Let Your Yes Be Yes.

We received multiple queries regarding the bishop’s October 4 column in the The Catholic Moment, “Frequently asked questions to keep in mind during this year’s elections.“

A reader writes:

After reading the bishop’s column in the 10-4 -2020 issue of the Catholic Moment, I had several observations. I thought Bishop Doherty was being very selective in what he quoted from Pope Benedict’s 2004 letter. The end of the quote ended with the word proportionate, and he didn’t even bother include the word that followed, reason. It appeared to me that he was using this “cherry picked” quote to give tacit approval for Catholics to vote for pro-abortion candidates. I concluded this from what he didn’t include from Pope Benedict’s letter. He also stated that he was giving Benedict’s “precise” teaching on the matter, even while failing to include the information from the letter that would put it into context. He muddled the entire concept of a “proportionate reason”.

He did not include the very important sentence that states: There may be legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia. With this guidance, the faithful could have more effectively concluded what a proportionate reason really is. I think it is clear that Pope Benedict did not believe that reasons like health care, climate change, and the death penalty could be considered proportionate reasons to abortion. In fact he specifically rules out that the death penalty could be considered “proportionate” to an intrinsic evil like abortion!

To me, this selective quoting of the Pope is reprehensible. The bishop is misleading, rather than guiding his flock. Bishop Doherty may be included among the ranks of the one third of US bishops that said that abortion is not the preeminent moral issue, as scandalous as that is. It’s too bad that his tolerance for voting for abortion-supporting candidates is much greater than his tolerance for priests that tell the truth.

–MFB

A few thoughts: MFB is correct that USCCB experienced a somewhat heated discussion last year in putting together its document on Faithful Citizenship, with San Diego’s Bishop McElroy leading the charge to deny the issue of abortion its place of preeminence, and instead to lump it in among other social ills. With McElroy rebutted by Archbishop Chaput, who received loud and unconventional applause, the pro-life position remained in its place of importance in the document.

The assertion that the Ratzinger letter allowed for casting one’s vote in favor of a candidate promoting abortion, as long as said candidate aligns with Church teaching on other issues– silly on its face–has already been effectively refuted (see especially pages 7-8 of the linked article where the author explains that voting for a candidate or legislation that poorly reflects Church teaching on the non-negotiable issues is permitted in order to exclude a candidate or legislation that would be yet worse on said issues. Another instance of such permissibility would be situations of moral impossibility, as when a man must cast a vote in a corrupt Soviet election, knowing that a vote for a dictator’s opponent would be meaningless and would cause persecution to his family.)

Yet in spite of all this, we’ve seen the subtle slide by those of McElroy’s persuasion to build an escape hatch against this into their election guidance.

It’s already been noticed, for example that Bishop Joseph Tobin of Newark stated that Catholics could in good conscience vote for a certain Catholic presidential candidate. The latter holds a pro-abortion stance and has just pledged to ensure legal abortion is the law of the land, even in the event Roe v. Wade was overturned. His running mate is heavily funded by the likes of Planned Parenthood and has the distinction of having prosecuted to the enth degree and with unique, discriminatory aggressiveness the journalists who exposed PP’s illegal trafficking in fetal body parts.

Against this backdrop, Tobin’s own thoughts run thus: “I, frankly, in my own way of thinking, have a more difficult time with the other option.” (The full discussion with Tobin can be viewed here.)

Tobin later walked backed his remarks, saying he gave no actual endorsement and merely wanted to remind Catholics of their duties in civic life. When asked by CNA, he declined to say if Catholics could in good conscience vote for the other candidate, but said in his statement:

“A Catholic cannot vote for a political candidate because he or she supports an issue considered an intrinsically evil act, such as abortion, euthanasia, deliberately subjecting workers or the poor to subhuman living conditions or assisted suicide,” the statement said. 

“At the same time” the statement continued, “a voter should not use a candidate’s opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity.”  

Which brings us to our own diocese, the column in question, and the questions raised by MFB and others.

Let’s be clear that we don’t intend to characterize our bishop as being in league with the above. It seems to us that the problems in the October 4 article had more to do with a lack of clarity in expression; whether purposeful or not, we cannot say.

While it’s likely that at least one omission from the Ratzinger letter was accidental or a copy error (the missing word “reasons”), there’s no doubt that including further clarifying statements from the letter, would have helped greatly since the discussion on proportionality was indeed abbreviated to the point of uselessness.

And therein lies the problem. Catholic voters have decisions to make right now. Perhaps in the rarified air of the USCCB, people pose questions such as those included in bishop’s column, but the average voter does not, and needs more direct guidance. Surely moral philosophy, enlightened by our supernatural knowledge of God, is there to make things more clear, not to obscure them.

Bishop Doherty, quoting Mencken, hinted we should eschew the hope of simple or plain answers. We get it. There are things to weigh and consider in moral reasoning. But does that mean that in doing so we are descending into a hopeless, tangled morass that will take years of study to claw our way out of, as the bishop’s final paragraph seemed to suggest?

If so, then those who have already invested extensive time studying higher-level theology and who have a teaching role in the Church should give the rest of us poor suckers a clear shorthand version.

Again, the main issue that seemed to cause confusion was the discussion (or lack thereof) of “proportionality.” The bishop did clarify that the term does not refer to the outcome, to more good than evil being the result of an action.

Well, that is good, since there is literally nothing we can place on the scale that will outweigh the outcome associated with abortion, in terms of sheer violence, grotesque bloodshed and staggering loss of life caused by this intrinsic evil, to say nothing of the way it harms and corrupts souls, turns parents from their children, making hitmen out of doctors and nurses (to borrow an image from Pope Francis), violates consciences, abuses the reproductive processes of our bodies, excludes a category of persons from the human family and society, usurps the money paid by taxpayers to promote the common good, feeds the sin of greed, exports this evil into developing societies, commodifies and dishonors the bodies of the dead, dehumanizes the disabled, preys on women in dire need, and is entwined historically with the evils of racism and genocide and presently with those of rape and human trafficking. (Should we go on…?)

No, proportionality has to do with having sufficiently serious reasons to, in this instance, cast one’s vote for someone who will protect and expand access to abortion, in order to avoid some other, presumably greater evil.

So let’s have it, then: What is that greater evil? What horror must be averted that looms larger than the deliberate and ongoing mass extinction of the unborn and all the abovementioned wickedness that attends it? What are the reasons grave enough to suffice? Serious question.

The hour is late, and the time for gnostic abstractions has long since passed. We’ve lived in this culture of death for so long that its crimes have receded into the background and become like the wallpaper. We need to speak plainly, even at the risk of oversimplification, of seeming unsophisticated to the world, if we are ever to remove it.

One such no-fluff take is offered by John Mallon in the The Washington Times. Among its many other merits is the fact that he brings together the relevant Church documents in all their blunt, plain-spoken glory, stating:

Catholics should be aware that, yes, you can, and sometimes must, be a single-issue voter when that single issue trumps all others.

The Vatican said: “It must in any case be clearly understood that whatever may be laid down by civil law in this matter, man can never obey a law which is in itself immoral, and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle the liceity of abortion. Nor can he take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it.” (Declaration on Procured Abortion; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Nov. 18, 1974; No. 22, cited by St. John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae, (The Gospel of Life), No. 25, March 1995)

Then it was further clarified: “[T]hose who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a ‘grave and clear obligation to oppose’ any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them.” (Emphasis added. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Nov. 24, 2002, Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the participation of Catholics in Political Life.)

The U.S. Bishops stated: “The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family and because of the number of lives destroyed.” (Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility, Nov. 12, 2019, Introductory Letter.)

Like it or not, abortion is now one of the chief issues of this current election. Bishop Doherty is correct that in our country we tend to vote on candidates rather than propositions, but it’s also true that in our system, candidates effectively embody propositions. They are considered to be the reasons why certain propositions and laws will come into being.

So: May a Catholic, knowing full well that a candidate’s stated intention is to protect and promote abortion, cast a vote in support of that candidate? Can the voter support a candidate who is the avatar of abortion on demand, because he might also be the avatar of some other worthy issue? Is the voter off the hook, morally speaking, by clicking his heels together three times and saying, “I’m voting for him, but not because I like all the abortion this is going to lead to, I have other reasons”?

We suggest that everyone so inclined, maybe some of our bishops included, look Christ in the face and see if they feel like giving Him all the complex reasons why they think that answer can be ‘yes.’ Why does it feel that He’ll maybe not just be nodding along in agreement?

Christ is merciful. There are delicate things to negotiate within moral theology, but there are also simple truths, and maybe He doesn’t require the average man to crawl through mazes of legalese and to faceplant in exhaustion each night upon the pages of Germain Grisez to know that it’s not possible to place your support behind those who have openly pledged to promote evil acts–irrevocable, unjustifiable, evil acts that fall within the category of the “non-negotiables”–without sharing in those acts in your own way.

Priests and bishops, we ask you to be clear and unequivocal in your leadership on this matter. Fellow laymen, we ask you to be diligent in your duty as citizens whose real homeland is above. Let’s keep each other accountable in this always.

This evening, let’s put these concerns into the hands of Our Lady of Victory, Our Lady of the Rosary, on this her feast day.