to rationalize voting for a pro-abortion canidate.
Why not? If it a rational conclusion…
A person who supports unrestricted taxpayer funded abortion on demand is every bit ,if not more, evil that a evil lie mongerer who is against human rights and believes the poor create their own povery.
I don’t know why you bring up “taxpayer funded”, except to tap into the feelings of the resentment against taxes in general. The fact that abortions are funded by taxes adds only minimally to the evil that is abortion. Whether they are paid for by taxes or paid for by the fathers, it is all the same to the baby that does not get a chance to live.
 
Nor can one elect a pro-life candidate solely on the fact that he or she is pro-life. Pope Benedict XVI made that clear.

You may think the Democrats nominate evil people every time, and that is your choice, but in reality, they do not. No political candidate is perfect, neither Republican nor Democrat.

The Republicans are certainly faced with electing an evil person this time. Even high profile Republicans admit that and are working to stop it.
They nominate People who support the abject evil of allowing a mother to pay someone to kill their child. Let me repeat -they nominate people who support allowing a woman to pay someone to kill their child. Please tell me how a Catholican ever support someone who supports such evil ?
 
Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasi

Pope Benedict IXVI*
I don’t believe this is meant to be applied to voting for candidates. It seems that you are trying to apply this to a prohibition on voting for pro-choice candidates is a personal interpretation that is not supported by the comment itself.
 
I don’t believe this is meant to be applied to voting for candidates. It seems that you are trying to apply this to a prohibition on voting for pro-choice candidates is a personal interpretation that is not supported by the comment itself.
I think the Bible also says “Thou Shalt Not Kill”, is that difficult to understand as well?
 
Voting for someone for president who does not oppose abortion is called, in moral theology, “remote material cooperation with evil.” Everyone cooperates with evil at some time or another. It can’t be helped.

Remote material cooperation with evil exists when the person voting, or buying, or selling, etc. does not intend any evil to occur, when the cooperation with the evil is insignificant, and when the evil would occur even if the person who remotely cooperated would have abstained.

Remote material cooperation with evil almost always carries no culpability at all. Should a pharmacist fill a prescription for birth control pills? Does that make him a co-conspirator in abortion? No. What about the man whose cleaning service cleans the office of a doctor who performs abortions in another facility? Is he culpable? No. These people have to work, they have to feed and clothe themselves and probably families, they do not wish the evil to occur. It’s the same with voting. Clinton and Sanders, if one is elected president, might not actively oppose abortion, but they aren’t going to be out rabidly trying to coerce women into getting an abortion. And what they do, they would do with or without my vote or anyone else’s vote.

If you buy your clothes from a company that owns a sweatshop in China, you are committing remote material cooperation with evil. Are you culpable? No. Even if you can get your clothes someplace else? No, still not, however, it would be good if you would get your clothes someplace else. No one, however, can be expected to investigate all the clothing manufacturers out there to make sure they aren’t operating sweatshops in China or India or elsewhere. I have an Internet service provider who employs Indians as underpaid customer service representatives. I keep my Internet service provider even though that is remote material cooperation with evil because if I change, the underpaid workers in India will still be underpaid. I do not wish them to be underpaid, but I have no clout with the Internet service provider, they will go on doing what they do in India no matter what I do, and they are the most reliable one given where I live.

Moral theology is filled with gray areas. We can be culpable when we think we are not, and we aren’t culpable when some think we are. For example, if a man does not want his wife to have an abortion but he drives her to the clinic and pays for the abortion anyway, that is immediate material cooperation with evil, and it carries severe spiritual penalties. If a nurse, who does not believe in abortion takes a job assisting a doctor who performs them because he pays well, that is formal material cooperation with evil, and it carries the same penalty as the doctor incurs.

Gray areas, and even more gray exist in moral theology.
Justification, I think that’s what it’s called. Our Government had everything to do with making Abortion legal and keeping it that way. But “maybe” your right and the Church is wrong. Many have thought so before now. BUT I sure wouldn’t want to tell Jesus His Church is wrong and I was right! God Bless, Memaw
 
They nominate People who support the abject evil of allowing a mother to pay someone to kill their child. Let me repeat -they nominate people who support allowing a woman to pay someone to kill their child. Please tell me how a Catholican ever support someone who supports such evil ?
Catholics can support other things about a candidate, but not abortion. I don’t support abortion under any circumstances.

And I support freedom of religion. One of our Jewish posters has told us that some Jewish woman are bound to have an abortion if their life is in danger. I don’t think we have the right to deny them freedom of religion.
 
I may too. But what I won’t do is decide that since the Republican candidate is deeply flawed it’s okay for me to support abortion
Where do you buy your clothes? Everything else you use? Are you positive it wasn’t manufactured in a sweatshop in China or the Philippines or India? If it was you was cooperating with evil to the same extent as someone who votes for a pro-abortion candidate but does not believe in abortion.
 
Justification is not a bad word. I would be happy if what I say was justified.

What Lily was referencing was Church teaching on remote material cooperation. She was not challenging Church teaching.
Absolutely, Leaf. There are a few small things the Church teaches that I wish were different, opposition to abortion not being one of them, but I am Catholic, and even if I don’t agree with something, I will follow the rules of the Church.
 
Moral Equivalencies again.

I can pay a dime for newspaper at the old style newspaper machines and take a dozen newspapers out. That is stealing.

I can rob a bank at gunpoint. That is stealing.

They are not moral equivalents.
 
Where do you buy your clothes? Everything else you use? Are you positive it wasn’t manufactured in a sweatshop in China or the Philippines or India? If it was you was cooperating with evil to the same extent as someone who votes for a pro-abortion candidate but does not believe in abortion.
The Church does not equate cheap labor with abortion and neither do I But if you can show where the Church says a candidates who supports free trade is justification for voting for his pro_abirtion opponent please post it.
 
The Church does not equate cheap labor with abortion and neither do I But if you can show where the Church says a candidates who supports free trade is justification for voting for his pro_abortion opponent please post it.
As I have said before, the absence of explicit permission for something is not equivalent to condemnation of that thing. To make it very clear, just because no Church teach says you may vote based on free trade policy does not mean the Church forbids it.
 
As I have said before, the absence of explicit permission for something is not equivalent to condemnation of that thing. To make it very clear, just because no Church teach says you may vote based on free trade policy does not mean the Church forbids it.
Or legalizing marijuana or pedophilia too while were at it.
 
Moral Equivalencies again.

I can pay a dime for newspaper at the old style newspaper machines and take a dozen newspapers out. That is stealing.

I can rob a bank at gunpoint. That is stealing.

They are not moral equivalents.
If you are implying that the arguments have been based on abortion being morally equivalent to unemployment or whatever, they are not. If it were an objective choice between getting the unemployment policy you want or getting the abortion policy you want, the choice would be clear. Choose to address abortion. But that is not the choice. When you vote for a pro-life candidate, that candidate may not be able, or even willing, to take specific action that leads to a positive results. You are rolling the dice. Same thing with unemployment policy. You are rolling the dice with that too. But if the conditions are such that you have reason to believe that the desirable unemployment policy is much more likely to be achievable than the desirable abortion policy, that fact can be taken into account. And taking probabilities into account throws off the clear comparison between abortion and unemployment. If you vote to address abortion, you may get neither desirable policy.
 
If you are implying that the arguments have been based on abortion being morally equivalent to unemployment or whatever, they are not. If it were an objective choice between getting the unemployment policy you want or getting the abortion policy you want, the choice would be clear. Choose to address abortion. But that is not the choice. When you vote for a pro-life candidate, that candidate may not be able, or even willing, to take specific action that leads to a positive results. You are rolling the dice. Same thing with unemployment policy. You are rolling the dice with that too. But if the conditions are such that you have reason to believe that the desirable unemployment policy is much more likely to be achievable than the desirable abortion policy, that fact can be taken into account. And taking probabilities into account throws off the clear comparison between abortion and unemployment. If you vote to address abortion, you may get neither desirable policy.
I’m not going to balance the life of a human being with that of an unemployment policy.

That again, is not a moral equivalent. One can make that case but it is one’s personal philosophy and not Church teaching.
 
I’m not going to balance the life of a human being with that of an unemployment policy.
But my point was it isn’t balancing the life of a human being with an unemployment policy. What its about is balancing the chance of saving a human life vs. the** chance** of getting a just unemployment policy. If the first chance is sufficiently low compared to the second chance, it becomes harder and harder to justify throwing away a good chance at getting one thing just for a tiny chance of getting something else, even if that something else is a lot more valuable.
 
The Church does not equate cheap labor with abortion and neither do I But if you can show where the Church says a candidates who supports free trade is justification for voting for his pro_abirtion opponent please post it.
No it doesn’t equate the exploitation of children, women, and sometimes men with abortion, but it does equate the exploitation of any human being with voting for a pro-abortion candidate who will not coerce anyone to get an abortion and, except for his or her views on abortion, has ideas that will probably benefit society as a whole.

In fact, it considers exploitation of the weak worse than voting pro-abortion.

What are you actively doing to stop abortion? People need to ask themselves that question because withholding a vote isn’t going to stop it.
 
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