10.10.2008

Catholic perspective on abortion no. 7,300,283,376

This seems to have been passed over... Bishop Robert Vasa on voting for a pro-choice candidate:
Bishop Vasa explained the notion of proportionate reasons, saying, "The conditions under which an individual may be able to vote for a pro-abortion candidate would apply only if all the candidates are equally pro-abortion."

He added: "And then you begin to screen for the other issues and make a conscientious decision to vote for this pro-abortion candidate because his positions on these other issues are more in keeping with good Catholic values." In that case, he said, "It doesn't mean that you in any way support or endorse a pro-abortion position but you take a look in that context at the lesser of two evils."

Speaking of politicians with a pro-abortion stand he said, "When we have someone who has that stand on a disqualifying issue, then the other issues, in many ways, do not matter because they are already wrong on that absolutely fundamental issue."

Only when taken to a level of insanity could a 'pro-war' candidate be considered on par with a pro-abortion candidate in the Bishop's view. "If we had a candidate in favor of a war in Iraq in which we decimate the entire population and we kill as many civilians to impose as much terror on everybody as possible to make sure . . . If that was in opposition to a pro-abortion person then I'd have a real conflict of conscience because you'd have a direct and intentional killing of innocent persons on one hand and the direct and intentional killing of persons on the other hand, said the Baker Bishop.

"But we don't have that issue with capital punishment, we don't have that issue with the war in Iraq we don't have that issue with the present Administration," he added.

2 comments:

miafrate said...

"When we have someone who has that stand on a disqualifying issue, then the other issues, in many ways, do not matter because they are already wrong on that absolutely fundamental issue."

This statement is FUNDAMENTALLY at odds with Faithful Citizenship which explicitly denies that the importance of abortion overshadows other issues.

Zach said...

What line are you reading?

I think it is quite in line with this statement:

"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.