An open letter to family and friends about the election

Dear family and friends,

This got to be very long; I apologize in advance for that. I wanted to quote directly from the guidance I sought in addition to providing links in case anyone was interested. If it's too long, skip the quotes, or skip the whole thing. My purpose isn't to change your mind, it's to help you understand mine.

Politically, I have been a declared Independent for about 10 years now, and it seems more and more difficult in each election for me to find a candidate who meets all my requirements as a Catholic. But our ballots arrived in the mail last week, and it's time to decide. As a lifelong Catholic, I have found that when I have made good decisions, i.e., decisions that brought long-term positive results, they are the ones in which I have allowed my faith to inform the decision, whether it be a choice of entertainment or lifestyle or really, anything. For this reason, I decided it was important to go back and read and try to understand Church teaching on voting before deciding upon a candidate. I wanted my decision to be informed by my faith. So I took a look at the U.S. Bishops statement, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.” (You can read/download it in PDF format from http://www.faithfulcitizenship.org/ )

The bishops state in paragraph 21 and following, “21. Aided by the virtue of prudence in the exercise of well-formed consciences, Catholics are called to make practical judgments regarding good and evil choices in the political arena.

22. There are some things we must never do, as individuals or as a society, because they are always incompatible with love of God and neighbor. Such actions are so deeply flawed that they are always opposed to the authentic good of persons. These are called “intrinsically evil” actions. They must always be rejected and opposed and must never be supported or condoned. A prime example is the intentional taking of innocent human life, as in abortion and euthanasia. In our nation, “abortion and euthanasia have become preeminent threats to human dignity because they directly attack life itself, the most fundamental human good and the condition for all others” (Living the Gospel of Life, no. 5). It is a mistake with grave moral consequences to treat the destruction of innocent human life merely as a matter of individual choice. A legal system that violates the basic right to life on the grounds of choice is fundamentally flawed.

23. Similarly, direct threats to the sanctity and dignity of human life, such as human cloning and destructive research on human embryos, are also intrinsically evil. These must always be opposed. Other direct assaults on innocent human life and violations of human dignity, such as genocide, torture, racism, and the targeting of noncombatants in acts of terror or war, can never be justified."

Okay, I would say most Americans agree that actions that harm human life are wrong. So what does that mean for a Catholic who is voting or weighing the positions of the various candidates? The bishops continue:

"26. Pope John Paul II explained the importance of being true to fundamental Church teachings:

Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights—for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture—is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination. (Christifideles Laici, no. 38)"

So in terms of voting, how must I defend life with maximum determination? Then-Cardinal Ratzinger dealt with this question in 2004, “A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.” (http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/bishops/04-7ratzingerommunion.htm )

I wouldn’t vote for either candidate because I agreed with his position supporting a grave evil, so the question then becomes, what is a proportionate reason? A proportionate reason could be preventing something that is an equally grave evil.

In considering the two major party candidates, I have to then look at their stands on the other issues that the Bishops have identified, what I think of as “threshold issues,” meaning that the candidate must not support these or s/he doesn’t get in the door. These are the grave evils: promoting public policies that support abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, torture, terrorism, repression of religious liberty, or racial discrimination (Faithful Citizenship, paragraph 23). I think I’m summarizing correctly to say that these are all issues that go to the dignity of the human person, and attacks on that dignity are grave evils.

There are many other important issues that are often pointed out, which the bishops state are linked as life issues (paragraph 25), such as healthcare, education, and poverty abatement, but, according to the bishops, these follow from the right to life, they do not supersede it. In fact, when I think about it, they are meaningless unless a person has life in the first place. So, a candidate must cross the “intrinsic evil” threshold before I can look at those issues, although I am obligated to consider them, as well. And I guess that’s where it gets tricky.

More from Faithful Citizenship:

"27. Two temptations in public life can distort the Church’s defense of human life and dignity:

28. The first is a moral equivalence that makes no ethical distinctions between different kinds of issues involving human life and dignity. The direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life from the moment of conception until natural death is always wrong and is not just one issue among many. It must always be opposed.

29. The second is the misuse of these necessary moral distinctions as a way of dismissing or ignoring other serious threats to human life and dignity. Racism and other unjust discrimination, the use of the death penalty, resorting to unjust war, the use of torture, war crimes, the failure to respond to those who are suffering from hunger or a lack of health care, or an unjust immigration policy are all serious moral issues that challenge our consciences and require us to act. These are not optional concerns which can be dismissed. Catholics are urged to seriously consider Church teaching on these issues."

So, I have to compare the major candidates on all of these issues, Obama supports abortion (and infanticide as I would define it “killing an infant,” based on his vote in Illinois against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obama_and_infanticide.html ), but not torture. He is not opposed to embryonic stem cell research or human cloning. But he is concerned about reducing poverty and hunger and determined to end the Iraq war.

McCain opposes abortion, supports embryonic stem cell research but not cloning and although he says he does not support torture, based on some of his other statements about the war and current policies, I’m not sure I believe him, so possibly (probably?) also torture (this is a fine point because I define torture differently than the Bush Administration's defenders interpret US law as defining torture). McCain's campaign information says he also wants to end the war, but his timetable is different from Obama’s.

(NB: The bishops discuss their position on the war in paragraphs 67 and 68 of Faithful Citizenship:

(the pertinent part)
"The war in Iraq confronts us with urgent moral choices. We support a “responsible transition” that ends the war in a way that recognizes the continuing threat of fanatical extremism and global terror, minimizes the loss of life, and addresses the humanitarian crisis in Iraq, the refugee crisis in the region, and the need to protect human rights, especially religious freedom. This transition should reallocate resources from war to the urgent needs of the poor."

If what I read last week in Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper, was correct, this sort of "responsible transition" is already in the works. The reality is that the withdrawal can only happen so fast. The UN deadline for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is already set, and the agreements on how that will be done have already begun to be drafted. In fact, the initial proposal was presented by the Iraqi government to the U.S. Dept. of State a week or two ago. The withdrawal will most likely happen on the UN timetable without regard for which candidate is sitting in the oval office at that time.

Would I like it to happen sooner? Heck yes! I would love for all the missing dads and moms from this base to get home tomorrow and be with their kids for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I would love to have our pastor back from "downrange" as they call it, so we could have Mass on base here again. But do I want to make the mess we have made of Iraq even worse by pulling troops out without appropriate measures in place to keep the peace there? No. From a Christian standpoint, that would bring much greater harm to the people of Iraq than we already have brought. Not to mention failing to protect the remnant of the Iraqi Christian community that is still hanging on there, but which will be demolished if protections are not put in place for them.

From what I have learned of them, both candidates support some forms of intrinsic evil. I can’t really vote for either one without needing to consider the ‘proportionate reasons’ guidance Cardinal Ratzinger provides above. If I must vote for one, whom do I choose? It’s hard to balance these horrors. Both candidates support embryonic stem cell research, so there's no difference between them there. (Correction 10/30/08 (thank you, Dan): There is a nuance here that I missed. Obama supports the creation of new humans for the purposes of research while McCain supports only the use of frozen humans who would otherwise remain frozen or be discarded. McCain's position still calls for the abuse of human persons, but would result in fewer lives lost.)

The torture of prisoners against whom charges have not even been formally brought is unconscionable. It is conduct that is a disgrace to our nation and to humanity. But so is abortion. And the war is a horrible thing, as well.

So then what? At this point, to try to find some sort of way to determine proportions, I decided to compare the numbers of victims. What I discovered was chilling. Over the past five years, 4,188 American soldiers have died in Iraq (http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/ ). Even that many deaths, even the horrors of Guantanamo, are not as horrific as the abortion deaths of 45 million American children over the past 35 years since Roe was decided (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5309a1.htm#fig1 ). (Some accounts say 48 million children in the US alone—and scheduled to pass 50 million before the end of this year http://www.nrlc.org/Factsheets/FS03_AbortionintheUS.pdf ).

45-48 million. Innocent infants. I can hardly think of it. I can hardly comprehend the number.

So there it is.

The objection often raised, that McCain may not do anything to overturn Roe, is well taken. He can’t; not directly anyway. It’s a judicial matter and he is running for an executive office. He could appoint pro-life judges, but he might not. The reality is that judicial appointments are a might, not a will—complete speculation about what the president and the judge may or may not do. In any case, overturning Roe doesn’t really end abortion in the US anyway. It simply puts the decision-making back in the hands of the individual states, many of which have laws allowing abortion that would go back into effect immediately. So at best, McCain may (indirectly) return the abortion decision to the States. At worst, he may leave things as they are.

But last summer at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser, Obama said that one of his first acts in office would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act as soon as congress sends it to him http://www.nrlc.org/FOCA/index.html (the speech is also on YouTube), a bill which would strike down all governmental limits on abortion throughout the country. Every state law: from limits on partial birth abortion, to requirements that licensed physicians perform abortions, to fully informed consent, to parental notice laws, would be overcome by this act that would allow all abortions in all trimesters for any reason as a federal requirement. Obama has plainly stated that he intends to ensure that my tax dollars would be paying for even more abortions than they already are. He intends to expand the evil. That, to me, is far more grievous than keeping the status quo.

So now I have 45 million murdered unborn infants and one candidate who stated a clear intent to block legitimate limits on abortion approved by state legislatures. At this point, I’m not sure what could possibly be worse. All the wars in the past two centuries haven’t killed this many people. Nothing ever has. There really is nothing proportional to this. Obama has failed the ‘proportionate reasons’ test.

Therefore, I cannot in good conscience vote for Obama. I wish there were a viable 3rd party candidate who came at all of these issues from a Catholic standpoint rather than a purely Democratic or Republican one. That is really the only way I’m ever going to be able to vote freely and happily for someone. But I know from what our parents taught us, and from what the Bishops’ tell me, that “participation in political life [is] a moral obligation.” (Faithful Citizenship, para. 13) So I have to vote for someone.

And the bishops instruct me that I am not a “single issue voter” if I follow their guidance (“42. 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.”) (Faithful Citizenship)

And they remind me of my duty: “89. As Catholics, we are led to raise questions for political life other than “Are you better off than you were two or four years ago?” Our focus is not on party affiliation, ideology, economics, or even competence and capacity to perform duties, as important as such issues are. Rather, we focus on what protects or threatens human life and dignity.” (Faithful Citizenship)

When I stand before God and He asks me whether I did all I could to protect "these least ones" I want to tell him truthfully that I did. That's why I must vote against the candidate who would expand the evil of abortion. I must vote for life.

With love,
Judy