Associated Press
The nation’s bishops will vote next month on a political roadmap for Roman Catholics headed into the 2008 election that gives top billing to abortion but also spotlights a wide range of issues, including opposition to torture and killing noncombatants in war.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued similar guides on Catholic political engagement in the year preceding presidential elections for three decades. But in the past, the conference’s 50-member administrative board was the final stop for approval.
This time, in a sign of religion’s heightened role in public life, the full body of about 300 bishops will publicly debate and vote on “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” at its fall meeting in Baltimore.
“It’s to get buy-in from a broader group and to listen to any of the voices that want input on its final form,” said Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., president of the conference. “Given the complexities of our political situation, this is a very good teaching document for the bishops and we’re really very committed to it.”
Skylstad said he didn’t foresee major changes because of the unprecedented consultation on the draft, with bishops from seven committees taking part.
A draft of the document calls abortion and euthanasia “intrinsically evil” and “pre-eminent threats to human dignity because they directly attack life itself, the most fundamental human good and the condition for all others.” The bishops then cite other threats that can never be justified: human cloning, embryonic stem-cell research, racism, torture, genocide, and “the targeting of noncombatants in acts of terror or war.”
Throughout the 37-page document, opposition to abortion gets special attention.
“The direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life is always wrong and is not just one issue among many,” the draft says.
At the same time, the bishops say Catholics must not dismiss racism, the death penalty, unjust war, torture, hunger, health care problems or unjust immigration policy.
“A consistent ethic of life,” the document says, “neither treats all issues as morally equivalent nor reduces Catholic teaching to one or two issues.”
Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, one of the country’s most vocal bishops about Catholics’ need to speak in the public square, criticized the previous version of “Faithful Citizenship” for not being strong enough in underlining abortion’s pre-eminence.
Chaput said in an e-mail Tuesday the revised document “is better and clearer than any version in the recent past” but isn’t ideal. He said would be offering suggestions, but wouldn’t be specific.
Chaput wrote that “all bricks in a building are important, but the ones in the foundation support everything else. The latter aren’t just important; they’re indispensable.”
The Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, said the anti-abortion group is “grateful to the bishops for this document, and for pointing out that abortion is not just one issue among many; it attacks the very foundation of all our rights.”
Some independent Catholics groups have taken to distributing their own voter education guides in recent years. Among them are Priests for Life and California-based Catholic Answers, which distributed material on five “nonnegotiable” issues: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and same-sex marriage.
A group formed in 2006, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, produced an alternative guide that also highlighted church teachings on war, poverty and social justice.
Alexia Kelley, the group’s executive director, noted that the “Faithful Citizenship” draft includes new references condemning torture, genocide and the deaths of noncombatants in war.
“That’s reading the signs of the times,” she said.
The draft acknowledges the dilemma facing Catholic voters in finding a candidate who would fit the church’s criteria. But rather than pulling back, bishops urge Catholics to transform their respective political parties.
If a Catholic were to vote for an abortion rights candidate expressly because of that candidate’s position, that voter would be “guilty of formal cooperation in evil,” the draft says. Voting for an abortion rights candidate for other reasons is still “remote material cooperation” with evil. It can be permitted only if there are “proportionate reasons.”
The Rev. Tom Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center, said Democrats can argue they line up with the bishops on most issues, while conservative Republicans can say they’re in line on foundational issues, starting with abortion.
In 2004, some bishops and American Catholics worried that the voices of a few bishops were getting undue attention.
St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke drew the most notice for saying he would deny Communion to Democrat John Kerry, a Catholic who supports abortion rights. Burke has indicated he would so the same for 2008 Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani, a Catholic who also backs keeping abortion legal.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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posted October 31, 2007 at 6:22 pm
This is all very interesting. When is the live public debate going to be? Can it be viewed online or on television?
posted October 31, 2007 at 6:59 pm
The Catholic cable network EWTN will most likely air, if not the actual discussions, the hightlights of each day’s proceedings. Check your cable listings for details or better yet, go to http://www.ewtn.com.
As to the new political statement, what I hear sounds encouraging. You may have heard the expression “seamless fabric” when someone (usually a Catholic) talks about Catholic social teaching. This new statement by the Bishops should put cement overshoes over that notion and send it to the bottom of the lake where it belongs. “Livable wage” or “health care reform” goals cannot be given equal value with the effort to stop the premeditated killing of an unborn babies. “Reproductive rights” is a sham and a lie and has been used as the pretext for the prenatal executions of millions of innocent unborn since the early 1970′s. Compared to the abortion carnage the war in Iraq is hardly more than an expensive sideshow (and yes, I oppose our involvement there. The sooner we can bring the boys home the better).
posted October 31, 2007 at 7:43 pm
It would be interesting to see what they do if Giuliani gets nominated. It might curl their collars more to see a pro-choice Catholic elected than a pro-choice non-Catholic. But I’m still worried about his promise to nominate Supreme Court candidates like the bad ones Bush got through.
I hope people realize they can get Christianity a lot of places other than one that demands they vote against their own interests. Catholics need and get abortions like all the other types of people (well, not men).
And given the Church’s changing teachings on abortion it’s hard to see why they give it so much importance. I wonder if some rich fanatics demanded it or if they really are concerned that not enough baby Catholics-to-be are being born.
posted November 1, 2007 at 8:20 am
‘”Livable wage” or “health care reform” goals cannot be given equal value with the effort to stop the premeditated killing of an unborn babies.’
And it goes on. The anti-abortionists’ concern about “people” stops at the birth canal. Crank them out; don’t worry about whether they can be fed or cared for.
‘”Reproductive rights” is a sham and a lie and has been used as the pretext for the prenatal executions of millions of innocent unborn since the early 1970′s.’
And just what is a sham or lie about the ability of a woman or a family to control whether she or it will bear or have to raise a(nother) child? Those are the people who can decide that, not some old men in Rome who never had to put food on the table or worry about paying for a doctor for a sick child.
And your screed against “reproductive rights” suggests you also oppose birth control, though you may not be willing to admit it here.
Fetuses aren’t babies, they are in process of becoming babies. They don’t have the social connections babies have and earlier in the pregnancy, when abortions should happen and more would if the anti-abortionists would leave the clinics alone, the fetuses pretty much lack the ability to even feel pain for the short time an abortion takes.
Don’t waste pity on fetuses, pity families that can’t afford food, that have to work three or four jobs to keep the family fed and that have to skip medical care because they can’t afford it. Try feeling sympathy for actual people for a change.
posted November 1, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Wow. Thanks nnmns.
The currency of the RCC is guilt, and we continue to pay it time after time. I refuse to be guilted into voting for a candidate the church endorses if that candidate doesn’t also represent what is important to me.
Fact is, I refuse to let anyone tell me how to vote! I vote my own conscience and call it a day.
posted November 1, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Here we go again with “Embryonic Stem Cells”. If these work the best than we should be able to use them. People are going out of the country for them and living.
posted November 2, 2007 at 11:08 am
Fetuses aren’t babies? I guess they must be chickens, or tumors, or cauliflower. Still, their DNA is different from the DNA of the female creature they are carried in.
Some believe that what are termed “homosapien” are actually dogs, unable to control their instincts and unable to take responsibility for themselves. Thus the need for abortion. Personally, I believe mankind is capable of more than that.
posted November 2, 2007 at 4:19 pm
“Some believe that what are termed “homosapien” are actually dogs, unable to control their instincts and unable to take responsibility for themselves. Thus the need for abortion. Personally, I believe mankind is capable of more than that.”
When mankind has been able to eliminate wars, which as GWB has implied, could destroy the planet, then let’s talk about eliminating abortion. Let’s do the more important things first.
posted November 2, 2007 at 7:08 pm
As a devout Roman Catholic educated in Catholic schools for 22 years, culminating in ordination, followed by teaching in a seminary, I owe the Catholic Church a tremendous debt of gratitude. But I didn’t stop learning, and the more I learned, the more convinced I became that, for the most part, the higher one goes in the hierarchy, the more corrupt one becomes (or must be in order to be promoted).
After 30 more years of study (from both Catholic AND independent sources) I have published the results of my findings at http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/ . Regarding the issue of abortion, this church acts as though its leaders are moral giants, when in fact history has proven them to be moral pygmies.
Take this paragraph, for example, from the article in question.
“If a Catholic were to vote for an abortion rights candidate expressly because of that candidate’s position, that voter would be “guilty of formal cooperation in evil,” the draft says. Voting for an abortion rights candidate for other reasons is still “remote material cooperation” with evil. It can be permitted only if there are “proportionate reasons.”
There are important moral principles involved here. But look at what the leadership of the Catholic Church did about these principles during World War II. These principles were as valid then as they are now and were professed by the Catholic Church. Yet the Pope and German bishops were unable to recognize the Holocaust of millions of innocent full-blown human beings as an evil so great that there were no “proportionate reasons” that could justify any “cooperation” with this evil whether “immediate” or “remote”, “material” or “immaterial”.
While the Catholic Church had seen Nazism as evil enough to tell its members that they could not be members of that party in the years leading up to 1933, what on earth could justify their lifting that ban when the Nazi Party wasn’t no longer just a threat, but when they had gained the power needed to carry out their evil plans?
Since Hitler’s demise the Catholic Church has tried to put as much distance between itself and the Nazis as possible, but it didn’t oppose him when they SHOULD have. As the highly regarded Catholic social scientist concluded; “The German Catholic who looked to his religious superiors for spiritual guidance and direction regarding service in Hitler’s wars received virtually the same answers he would have received from the NAZI ruler himself.” { German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars, p. 17 )
posted November 3, 2007 at 12:21 am
“When mankind has been able to eliminate wars, which as GWB has implied, could destroy the planet, then let’s talk about eliminating abortion. Let’s do the more important things first.”
I’m against war too. But I do see a big difference between unborn babies who are totally innocent and dependent on their mothers versus adults who should know better but can’t play well with others.
So let’s euthanise Grandma because she’s too much trouble, and anyway the war is more important?
posted November 3, 2007 at 9:59 am
|, that was a very strange post. If you think, for instance, an attack by us on Iran, protected by Russia, could not escalate into a nuclear holocaust that destroys all the grandmas and all the fetuses and all the other folks, you aren’t paying attention or are very young. I grew up knowing WWIII would be the end of human civilization. So for the RCC to obsess on abortion when they could be preaching about war or poverty that helps lead to war or greed that also helps to lead to war or so many other more immediate things is frivolous or is perhaps just them flexing their political muscles.
But I know they do not have the moral authority any more, not that they ever did, to tell anyone how to vote.
And as for the “innocence” of fetuses, actually they are at that time parasites who would, if the mother to be wasn’t getting enough nourishment, take her life to keep themselves alive. So don’t picture a smiling actual baby when you hear fetus, picture a creature somewhere between a tiny mass of cells and a baby. And lose the “innocent” nonsense.
And if you or I get killed during someone else’s firefight or bombing will that be because we “can’t play well with others”? Get real!
posted November 4, 2007 at 7:49 pm
“So for the RCC to obsess on abortion when they could be preaching about war or poverty that helps lead to war or greed that also helps to lead to war or so many other more immediate things”
Ah, but the RCC does obsess about all those things. The Pope has spoken clearly that he is opposed to the war (even telling our President that face-to-face). It urges corporations to pay living wages and benefits to employees, etc. And, it works hard to end poverty all over the world – look at Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities, for two examples.
It’s not a this or that, it’s about quality of life for all mankind. IMO it’s the pro-abortion camp that obsesses about abortion to the detriment of these other issues.
“So don’t picture a smiling actual baby when you hear fetus, picture a creature somewhere between a tiny mass of cells and a baby.”
So if a baby isn’t cute and smiling but rather handicapped it too is not worthy of life? If I my arms, legs, and face is burned off, am I not worthy of life? I suppose not since I’d just be a parasite.
posted November 4, 2007 at 8:04 pm
“Ah, but the RCC does obsess about all those things. The Pope has spoken clearly that he is opposed to the war (even telling our President that face-to-face). It urges corporations to pay living wages and benefits to employees, etc. And, it works hard to end poverty all over the world – look at Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities, for two examples.”
It mentions all those things and it does some good things but, as this article shows, it obsesses on abortion.
“So if a baby isn’t cute and smiling but rather handicapped it too is not worthy of life? If I my arms, legs, and face is burned off, am I not worthy of life? I suppose not since I’d just be a parasite.”
As I’ll presume you are aware, I didn’t say that. An earlier poster had mentioned the typical “innocent babies” and I was pointing out “innocent” is not applicable to fetuses.