Wosbald wrote: 28 Aug 2023, 10:32
+JMJ+
Del wrote: 23 Aug 2023, 20:47[…]
[N]o bishop, and certainly not the USCCB, has come out with a clear statement that we must tolerate Biden's crisis because it would be a mortal sin to vote for Trump's policies.
[…]
That's prolly cuz the Bishops and the USCCB don't speak (at least, not authoritatively) in such a hamfisted, politically weaponizable way. They are well aware that a Vote for Public Office is a vote for persons — not for policies — and that policies (though certainly not negligible or isolable from the moral calculus) are only an indirect consequence of said vote.
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Del wrote: 23 Aug 2023, 20:47[…]
As for myself, I must tolerate one version or the other of immoral border policy. But I cannot vote for a candidate or party that promotes abortion.
[…]
Of course, yes. That's your prerogative. The Catholic is principally free to vote (though not with blithe equanimity) for whomever he prudentially deems best. Though the standard conditions apply:
- One must weigh one's choice, with sincerity and docility, against the Church's ethical norms.
- One must not vote because of any political positions offending against the Nonnegotiables, but only despite them.
- Just as in golf, casting a vote has a followthrough. And in the followthrough from pulling-the-lever on voting day, one must refrain from aiding & abetting said offenses in the pubic square, and further, must oppose them as much as one is reasonably and prudently able.
As soon as a Catholic authority utters "Non-Negotiable," he is talking about grave matter and the risk of mortal sin.
The only issue in America that is so clear -- and so clearly evil -- that bishops have couched discussion in terms of "Non-Negotiable" is the matter of Life (abortion, assisted suicide, human cloning, etc.).
To put a fine point on it:
There is no balance to counter a candidate who expresses full-throated support for abortion and who desires easy, wide-spread access to abortion. There never was a "seamless garment."
No combination of border policy, environmental policy, tax and fiscal policy, foreign policy, et al., is good enough to merit voting for a pro-abortion candidate. Not only are millions of children at risk, but also the voter's soul and salvation.
As my own bishop preached, "There will be over three million children murdered during the next four years. And at your judgment, you would have to face them..... and explain,
"What policy was so important that they could not be protected by your vote?" Are you ready to give them your account? What answer would you give?"
The only way a Catholic can morally vote for a pro-abortion candidate is if the other candidate is even more stridently pro-abortion. As you said, voting
in spite of the evil position, not because of it.
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Meanwhile, we can still enjoy a jolly discussion as to how and whether Biden's border crisis is morally superior to Trump's former border policy.
And we can speculate as to whether Trump's policy during his second term might be far better than that of his first term.
I hope we find out.... for the sake of migrants, and for the protection of children.
