Thought Experiment: The Striking Priests Platform

[Teflon93]

A candidate for election to high political office runs on a platform promising to make the physical assault of Catholic clergy a protected Constitutional right. The candidate emphasizes that he himself will not commit such assaults but that the freedom to do so ought to be enshrined in law.

The candidate supports a raft of other issues which are in line with Church teaching, however—indeed, the candidate (call him Candidate A) is more in line with Church teaching on these other things than the opposing candidate (Candidate B).

Would you feel comfortable as a Catholic voting for Candidate A?

 

[Pug]

Candidates often have some folly on their platform that they have no expectation of enacting. So, I’m not too worried it would become law.

But is he fit for office? Assault is well accepted as a crime in our society. To hold that it ought not be a crime and should be a protected right and further to think that is an appealing political platform, well, the candidate could be off his rocker. It does not seem relevant to me if the victim class were to be priests or, say, civil lawyers.

I would not feel comfortable voting for a man whom I believed to be unfit for office. Whether I would throw comfort to the winds is a different question.