After a meeting at the church the other Sunday, the conversation turned toward the HSS mandate. Someone who was not up on the matter asked what the issue was, & I said it was a three-pronged issue: 1) government dictating to a religion what it is & what it may do, 2) the Church’s teaching that contraception & its logical consequence of abortion are grave personal & societal evils, & 3) the widespread disobedience of Catholics regarding the Pope Paul VI’s teaching on these matters in Humanae Vitae – a fact, in this case, which the administration seems to be using to divide the faithful against their bishops.
At that point, someone chimed in that they were tired of people attacking Obama’s health care plan when the Republicans don’t offer anything better. It was so incongruous to my thought stream that I actually didn’t respond - the argument premises had been swapped too fast. I had not said anything about political party affiliations or agendas.
The truth is that Catholics do not “belong” to any political party, though the magisterial or prudential teachings of the Church may find better alignment with one party or another at any particular time. Many Catholics automatically identify themselves as Democrat, because of the work the Church did in the last century on behalf of the poor & the working man in the days of strife between capital & labor, & also in struggle for the civil rights of minorities. Perhaps the party infiltration of “progressive” & subversive elements that embrace many intrinsic evils went unnoticed by many Catholics.
These days both parties are in various ways woefully deficient in upholding Christian moral & social principles. However, not all social or moral issues are of equal weight. Some things, like war or capital punishment, for example, are incredibly serious & require the utmost consideration & care. But those that directly affect the begetting or taking of innocent human life trump all others. The Church does not outright forbid either war or capital punishment, but rather makes necessary distinctions about the conditions which must be present to make these evils permissible. The direct, intentional taking of innocent human life is never permissible or tolerable under any circumstances whatever. Nor is the redefinition of marriage. Nor is coercion by the state into the defining what a religion is, what it may believe, & how it may practice those beliefs.
So, if a certain political party offers safe haven to those who actively promote abortion, new definitions of marriage, the trampling of individual dignity & rights by the state, & a host of other perversions, then that party has ipso facto disqualified itself from electability by Catholics of informed conscience. No other issue can offset the gravity of these.
I hope more Catholics look clear-eyed at the moral state of our country & vote for the candidates that offer a vision most closely identifiable with our most deeply-held Catholic Christian principles than to vote the way they always vote because that’s how they’ve always voted & that’s how their parents & their parents’ parents always voted.
To read Humanae Vitae, click HERE.
To read the USCCB's statement Faithful Citizenship or to get the latest on the HHS mandate, click HERE.
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