20 October 2002
By
Fr. Michael Dolan
This week’s issue: What about party loyalty? (Part I)
Loyalty is one of those beautiful words like ‘freedom’ and ‘choice’! Loyalty is to be highly praised, but the critical questions to be answered are ‘loyalty to what’? If loyalty is misplaced, it is like salt that has lost its flavor and is good for nothing except to be “thrown out and trampled under foot (Mt. 5:13). For a Catholic, loyalty to a political party must be predicted on the party’s faithfulness to God’s Will as expressed in scripture, in tradition, and by the Magisterium. Given that, it is appropriate to examine closely any party’s platform, or any candidate’s position on matters of great concern to Catholics.
When my dad landed here from Ireland some 80 years ago he, after achieving citizenship, aligned himself with the Democratic Party, which held and still does hold the loyalty of large numbers of Catholics. Would he do the same today? I think not, certainly not now—and why not?
1. In recent elections that party spent millions of dollars in California and New York attacking candidates of the other major party for not taking positions that were at odds with Catholic moral teaching.
2. The vast majority of that party’s U.S. senators are pro-abortion.
3. That party often attacks Catholic teaching on family life and labels the proponents seeking rights for the unborn as “extremist.”
4. Sixty-three percent of that party’s legislators rejected the Catholic Bishops plea to ban partial birth abortion for which the American Medical Association says there is no justification.
5. An even higher percentage opposed the Catholic Bishops who pleaded for financial assistance (even on a trial basis) to poor families trying to escape failing public schools.
6. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently rejected a pro-life judge as “unqualified” despite the American Bar Associations rating of her as being “well qualified”—a rating widely recognized as the gold standard for judicial nominees. This vote was strictly along party lines with all Democrats (10) against, and all Republicans (9) for approval of her nomination. Her unpardonable sin was to question a teen’s competence to seek an abortion without parental notification.
7. The Democratic National Committee on its web site lists only one reference under the category “Catholic” namely “Catholics for a Free Choice,” which is not only not Catholic, but has been publicly condemned by the Catholic Bishops. The spokesperson for the party said that the organization was chosen strictly for its pro-abortion position, adding the “Democratic platform is pro-choice.” Can anyone still say that being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion?
If loyalty is given to a political party, it extends only to the properly conceived and expressed party platform and the particular candidate’s obedience to it. That is your mandate, because you are Catholic before you are a democrat, republican, independent, etc. A platform flawed because of immoral commitments does not deserve, indeed must not be given, your loyalty at the ballot box. If ever given under these circumstances, consider yourself a necessary cooperator in an immoral act, with all of the penalties that imposes.
May God bless you always,
Father Mike
Next Week: “What about loyalty to a candidate (Pt. II)?”