Voting for good candidates

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amaxiner

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I was talking with a friend about my first time voting last November in a state election and I voted for a candidate who had great policy but pro choice. I was very conflicted about this candidate because she was pro choice even if she did have great policies and looking back, I know I should have voted for the other candidate, but my friend told me it was a mortal sin to vote for a someone who had pro choice views? I came back to the faith last August (praise God!) so I am still trying to find all the different “rules” about these kinds of things, and the entire country has a large election in 2020. So has anyone else ever dealt with this conflict? Should I hit up the confessional?
 
The CDF under Ratzinger stated:

“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’s unfortunate, since rarely if ever (never in my lifetime) has that been the most significant issue subject to real substantive change in any election. It’s never the lone issue.
 
Cor_ad_Cor said:
That’s unfortunate, since rarely if ever (never in my lifetime) has that been the most significant issue subject to real substantive change in any election. It’s never the lone issue.
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You have this inverted - it’s unfortunate the issue isn’t given top priority by voters because this is what would drive substantive change.
 
Cor_ad_Cor said:
There is no single issue that determines how you should vote
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Oh yes there is. Pro Life determines my vote. As it stands, If you believe life begins at conception and ending abortion is saving lives then there is only one option, the Republican Party.
 
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Allow me to clarify my position then: per Church teaching, we are not bound to single-issue voting.
 
Well sure you can spin it any way you want but the fact remains that the liberal left political ideology lays waste to all the life teachings of Jesus with the proliferation of abortion as one of their main objectives.

I found a Church document that says the issue of abortion is a priority…from Archbishop Chaput…
However, it is correct to prioritize the right to life as the foundation for all other rights, Archbishop Chaput noted.

“But of course, children need to survive the womb before they can have needs like food, shelter, immigration counseling and good health care. Humanity’s priority right – the one that undergirds all other rights – is the right to life,” he said.

And while being opposed to abortion and euthanasia does not excuse anyone from caring about other social injustices, such a poverty and violence, there is a right ordering of moral priorities, Archbishop Chaput said, which is the reason the United States’ bishops released their 1998 pastoral letter, “Living the Gospel of Life.”

“Any politics of human dignity must seriously address issues of racism, poverty, hunger, employment, education, housing, and health care . . . But being ‘right’ in such matters can never excuse a wrong choice regarding direct attacks on innocent human life.

Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the ‘rightness’ of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community” (Living the Gospel of Life pp. 22).
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Pope Francis says the same……
“Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away”.
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According to this document, which other reasons would be considered proportionate?
 
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