27 October 2002
By
Fr. Michael Dolan
This week’s issue: What about loyalty to a candidate? (Part II)
While some “Catholic” candidates remain loyal to their religious principles, too many others are inclined to sacrifice those principles on the altar of political expedience. To be right morally is not nearly as important to those as to be safe, politic and popular. Consider if you will: The “Catholic” governor of New York recently signed a bill mandating all state financed hospitals to teach abortion techniques to their resident obstetric physicians. The “Catholic” governor of California not only did the same to insure trained abortionists for the future, but also signed a bill legalizing experimentation on human embryos even allowing therapeutic cloning.
The presently sitting governor of Maryland as well as our lieutenant governor who is running for governor are both “Catholic” and pro-abortion. That same administration restricted merit pay increases for Catholic school teachers and begrudgingly allocated markedly reduced state money for Catholic education, while they underwrote the region’s highest expenditure for medically funded repeat abortions. That’s your money that is being spent their way. Our “Catholic” U.S. Senator is pro-abortion. Eleven democrats and 1 Republican fit that definition.
The moral of the story is—don’t necessarily expect Catholic politicians to represent your wishes. To be sure, as I inferred early on, there are Catholic legislators who stand for and by their religious principles. There are 11 such U.S. Senators (10 Republicans, and 1 Democrat), who prove that being pro-life is not too heavy a burden to bear.
Am I telling you how to vote? Yes, I am! I am telling you to vote as a Catholic, as the person you say you are before God! Do you want to hear it? Probably not! It can be painful to vote against “your” political party or favorite candidate, but it is right to do so. It is indeed the only way you may take back an errant party or set an errant candidate straight. The bottom line is you may not, indeed you must not, vote for a candidate who expresses or supports an immoral party platform.
God bless you, His chosen,
Father Mike
Next Week: “What is a Catholic to do?”