3 November 2002
By
Fr. Michael Dolan
This week’s issue: What is a Catholic to do?
I am inserting this now; not that it signals any closure for “Something to Consider,” but to help you in the election process
1. Be aware that you are not a split personality, that you are first and foremost a Catholic, and only secondly a democrat, republican, independent, etc.
2. Be aware that political parties that used to attract and hold families now have philosophies that, if known to your Catholic ancestors, would have alienated them.
3. Be aware that voting pro-choice is voting pro-abortion, and you are not only participating in a grievously sinful act (Catechism #2271 & 2272), but doing so as a necessary cooperator (Canon Law #1398) with its woeful consequences.
4. The coming elections are critically important, as are all elections, and will decide whether individuals, who are the most vulnerable, will prevail or whether the system who cares nothing for them will prevail.
For the few who would rationalize away a pro-life label from someone who is against abortion, cloning, and embryonic stem cell research because he or she is not against capital punishment, let me offer the following:
1. “The tradition of the Catholic Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty” (Catechism, 2nd Edition #2267), but now the Church considers that the incidence “should be very rare if practically non-existent.”
2. The total number of capital punishment deaths since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 according to National Catholic Reporter’s “Death Watch” is 675. That is less than the number of abortion deaths in any one day, in any one year of the last 29 years.
All of this is not meant to endorse capital punishment, but to call attention to the fact that capital punishment and abortion are separate and distinct entities with abortion as the premier pro-life concern. As the U.S. Bishops have said, addressing the abortion issue, “The failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the ‘rightness’ of positions in other matters.”
It’s your decision, and you are good people. If you are forced by competing candidates who are pro-abortion to different degrees, you can vote for neither candidate, but you are also free to choose the lesser evil; that is the one who is more pro-life, and also look to their running mates for direction. The Democratic platform and its candidates for governor and lieutenant governor are pro-abortion without compromise. The Republican gubernatorial candidate votes against partial birth abortion, and his running mate is strongly pro-life. The choice is yours.
Father Mike