Why is voting for Biden a mortal sin?

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First I think any religion telling people who to vote for is spiritual bullying and an abuse of power.

Abortion may be the preeminent issue in normal times but these times and this
president has taken us into a whole new realm of considerations.
 
NSmith said:
if one was convinced about the reality and pervasiveness of systemic white supremacist agendas in the government, and one had faith that the Biden/Harris ticket would lessen or remove that influence, would that suffice as a proportionate reason to put up with support for abortion in your view?
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No. First of all, I would challenge such a person as to the reality of such an assertion when a black man was elected president of the United States, when black officers outnumber white officers in most cities and when there are penalties for acting on racist motives and entire agencies whose sole purpose is to enforce those penalties.

But most of all it must be realized that the victims of racism live almost without exception. Victims of abortion all die without exception. Deliberately setting out to kill a person out of racist motives is extremely rare. All abortion killings are deliberate.

So no, there is no possibility at all that racism, however guilty one thinks this society is of it, even comes close to being proportionate to the deliberate killing of millions of totally innocent children.
One would have to reflect back on the Holocaust or the Gulags or the “Great Leap Forward” to even come close.

As an aside, one might mention that Abp McElroy’s position was rejected by the great majority of U.S. bishops. His opinion is an outlier in opposing the statement that abortion is the preeminent issue. Additionally, careful reading of his position reveals an ambiguity. He said he actually agreed with the principle, but feared that politicians would “run away with it”. One might respond that NOT saying it might morally mislead. There was considerable concern in the last election that the USCCB failure to clarify on the matter might have allowed relativism to creep into the considerations of Catholics.
 
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Based on the following remarks from the article from Archbishop McElroy:
  1. There is no mandate in universal Catholic social teaching that gives a categorical priority to either of these issues [climate crisis and abortion] as uniquely determinative of the common good.
  2. The death toll from abortion is more immediate, but the long-term death toll from unchecked climate change is larger and threatens the very future of humanity.
  3. Both abortion and the environment are core life issues in Catholic teaching.
  4. The designation of either of these issues as the preeminent question in Catholic social teaching at this time in the United States will inevitably be hijacked by partisan forces to propose that Catholics have an overriding duty to vote for candidates that espouse that position. Recent electoral history shows this to be a certainty.
It seems odd to me that the potential harm of future climate disaster is considered equivalent and of equal weight to the actual historical and ongoing slaughter of abortion. Could we not handle abortion first and then handle the climate? Why is there a false dichotomy of one or the other?
Besides, my understanding is we’ve already hit the point of no return and that there is no reasonable human action on climate change that will actually stop the impending disaster that scientists are predicting.
Yep, 2020 was the point of no return last election…from 2015 -Have We Passed the Point of No Return on Climate Change? - Scientific American
More recent article - Too Little, Too Late? Carbon Emissions and the Point of No Return | Yale Environment Review
This is the first time I’m even reading about this in detail, apparently the solution to all our climate problems is more taxation of rich countries? Oh, and stop cutting down the rainforest.
It seems to me we better hope the warming effect is exaggerated or the predicted changes don’t occur, since its predicted to happen whether we like it or not.
 
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Abp McElroy was amibguous, as I mentioned previously. He recognized that the majority was right, but he had a concerned that “partisan forces” would “hijack” the issue. So it almost seems he didn’t want politicians to use it as an election issue overtly, when the majority considered that the faithful (they didn’t address the potential practices of politicians) needed to know what was most important.

Frankly, it’s a shame and a scandal that more politicians and more churchmen do not make more of it.
 
He seems not to have been in the committee when the USCCB wrote this part of the Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship guidelines:
37.In making these decisions, it is essential for Catholics to be guided by a well-formed conscience that recognizes that all issues do not carry the same moral weight and that the moral obligation to oppose policies promoting intrinsically evil acts has a special claim on our consciences and our actions. These decisions should take into account a candidate’s commitments, character, integrity, and ability to influence a given issue. In the end, this is a decision to be made by each Catholic guided by a conscience formed by Catholic moral teaching.
38.It is important to be clear that the political choices faced by citizens not only have an impact on general peace and prosperity but also may affect the individual’s salvation. Similarly, the kinds of laws and policies supported by public officials affect their spiritual well-being. Pope Benedict XVI, in his recent reflection on the Eucharist as “the sacrament of charity,” challenged all of us to adopt what he calls “a Eucharistic form of life.” This means that the redeeming love we encounter in the Eucharist should shape our thoughts, our words, and our decisions, including those that pertain to the social order. The Holy Father called for “Eucharistic consistency” on the part of every member of the Church:
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In contrast with Archbishop McElroy:
The problem with this approach is that while the criterion of intrinsic evil identifies specific human acts that can never be justified, this criterion is not a measure of the relative gravity of the evil in particular human or political actions. Telling a lie is intrinsically evil, while escalating a nuclear arms race is not. But it is wrongheaded to propose that telling a lie to constituents should count more in the calculus of faithful voting than a candidate’s plans to initiate a destabilizing nuclear weapons program. Similarly, contraception is intrinsically evil in Catholic moral theology, while actions which destroy the environment generally are not. But it is a far greater moral evil for our country to abandon the Paris Climate Accord than to provide contraceptives in federal health centers. What these examples point out is that Catholic social teaching cannot be reduced to a deductivist model when it comes to voting to safeguard the life and dignity of the human person.
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Also, Pope Francis said that possessing nuclear arms is immoral, and that we (collectively, I assume) would be judged for it. 2017 Declaration
 
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Tolle_Lege said:
Quite honestly, it’s a stretch to claim that an informed Catholic can consciously vote for a party or candidate that supports grave moral permissions which are clearly against Church teaching - even if it’s not their sole intent to “go against” Church teaching.

Ultimately, it has to do with the reluctance by the Church to tell people that they’re wrong, and fear of ruffling the feathers of those whose positions are most frequently echoed by the media and secular culture.

Hypothetical litmus test: replace “abortion” with “slavery” - could the same claim be made that, “Candidate X supports someone’s right to own a slave, but that is not the issue I’m voting for! Everything else Candidate X stands for is great, so I can vote for them!”
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In the US, both major parties promote policies at odds with the Magisterium…but yes, abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, and the like are particularly grave.
Here in Canada, ALL FIVE major federal parties at least passively support abortion, gay marriage, etc…I vote Conservative by default, but that’s basically like “moderate Democrat” by US standards. It makes it tough.
 
I often pray for Catholics in countries around the world, but I never considered the difficulty of living in Europe or Canada. Sorry to hear about the situation there.
 
this made me laugh so hard in the middle of reading a heated discussion 🙂
 
The fundamental principle here is not complicated. One cannot directly cooperate with evil. What is often complicated, however, is to apply this principle in a given situation, but that is the task each of us has set before us this election.

Now, if candidate X & Y are both advocating grave evil, and one or the other will certainly be elected, then we may vote for the lesser of two evils. The reason is that voting for the lesser of two evils is not direct cooperation with evil, but an attempt to lessen evil by avoiding the worse of two, since, again, having one of them is unavoidable.

This means that each one of us has to go and study where X & Y stand on things, and weigh them out, to the best of our own ability. Which candidate amounts to the lesser of two evils? One can, of course, vote for a third person, but in the present situation, it will certainly be X or Y. Try this: get out a piece of paper and put Biden in one column and Trump in another. Under each candidate, list the grave evils each is advocating for in this election. Don’t list anything else, like programs you like or matters of prudential judgement (i.e. what is the best way to go about achieving something). List only the grave evils each candidates advocates and not things for which one may have a legitimate disagreement.

There may be some nuances to add to what I am saying, but this is basically it.

So, based on going through this exercise myself, it seems clear that the lesser of the two evils is Trump. Even if I try to force it, I am unable to make it come out the other way around. If anyone here has a list of grave evils each of these candidates is advocating for and you have reach a different conclusion, please post it. This would be very helpful.
 
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Considerations like we are now living in a different era when all the old rules have been obliterated. This is a time when the president believes he can negotiate beyond his term. It is a time when science no longer matters any more than what the president might have heard someone say. It is a time when we have curried favor with our enemy while turning our back on allies. It is a time when the environment is seen primarily as an exploitable resource for profit. It is a time where there is no longer civil discourse. And personal insults take the place of topical debate. It is a time when the integrity of our elections is undermined by the president himself. In this distorted reality alternate facts have priority over actual facts. It is a time when racial tensions are exacerbated by the White House. So much more to consider than a single issue. That is for sure.
 
This was basically what I’ve been trying to get at. I have family members who support Biden, but none who are Catholic, so I am trying to understand this from a Catholic perspective. This is my first election year as a Catholic, to boot.
 
Thanks for the list, although I don’t think most of these things are exactly novel innovations in the realm of politics.
Also, the credibility of much of the sources that are claiming the things you list is highly suspect, which is a contributing factor to the seemingly fluid nature of facts in the present time.
It’s rather an exaggeration to say that science doesn’t matter. The trouble has been trying to determine what the science actually is, and then whether or not it has practical significance, and then whether or not it would incite widespread panic and harm to release the findings. I remember initial reports were estimating over a million Americans dead from COVID-19 before the end of 2020…glad they were wrong.
I share your concern about the legitimacy of the election. I think that both sides have contributed to suspicions about cheating. Who knows if people will accept the results at this point?
 
Thanks, that was just off the top of my head. Can we all agree these are unprecedented times? If Trump loses he will surely contest and it will get uglier than anything we have yet seen. If he wins you can be sure the boasting and gloating will also.
 
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I have been holding out hope that people will settle down after November passes. I am not encouraged by the way the Democratic ticket seems to be doubling down on the things that got Trump elected in the first place (that is establishment candidates, race relations, outrage culture); it is exacerbating the anti-establishment sentiments that already existed. I think Bernie would possibly have been the better bet for liberals. I thought Bernie had a good chance to win, at least in my age group people found him compelling.
I can’t bring myself to vote for the current Democratic platform, primarily because of abortion, but I also take exception to the penchant for censorship and reinvention of language that was so rampant in liberal circles on my college campus. However, I really dislike how Republicans seem to talk big on moral issues and then they end up in Washington doing nothing but kicking back for their expensive lobbyists.
 
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Today all you can do is vote the lesser of two evils. I don’t think either candidate is worthy to be President.
 
The perspective here is essentially the natural law. It is not, for example, a Catholic doctrine, per se, that we may not directly take innocent human life (i.e. murder people). It is certainly reinforced by the Divine Law, and as such, in Catholic teaching. Each of us human beings need that reinforcement due to our fallen state (i.e. darkened minds, weakened wills). What I am getting at here is that very often good and evil can be determined and understood through reason and observation.

This means that you might have a great deal of common ground with your family members who are not Catholic. The Catholic perspective regarding human life is that we share in the Divine Nature through the Incarnation and all that that means. But to argue that people should not be murdered (e.g. abortion), and that murder is a grave evil is not, in itself, religious doctrine, per se.

Again, the question of this election is the lesser of two evils. Unless someone holds that those things in the Democratic platform that are objectionable are actually good, well, then, that is a different problem. This is not an uncommon problem these days because the predominant philosophy in our society is relativism. This is the belief that there is no moral truth, but whatever one decides is true is one’s truth (i.e. no objective truth). This problem, however, goes far beyond the question of this election, who to vote for. It requires a change of heart, a conversion.
 
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