Is there such a thing as a "pro-choice Catholic"?

[papapuff]

Is there such a thing as a pro-choice Catholic? My wife and I believe abortion is wrong and that any “Catholic” who votes for any candidate who believes in a “choice” for abortion is truly not a Catholic. We become very annoyed when the media states things such as “Forty-three percent of Catholics voted for Candidate X, who takes a pro-choice stance.” I reason that 43% of people attending a Catholic church are not truly Catholic! What say you?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I reason that 43% of people attending a Catholic church are not truly Catholic! What say you?

That this is precisely why bumper stickers that proclaim, “You can’t be both Catholic and pro-choice” may be well-intentioned but are so misguided. Such an assumption naturally leads to the conclusion that anyone who is mistaken in his Catholic beliefs isn’t really Catholic to begin with.

This is incorrect. Those who are validly baptized in the Catholic Church are Catholic. Period. The reason for this is because baptism is, quite literally, a new birth that makes the person a Christian in his very being, no matter how well or how poorly he lives out his faith. Just as physical conception means that a person will always be a human person with inherent human dignity, no matter how detestable the crimes he may choose to commit; so a baptized person, no matter how evil he becomes, remains a Christian.

In the case of a Catholic who believes in Catholicism but supports immoral activities or practices that orthodox Catholicism condemns, at most all that can be said is that he picks and chooses the doctrines of Christianity he will believe and the morals of Christianity that he will follow. In some ways, that can be considered worse than total apostasy, since at least the apostate follows his convictions to their logical conclusion by entirely abandoning the faith.