Its hard to imagine that our Archbishop took a full page ad in the newspaper to remind us to be single issue voters (ie Republican) --and I know it was not without career risks that Tom Kelly countered with his very public letter to the editor reminding us that there are many moral issues to take into consideration as we enter the booth.
For me, I am heading to the Obama campaign office for 3 hours of last minute calls---lets just hope the eastern seaboard gets to the polls!
PUBLISHED WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2012 AT 1:00 AM / UPDATED AT 3:44 PM
MIDLANDS VOICES
Many evils confront Catholic voters
The writer is associate professor of systematic theology at Creighton University. He writes as an individual and not as a representative of Creighton.
It was with great interest that I read Archbishop George J. Lucas’ letter to Catholics that occupied a full back page of a section of this past Sunday’s World-Herald. And while I hardly expect the archbishop to explain moral theology in a single-page ad, the content of the letter itself requires some clarification.
Archbishop Lucas is doing a service to all Omaha-area Catholics in pointing out the Church’s teaching on conscience and intrinsic evils in an election year. The issues are complex and difficult to understand, and strong opinions are connected to many issues before us.
Archbishop Lucas, emphasizing the common good, stated in his letter: “Left unchecked, intrinsic evils undermine this good regardless of our other efforts. Therefore we must always oppose them. They are abortion, euthanasia, embryonic destructive research, cloning, genocide, torture, racism and the targeting of innocents in war or terrorism.”
A list preceded with the words “they are” implies that what follows is the definitive and complete list of what the Church considers intrinsically evil. Unfortunately, that is not true. It is what is left off of this list that concerns me.
In his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993), Pope John Paul II quotes one of the most important documents of Vatican II with a much more extensive list of intrinsic evils:
“Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat laborers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free and responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer the injustice, and they are a negation of the honor due to the Creator.”
Clearly, intrinsic evils extend far beyond personal choices related to human reproduction or medical research. They include the way people live or fail to live throughout society.
According to this more extensive list, torturing people at Guantánamo Bay is intrinsically evil, separating and deporting families is intrinsically evil, using workers and paying them the bare minimum to increase a profit margin is intrinsically evil.
When the fuller list is given, it becomes clear that neither political party adheres to the Catholic positions on a variety of issues, even intrinsic evils. And this speaks to the reason for my essay.
Regardless of what Church leadership says or implies, Catholics are not called to, nor should they be expected to, support either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party carte blanche as part of their faith tradition. We are, however, called and expected to exercise prudential judgment by informing ourselves about the policies of both party platforms and to understand the ultimate implications of who and what we are voting for and which path would be most effective in addressing a variety of evils in our society.
I believe one of the best guides for this process comes from the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ 2007 booklet, titled “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the U.S.”
As Catholics go to vote this year, it is my hope that they think through the fullness of Catholic teaching on a whole range of very important life issues and that they struggle in good conscience with trying to translate the moral values of the common good into civil law and social policy.
It is tempting to erase all ambiguity this election year by focusing on one issue or set of issues, such as medical or sexual ethics, but the Church has never taught its members to be single-issue voters.
To intentionally avoid naming other notable intrinsic evils allows them to, in the words of the archbishop, go unchecked and undermine the common good.
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