A great deal is up for judgment today: assisted suicide in Washington; marriage and family in California, Arizona, and Florida; and the dignity of the unborn throughout the United States. Not to mention a host of other issues demanding thoughtful consideration. These three, however, lie at the heart of the American values of life and liberty, and consequently they are the ones that will set the course of American life—public and private—well beyond the next four years.
Voters today who espouse American values, rooted in the Christian tradition, would do well to revisit this statement of Archbishop Charles Chaput. Writing when the election season was still young, Chaput outlines how we can be more faithful to our country, and to our God:
How do we make good political choices when so many different issues are so important and complex? The first principle of Christian social thought is: Don’t deliberately kill the innocent, and don’t collude in allowing somebody else to do it. The right to life is the foundation of every other human right. The reason the abortion issue is so foundational is not because Catholics love little babies—although we certainly do—but because revoking the personhood of unborn children makes every other definition of personhood and human rights politically contingent.
So can a Catholic in good conscience vote for a pro-choice candidate? The answer is: I can’t, and I won’t. But I do know some serious Catholics—people whom I admire—who may. I think their reasoning is mistaken, but at least they sincerely struggle with the abortion issue, and it causes them real pain. And most important: They don’t keep quiet about it; they don’t give up; they keep lobbying their party and their representatives to change their pro-abortion views and protect the unborn. Catholics can vote for pro-choice candidates if they vote for them despite—not because of—their pro-choice views. And they also need a proportionate reason to justify it.
What is a proportionate reason when it comes to abortion? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them in the next life—which we certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives, then we can proceed.
Bishop Robert Finn, in few words , agrees.
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