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An issue came up this week in the comment thread of my previous post. I thought I might as well throw it up as a head post and see if anybody else has thoughts about it. The question is: when, if ever, is it ever okay to vote for a politician who believes that abortion should be legal?
I was pointing out that the Church needs to make it more clear, across the board and not just to particular politicians, that support for legalized abortion prevents one from being a Catholic in good standing, and (according to the CCC) incurs and automatic latae sententiae excommunication. In other words, people who have supported legalized abortion should not be receiving Communion until they have visited a confessional and made things right with God and the Church. And that support need not necessarily take the form of, say, actually working as an abortion doctor or as support staff at Planned Parenthood. It could also take the form of driving a person to an abortion clinic, helping to pay for an abortion, trying to bolster political support for Roe v. Wade, or (as I put it) deliberately voting for a pro-choice politician.
Theologian Mom reasonably asked me what I took the term “deliberately” to imply. My answer was that I thought would be an excommunicable offense if a person voted for a particular politician either 1) solely because that person supported permissive abortion policies, or 2) for a variety of reasons, one of which was that the person supported permissive abortion policies. The long and the short of it is that, if a politician’s pro-choice sentiments were one positive reason that persuaded you to vote for them, that is an excommunicable offense.
Other sorts of scenarios now rise to the surface. What if you voted for a pro-choice politician, and you just don’t care very much about abortion one way or the other? What if you didn’t even bother to research his views on abortion? Or, somewhat more interesting, what if you voted for a politician explicitly in spite of his views on abortion, making it clear (to anybody who asked, at least) that you did not support that particular part of the candidate’s platform?
In the former two cases, I’d say you’re at least guilty of some kind of sin of neglect or omission. Anybody who doesn’t care about abortion has a fairly serious moral deficiency, and while it probably doesn’t in itself incur a latae sententiae excommunication, I wouldn’t really recommend receiving Communion either. In the latter case, prudential judgments are involved, and the person might be guilty of sin for voting for the pro-abortion candidate. In our own particular climate, I’m certainly inclined to think that he would be; there isn’t any compelling reason to vote for the Democrats at this time, and certainly not one that could make up for their steadfast support of legalized infanticide. But here, a number of complex circumstances might come into play.
In the first place, let’s take the phony-baloney “personally opposed” excuse in reverse. Suppose someone were “personally supportive” of permissive abortion laws, but agreed for the sake of the party to caucus with other politicians who opposed them. Would it be a mortal sin to vote for that person? Obviously his personal attitudes would still be a strike against him, even a serious one, but I don’t think it would necessarily be sinful to vote for such a person.
Or, suppose we had a state (sadly, there are some already) where abortion had ceased to be a very debatable issue, and all available parties supported legalized abortion. Now, obviously we would always have the option to stop voting, and in some instances that would probably be the right thing to do. But now suppose that one of these pro-abortion parties favors, not only abortion on demand, but also some other depraved things (legalized prostitution, homosexual marriage, or, if you want to get more extreme, persecution of priests and religious, etc.) while the other party wanted to restrict abortion somewhat, and also opposed some of these other unfortunate trends. Would that justify voting for a pro-choice candidate?
I’d have to point out here that there are already several morally depraved things that have long been legal in this country, and we’ve more or less all accepted that, for the time being at least, the battle is being waged on other fronts. Is anyone refusing to vote for candidates that favor no-fault divorce? Legalized contraceptives? Are we demanding candidates who will bring back sodomy laws? It’s a fine line to walk, but I think we do need to preserve some distinction between actively supporting a measure through one’s vote, and supporting a candidate despite reservations about some portion of their agenda. I’m not saying that it’s okay for a Catholic to vote for Barack Obama in the upcoming election. Quite frankly, I don’t think it is. But it does make a difference why a person votes the way he does.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Abortion is the willful destruction of innocent human life. No excuses. No compromise. Non-negotiable.
Two pro-abort candidates running for office? Catholics and likeminded Jews, atheists, and heretics, need to pull out en masse and form a new political party.
Lay Catholics, especially newbie converts or mommy theologians shouldn’t sit around thinking of ways to legitimately vote for a pro-abort.
Given the choice between Hitler and Stalin who would you vote for? That’s the kind of question you’re asking. If you don’t realize that you’re delusional.
Does it make any sense to construct some Ivy League philosophical reasoning for voting for Adolf Hitler? All this does is open the door to the exception-becomes-the-rule crowd.
Yes, contraception is a moral evil. So are constitutionally protected blasphemy and a host of other evils in our country. But at some point we need to draw a line and say go beyond this and Catholic must withdraw, under the penalty of mortal sin, from the current political life of the country.
See, the problem with a line like that, JSP, is it actually draws the Church further away from the sort of action that I was originally calling for — making it clear to pro-abortion Catholics that they are not in good standing and should not be receiving Communion. If you’re going to make such a message clear, part of the process involves determining what counts as genuinely supporting abortion. Otherwise it’s just confusing and people start coming up with loopholes of their own. If you want to draw a hard and fast line, you need to give some attention to the “fast” part.
I have never voted for a pro-abortion politician, nor been tempted to do so. I agree that it is not justifiable to vote for Barack Obama.
Well while we’re on the issue of what’s not needed we can add the “contributions” of those with painfully obvious inferiority complexes.
It is quite possible that Catholics may be required to reason prudentially about the possibility of voting for a pro-abortion candidate. For instance, an American might need to reflect on whether to vote for a pro-abortion Republican over a pro-life Democrat if, and it’s a big ‘if,’ that might allow a Republican majority in the senate which might lead the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice willing to reverse Roe.
There’s a lot of ‘if’s’ and ‘mights’ in there; so many that the correct response is far from clear. And, of course we can’t simply assume that the pro-abortion Republican would caucus with the party. But it is not unreasonable to think that this might be the sort of thing that a pro-abortion Republican would horse-trade over while it seems clear to me that the national Democratic party is so wedded to the culture of death that there’s no real hope for them (at least in the near term).
Nonetheless, deliberately cultivated stupidity does not contribute at all to the issue.
I have a concern, though I’m not sure it is entirely within reason. That is, that through a kind of American empire-centric bravado, the U.S. might provoke the Russian empire into responding to, say, our military involvement in Georgia and the Ukraine. Which force might be beyond what you or I might consider reasonable, in order to once-and-for-all make it clear what Russia considers its sphere of influence (analogous to our Monroe Doctrine).
That conflates an issue of external war with the internal war that we consider abortion to be. If I might invoke another historical example of Godly people supporting an ungodly leader for what might be reasonable causes, I would put forward the religious Russians’ support of Stalin in WW2. It was limited and tactical support, rather than wholehearted support, and the “truce” between the two parties endured only as long as the conflict endured.
My point being that, even with the clearest morality in the world, the sphere of public policy often presents us with dirty choices. I pray I won’t feel the need to make such a choice this time around…
That being said, I don’t think it is in any Christian’s interest (or the Faith’s) to categorically denounce those who venture into such a gray area. On the other hand, it seems clear that enthusiastic or knowing support of pro-abortion politicians, absent other sufficiently grave reasons for support, is certainly something we must all do our best to address forcefully.
What if you vote for a candidate because you believe they will reduce abortions, though they are personally pro-abortion?
For instance, Barack Obama has pointed out that abortions have increased while George W. Bush has been in office, even though he is personally pro-life. But does that really matter? After all, would it not be better if abortion were legal and only 10,000 babies were aborted rather than abortion be illegal and have 100,000 babies aborted? I realize I am casually throwing numbers around of hypothetical abortions. I feel bad for doing this. I am very much against abortion.
Thank you for the responses.
Luke,
Don’t trust baracks figures. The 2005 abortion rate was the lowest since Roe. Google, don’t listen to politicians!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/us/30beliefs.html?emc=eta1
I thought the above Q&A was an interesting take on the issue. Let’s make sure we understand the logistics of overturning Roe.
And I do think we ought NOT to underestimate the importance of social service programs that provide resources for pregnant women, from prenatal to Head Start and beyond. It would be nice if Republicans expressed this kind of concern.
And it would be nice if Catholics could express their views on this topic lovingly, rather than with sneering labels such as “newbie converts” and “mommy theologians.” Of course, I have a child in my womb at this moment, so take that as a motherly remark, as much as a theological one.
Clara,
I agree with many of the distinctions you make here. (Some of which would fall neatly under Aquinas’ discussion of different kinds of voluntary ignorance.)
But where are you getting your claim that voting (with abortion as a positive reason) is an excommunicable offense? The CCC quotes Canon Law: “A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae.” The other phrase the CCC uses is “formal cooperation in AN abortion.” Granted, Latin lacks articles (there is no “an”; however, as you know, the only way to say this would be to say “unum abortum” – which would in fact alter the meaning intended by the text, because it would then imply that someone who formally cooperated in MULTIPLE discrete abortions (say I fill my car with pregnant women and drive them to the abortion mill) was NOT excommunicated latae sententiae). It is clear from the context even in the Latin, however, that what is being discussed is the commission of an abortion.
It seems obvious that deliberately voting to protect abortion ‘rights’ would be a sin, and moreover that someone who did so is probably the type of person who would also be likely to formally cooperate in AN abortion. But voting per se is not “formal cooperation in AN abortion.” It is an act of trying to ensure that the *possibility* of abortion remains a real one for women. Such an act is of course gravely wrong and wrong-headed, but the object of the act is different from the one alluded to by the CCC and Canon Law.
So, to go back to what you start with in your post, that would mean that someone who voted in this way could go to confession to any priest and be absolved, whereas someone who formally cooperated in an abortion could not go to confession (be absolved) unless his excommunication had first been lifted by the ordinary. (Although, just as a factual point, these days it happens that most bishops have granted to their priests the faculty to lift these excommunications, since there are so many women who have aborted and who try to go to confession without knowing about the excomm. latae sententiae.)
Respectfully submitted.
P.S. Here’s the Latin of the CCC on this point if you want it:
2272 Formalis cooperatio ad abortum culpam constituit gravem. Ecclesia hoc contra vitam humanam delictum poena canonica punit excommunicationis. « Qui abortum procurat, effectu secuto, in excommunicationem latae sententiae incurrit », 184 « ipso facto commissi delicti », 185 condicionibus a iure praevisis. 186 Ecclesia sic misericordiae campum restringere non intendit. Commissi criminis manifestat gravitatem, damnum irreparabile innocenti, qui morte afficitur, illatum, eius parentibus totique societati.
P.S. NB also that the previous point in the CCC says “abortus directus.”
Although this is a serious discussion, I find it amusing that Clara has outdone JSP on rigorousness. JSP says it’s a mortal sin to vote for a pro abort politician while Clara says it incurs ipso facto excommunication (although there may be exceptions). I’m not going to conjecture which it is.
When it comes to a question regarding the lesser of two evils, I believe you are allowed to “tolerate” the lesser but not “choose”it or participate in it. Else why not give contraceptives to avoid abortion or AIDS like Cardinals George Cottier and Javier Barragan advocated to avoid the latter? It is said that Pope Pius XII justifiably tolerated evil during the Holocaust by his silence lest worse happen. It would seem that you can tolerate a pro abort politician once he’s in office but not choose him.
Paul VI has this to say on contraception but perhaps it applies here also:
“it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (Rom 3: 8) — in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general.
You can tolerate lies by silence but you can’t tell a lie to save a life. I guess it comes down to this: “Is choosing a murderer for a leader intrinsically evil?” Are mental reservations allowable?
Okay, Anon. I think you’re probably right that I’m getting a bit sloppy here, and I thank you for calling my attention to it. Perhaps voting for a pro-choice politician doesn’t fall under the provisions mentioned in the CCC, in which case it would be “just” a mortal sin. So, people who lend political support for abortion still should not receive Communion, but as you say, they would only need to confess and be absolved in order to be in good standing once again.
There are some interesting philosophy of action puzzles hidden within this question, but my main concern is this: there’s a lot of talk these days about pro-abortion politicians not receiving Communion, but not much about what this means for non-politicians who vote for them. That doesn’t seem reasonable to me. Both politicians and voters are lending political support of a kind to particular (evil) policies; the voters have less power, but neither is the direct agent in procuring abortion, and both are doing what they can to foster conditions hospitable to people seeking an abortion. It seems likely that the politicians actually do more evil (both because they have more influence and because they cause more scandal) but I don’t see how the acts are so different in kind. And if you don’t apply the same principles across the board, you 1) fail to adequately warn people who may well be sacrilegiously receiving in a state of mortal sin, and 2) make it look as though barring people from Communion is some kind of quasi-political measure used to punish people who don’t agree with the Church. Of course that’s not so, but it really looks that way when all the focus is on the politicians.
Anyway, thank you for your comments, which were interesting. I’ll ponder the matter some more.
For Theologian Mom… I know about Doug Kmiec. I think his position very far from satisfying. Of course, in the first place I just don’t agree with him that the Democrats necessarily do a better job of realizing other goods that Catholics should care about. But even if that were the case, I frankly find his remarks on the abortion issue to be rather callous. Yes, it’s true that overturning Roe will be difficult, though I don’t think it’s at all impossible that we’ll see it in our lifetimes (and hopefully in the earlier part of them and not when we’re well into retirement.) It’s possible, that is, provided the pro-life movement is willing to continue pushing the issue. Had they NOT kept fussing about this, the issue probably would have been declared dead long since, as liberals expected would happen, and as has happened in a number of other countries. Concerning the effects of overturning Roe… everyone knows that the matter would then revert to the States. Does he really think that’s some big subtlety that most people don’t understand? But the point is, you can’t do anything by way of legally prohibiting (or even seriously restricting) abortion until Roe is overturned. So it has to be a big focus. When that’s done, we can worry about fighting it out in the states.
Here’s the thing, though. At the end of the day, how is Kmiec’s position pragmatically any different from, say, the Clintons’? He wants to try, through tinkering with social programs, to make abortion “safe, legal and rare”, and he’s content to leave it at that. The take-home message is, “Let’s stop trying to make abortion illegal and start worrying about other things.” I just think that’s an enormous mistake. So long as abortion is safe and legal, it won’t be rare (and anyway there’s a question of principle here, that the government should not be complicit in murdering children.) Labor reform and entitlement programs (no matter how lavish) are not going to make up for a fundamentally defective attitude towards life and family, and people like Kmiec, by by trying to sideline the abortion question, aid in the destruction of a proper valuing of life. The American bishops took a similar line in the early 80’s and did inordinate damage that way. Let’s learn from their mistakes.
Regarding social programs and the like… yes, it’s important for us to do what we can to help the less fortunate, including poor/unmarried mothers, not least because it helps the image of the pro-life camp (showing that we’re loving and caring people, interested in more than finger-pointing.) However, it does become complicated when you blame “Republicans” for their lack of support of political initiatives. Of course we could discuss various particular policy proposals, but in general: a lot of conservatives are unsupportive of social programs because they don’t think it should be the state’s role to provide these things. State-administered entitlement programs can be very socially destructive, which is why many conservatives are enthusiastic about such efforts on a private level (and conservatives do tend to give a lot more money and time to charity than liberals, from the statistics I’ve read) but hostile to similar initiatives on a state level. So keep that in mind when you start blaming Republicans for not caring enough about about children and pregnant women.
“It is an act of trying to ensure that the *possibility* of abortion remains a real one for women. Such an act is of course gravely wrong and wrong-headed, but the object of the act is different from the one alluded to by the CCC and Canon Law.”
If this type of reasoning is the fruit of education and lay-theologizing and philosophizing, than I say close down the universities now!
I didn’t participate in an abortion; I just allowed its possibility to occur, so I’m not a reprobate evil monster? Please.
Regarding the so-called doctor of philosophy’s opinion on voting for a pro-abort it’s totally BS. Regardless of whom that pro-abort republican caucuses with, he won’t vote for a right-winger judge or justice in committee or the full senate. Stop splitting philosophical hairs and providing cover for all the pro-abort pols and their supporters who vote for them. “I’m voting for him because I read a theologian and philosopher on Cornell Society and they said I could.”
I’m starting to become more and more of a fan of this FSSP priest’s bulletin notice: (the laity should not be deliberating these things. It leads to total confusion and obfuscation even among trads)
Voting is a moral act. We have both a right and an obligation to vote. There are 5 non-negotiable issues for the Catholic voter. These 5 non-negotiable issues are: 1) Abortion, 2) Euthanasia, 3) Fetal stem cell research, 4) Human cloning, and 5) Homosexual “marriage”.
If a candidate supports any of these issues, he is immediately disqualified from receiving the vote of any Catholic. The reason for this is that these actions are intrinsically evil (against the natural law) and must never be promoted by the law. It is a mortal sin to endorse or promote any of these actions or issues knowingly, whether by voting directly on these issues or for candidates that support these issues.
Question: “What about voting for the lesser of 2 evils?” Only if a candidate fulfills the above 5 non-negotiables, then and only then does he qualify to be considered a ‘lesser of 2 evils’ vote. They are non-negotiable issues because the natural law is ‘at stake’. We can always fill in a name and vote that way. We have to remember, Our vote is our voice, and we will be judged on how we voted, not on who won a particular election.
I apologize for the “so-called” and “BS” phrase. But I still disagree with him.
Of some interest, from The Moral Obligation of Voting, Rev. Titus Cranny, 1952:
Conditions Under Which One May Vote For Unworthy Candidates
I have a question. Doesn’t this limit our choices for candidates? This will be my first election to vote in and I haven’t looked at all the policies, but from what I see, does not McCain support embryonic stem cell research? Doesn’t this violate the “5 non-negotiable issues?”
Can we overlook McCain’s support of stem cell research because Palin is opposed to it? I must admit, I’m slowly becoming discouraged.
This Sunday my trad priest went right after Biden and Pelosi for calling themselves practicing Catholics (whatever that means) and then publically challenging the teaching office of the Church by their statements on abortion.