Vote pro-choice and you will be automatically excommunicated! - Is this a good tactic to use?

[Harry123]

For example, in the recent abortion debate in Poland, should the bishops have come out and said that if you vote for abortion, you are helping to facilitate abortions taking place …and consequently you will be automatically excommunicated.

Wouldn’t this have deterred luke-warm Catholics from voting pro-choice?

 

[Don_Ruggero]

For example, in the recent abortion debate in Poland, should the bishops have come out and said that if you vote for abortion, you are helping to facilitate abortions taking place …and consequently you will be automatically excommunicated.

Wouldn’t this have deterred luke-warm Catholics from voting pro-choice?

No.

The Code of Canon Law states the level of involvement in the act to incur a latae sententiae excommunication. And this is very far from it.

 

[joeybaggz]

For example, in the recent abortion debate in Poland, should the bishops have come out and said that if you vote for abortion, you are helping to facilitate abortions taking place …and consequently you will be automatically excommunicated.

Wouldn’t this have deterred luke-warm Catholics from voting pro-choice?

I would ask you this question, is it man’s position to deny another the right to his or her free will,even if its use is to choose evil, if God himself does not do so?

Harry, should the same excommunication apply to those who sell liquor, firearms, illegal drugs, pornography, and all other means of facilitating death, destruction and misery in the lives of others? I applaud your desire to rid the world of abortion and other such evils, but destroying the basic relationship man has with God, that of free will, is not the best answer. IMHO.

Shalom

 

[angell1]

For example, in the recent abortion debate in Poland, should the bishops have come out and said that if you vote for abortion, you are helping to facilitate abortions taking place …and consequently you will be automatically excommunicated.

Wouldn’t this have deterred luke-warm Catholics from voting pro-choice?

probably not, if a lukewarm catholic wanted to vote pro-choice, a threat of ex-communication isn’t probably not going to do much anyways. a truly pro-life caohtlic wouldn’t even need to be told that.

and besides, how would the church enforce in countries where all political candidates are pro-choice? if that is the case, we need to look at something else to vote on

 

[SuperLuigi]

For example, in the recent abortion debate in Poland, should the bishops have come out and said that if you vote for abortion, you are helping to facilitate abortions taking place …and consequently you will be automatically excommunicated.

Wouldn’t this have deterred luke-warm Catholics from voting pro-choice?

Maybe some. Others would have undoubtedly just accepted it.

In many elections, it’s almost impossible to vote for someone who isn’t to some degree pro-choice. So how pro-choice would a candidate have to be in order to be excommunicated?

In the last election I endorsed and voted for candidates who were to some degree pro-choice, some degree pro-life or at least would have done less damage.

As Catholics we have to make that determination in good conscience. That’s better than the Church making such threats because when such threats are issued people just stop examining and either obey or walk away.