Can a Catholic Vote for Obama? Part 2

5 CommentsThe Catholic Hack! Podcast

Let’s listen to what Bishop Gracida has to say:


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5 Comments

  1. Kenneth W. Barrett, Jr.

    With respect, Bishop, I must disagree with your assertion that a Catholic cannot in good conscience vote for Mr. Obama.

    According to the Forming Consciences For Faithful Citizenship document published by the USCCB, “A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes
    a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter’s intent is to support that position.” This only makes sense as there is no real pro-life candidate in this election.

    Additionally, it goes on to state, “There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons.
    Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.”

    I submit to you that there could actually be situations for some voters that could cause them to vote, in good conscience to vote for a pro-choice candidate such as Mr. Obama.

    Your statement is a source of great frustration for many Catholics and has been a source for a movement of it’s own. The Forming Consciences document specifically states, “As Catholics we are not single-issue voters. A candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support. Yet a candidate’s position on a single issue that involves an intrinsic evil, such as support for legal abortion or the promotion of racism, may legitimately lead a voter to disqualify a candidate from receiving support.”

    Mr. McCain as well as his party have supported a number of practices and/policies that themselves serve to promote an intrinsic evil, such as racism, and thus could serve to disqualify support for him and the party. Additionally, Mr. McCain is an admitted adulterer, which makes him no better than the alternate choice.

    I personally, disagree with Mr. Obama’s position on abortion. As a Catholic, abortion is a grave sin. I am not voting for Mr. Obama because of his position on abortion. Rather, I am voting for him in spite of his position on abortion. Personally, I feel that Mr. McCain will do nothing to get rid of abortion or even to reduce abortions. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, has a plan that will at least reduce the number of abortions. Mr. McCain won’t even be able to get anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court with a Democratic Congress.

  2. Joe McClane

    Dear Kenneth,

    What you are missing is the fact that Abortion out weighs all other issues due to the shear gravity of the issue. This is what the document from the Bishops states as well as all the other statements put out by many many Bishops.

    We sinply can not vote for Obama because of his position on Abortion. With 48 million (and thats only the ones we can count) and counting no other issue has the same weight. Therefore we must vote pro-life. This is a non negotiable.

    I recommend you listen to the 3 part video series by Fr. Corapi as well as listen to the round table shows I put out.

    No Bishop has come out to say you can vote for Obama but many have said you can not. We are called to be obedient… even unto death… death on a cross… that’s What we are told in scripture. So, when the shepherds come out to tell us it is a grave moral concern, that we vote for a pro-death candidate, we simply can not chose to ignore that. We must be obedient. After all… we were not set up as Pope’s over our own Church.

    Abortion is the worst atrocity of man kind and voting for Obama will set back the pro-life movement by decades. All the work… blood by innocents… we must not allow this to happen.

    Watch the video… I pray you will dig deep and search your concience and vote for life and not against it.

    God Bless
    Joe

  3. Victor R. Claveau, MJ

    A Catholic can disagree with the Church’s position on health care, education, economic security, immigration, and taxes and still remain a Catholic in good-standing.

    These issues are not codified by either Canon Law or the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). However, if when aware of the Church’s position that abortion and euthanasia are intrinsically evil, a Catholic deliberately votes for a pro-abortion candidate when there is a pro-life alternative, he separates himself from the Church and from Jesus Christ – forfeiting salvation.
    Let’s review that Church’s position on this issue.

    CCC 2258 – Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being.

    CCC 2261 – Scripture specifies the prohibition contained in the fifth commandment: “Do not slay the innocent and the righteous.” The deliberate murder of an innocent person is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human being, to the golden rule, and to the holiness of the Creator. The law forbidding it is universally valid: it obliges each and everyone, always and everywhere.

    CCC 2272 – Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. “A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae,” “by the very commission of the offense,” and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law. The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.

    CCC 1463 – Certain particularly grave sins incur excommunication, the most severe ecclesiastical penalty, which impedes the reception of the sacraments and the exercise of certain ecclesiastical acts, and for which absolution consequently cannot be granted, according to canon law, except by the Pope, the bishop of the place or priests authorized by them. In danger of death any priest, even if deprived of faculties for hearing confessions, can absolve from every sin and excommunication.

    Heretic: A baptized and professed person who denies or doubts a truth revealed by God or proposed for belief by the Catholic Church is a heretic (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert C. Broderick, Ed., Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1987, p. 262).

    Can. 1364 §1 An apostate from the faith, a heretic or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication, without prejudice to the provision of Can. 194 §1, n. 2; a cleric, moreover , may be punished with the penalties mentioned in Can. 1336 §1, nn. 1, 2 and 3 (Code of Canon Law).

    Any Catholic who supports intrinsically evil acts (abortion, euthanasia, cloning, same-sex marriage, etc), votes for them, or otherwise financially supports or furthers their cause, cannot remain Catholic. Catholics must adhere to Catholic teaching or they separate themselves from the Church; the Body of Christ.
    Such Catholics are excommunicated by virtue of the acts themselves. A latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication is triggered when they support, enable, and perpetuate such obvious and egregious evil (Cf. Code of Canon Law, Canons 1364, 1398; Canon 1329, §2). They are in turn forbidden from approaching the sacraments as the result (Cf. Catechism of Catholic Church # 1463).

    Victor R. Claveau, MJ
    The Evangelization Station
    P.O. Box 517
    Altaville, California, USA
    Telephone: 209-728-5598
    E-mail: evangelization@earthlink.net
    http://www.evangelizationstation.com

  4. Scott

    I agree with Ken. If we follow Victor’s logic then we must admit that we’ve lost about half the church in the last election via automatic excommunication. I guess we just can’t trust those pesky documents published by the USCCB.

  5. Joe McClane

    Hi Scott,

    The problem with that approach is that it becomes a #'s game. Can we say? So long as we commit grave sins in big #'s then we can ignore them? Of course not. Jesus himself says to his apostles, in Luke 18:8, that "when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" In other words too many “Christians” will loose their faith by the time Jesus returns. The reading, from this past Sunday, backs this up from Matthew 25. Jesus also reminds us that the path to hell is wide but the gate to heaven is narrow in Matthew 7:13.
    Yes, even half the church could of self-excommunicated by voting (assuming they knowingly decided to ignore the abortion issue) for a pro-abortion candidate. Another example would be lust. Can I ignore the deadly sin of lust simply because 100’s of millions of people commit this sin every single day? Surely God will not punish all those people? Well God does not force anyone to sin or even to go to hell. We make these decisions all on our own. When we choose to ignore our shepherds, and do what we want to do, then we face the consequence to action no matter how many of us are doing it.
    The Church is not ruled by the majority of opinion. It is ruled by Jesus Christ who is Truth and who came to cause division (Matt 10:35). Yes, he united the entire human race back to God however, he knew that too many would not have the courage to follow Truth (his voice) and pick up their crosses and take it to Calvary. Its obedience… that the trick. We must be obedient just like Jesus was. Obedience means going against the tide of the day… going against a safe comfortable life. It can even mean being obedient even unto death, death on a cross (Philippians 2:8).
    We simply voted for a better economy and end up sacrificing millions of innocent children in the process. Will it be good enough to say that "we thought" all intrinsic evils are equal at our judgment? I can't say for 100% certain but if I were a betting man I would not put my money on that argument. In fact, we can know that all intrinsic evils are NOT equal and that there is a hierarchy.
    How? Well we have the document from the US Bishops. This is the one that too many Catholics used to say that all intrinsic evils were the same. But does it? No. We can know this by the over 80 Bishops, who helped write that document, came out with their own statements to help us interpret their own document. You can read all of their statements at http://www.priestsforlife.org/elections/bishops.htm. They exhorted us to vote pro-life because more innocent lives have been lost to the atrocity of abortion than all of the wars the USA have been in combined. Too many Catholics simply ignored their help, in interpreting the document that these Bishops wrote, so that they can interpret it however it pleased them. Not to mention that every single apologist on Catholic radio and TV backed up the interpretation by these Bishops and still we ignored it. How can all these Bishops and apologists have gotten it so wrong and so many lay Catholics (and presumably clergy) have gotten it so right? Well if were talking #’s and if I were a betting man… I would put my money on the Bishops and the apologist and not on Catholics who simply were looking for a way to “get past abortion”.

    The bottom line… if I had voted for Obama I would go to confession and then I would do everything in my power to influence the Democratic party to think of the sanctity of life. When Obama overturns the Mexico City Policy he will be giving millions of our dollars to Planned Parent Hood (the largest provider of Abortion, and the most wealthy, on the planet) so they can kill babies in 3rd world countries. Obama will also increase federal dollars (yours and mine) to Planed Parent Hood here in the states for the first time in 6 years. This money will also be used to kill innocent children. Then, when Obama pushes the Freedom of Choice Act (which he promised Planned Parent Hood he would do) every effort (by blood, sweet, and tears) to limit abortion will be done away with opening up the gates for Planned Parent Hood to turn its Billion dollar industry into an even bigger death machine.

    50 million lives (remember that our #’s are only best guesses as most abortion mills do not keep accurate records on purpose) have been snuffed out since Roe vs. Wade. Hitler & Stalin could have only dreamed of killing so many. The decisions that Obama will make will directly effect the murders of millions of lives. So… what could be so important as this? The economy? I should consider my 401K before this? health care? The war on terror? Immigration? It all pales in comparison to abortion even though all of them are important. They are just not equally important. We can not expect to be able to make lesser decisions properly if we can’t even recognize the right of a conceived child to have life. The right to life is the foundation of all other issues.
    I am no ones judge however, God commands us to love our neighbor so much that we must let them know when their house is burning to the ground. Well… the flames are flaming and the house is coming down America. Reproving the sinner is the 6th spiritual work of mercy.

    Thanks for the feedback.

    God Bless
    Joe

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