What the Papal Nuncio actually said
youtube.com/watch?v=-LAHbc3NAAU
and around 1 hour and 2 min he makes his statement:
We are still a far cry from fully embracing the Holy Father’s encouraging exhortation, when we witness in an unprecedented way a platform being assumed by a major political party, having intrinsic evil among its basic principles, and Catholic faithful publicly supporting it. There is a divisive strategy at work here, an intentional dividing of the Church. Through this strategy the body of the Church is weakened, and thus the Church can be more easily persecuted.
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Of course, as a Catholic you cannot support abortion – in that the Archbishop only stated the obvious! Yet many Catholics vote Democratic without supporting abortion, and
no Catholic here who voted Obama supports abortion. You can support a party for other reasons than supporting intrinsic evil in their platform, just like you can support a pro-choice candidate for other reasons than supporting his pro-choice position.
The latter is exactly what the Pope said when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:
"[N.B. A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of
the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favour of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for
other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.]"
That is also exactly what the USCCB document
Faithful Citizenship says:
“35. There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate
for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.”
(Again, note that "“other morally grave reasons” contains the word “other” – obviously other than abortion etc.)
Precise words matter. And the precise words that the Papal Nuncio spoke are in no contradiction whatsoever with the words of Cardinal Ratzinger (the current Pope) and the USCCB guide
Faithful Citizenship. The words that the NCR put into the Papal Nuncio’s mouth might have been interpreted by some (and it has been done here) to contradict these documents or to force a more concrete interpretation towards not being able to vote Democratic at all, yet the actual words that the Papal Nuncio spoke do not support that idea.
Thank you for posting this. Of course it’s much clearer, when all the documents are put together, that Catholics are
not called to be ‘one issue voters’ and are to consider the whole picture when voting, so that the other important areas of concern are not swept under the rug and neglected.
The democratic party is accountable for the things that are contrary to Church teaching, not Catholics who look at the whole picture and take into account other areas (that are still important) they believe the party is less likely to screw up. The poor, the disabled, the sick, the young, the old…they are important too. My conscience would not allow me to vote with only one issue in mind. There
is no one all important issue. And frankly, I’ve never seen these so-called “five non-negotiables” come from the Vatican. There are many issues, and to concentrate on only one issue is to ignore the rest, which are important too.
