Why a Catholic Can't vote for Obama

Catholics make up a big sized voting bloc.  One in four voters is Catholic.  Four years ago, when Barak Obama won the presidential election, 54 percent of voting Catholics side with the Democratic nominee.  Many bought into his “Hope and Change.  Most didn’t check out his pro abortion record as an Illinois Senator.  Or they just didn’t care.  Some voted for him because they and their families had voted Democrat for years.  Others were not well informed.

Now four years later, I can’t see Obama getting close to that 54%.  He will go down in history as the most pro abortion president.  On top of that his HHS mandate that religious employers (the Catholic Church) through their insurance companies provide contraceptives for their employees is sure to erode his Catholic support. I don’t how anyone can call themselves Catholic and support a President that is attempting to strip our God given rights of religious freedom out from under us.  But there will some who do. 

That 54 per cent hit close to home recently for me when I responded to a Facebook post for a Catholic friend and former co-worker who seemed to be supporting Obama.   Since then I’ve learned that some of my cousins also are Catholic for Obama.  I’m sure that there are many more Catholics that will side with the President, even though the Church teaches that it is wrong for a Catholic to vote for a candidate who is pro abortion when another candidate is pro-life.   That is the case this year.  Many priests refuse to bring up the political and moral issues such as abortion, homosexual marriage, and religious freedom as is the case in my parish.  The Catholic Church doesn’t have a good track record of teaching what it believes. On top of that, the mainstream media has not been fair in vetting Obama. 

 
A couple of weeks ago the Democratic and Republican parties held their conventions. I can say after watching both conventions, that I’m proud to be a Catholic Republican with the emphasis on Catholic.  At the RNC, the spotlight was on the religious values of Mitt Romney.  Helping to paint that picture were pro-life Catholics such as Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, Susana Martinez, Marco Rubio, and of course VP candidate Paul Ryan.  They are all politicians that are guided by their faith.  They are all Catholics first. 

Former Denver, now Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, in a recent column talks about what it means to have Catholic faith and public life.  He stresses that

“we need to be Catholics first and political creatures second”.  

He goes on to say that 

“Hell is real"

 and that,

‘if we do not help the poor, we will go to hell”.

Then he defines the poor as 

“people who are homeless or dying or unemployed or mentally disabled. 

 

and,

 They’re also the unborn child who has a right to God’s gift of life, and the single mother who looks to us for compassion and material support”.

Many Catholics try to weigh the life and moral issues versus the political issues.  As Catholic voters we can’t do that. At the DNC Julian Catsro, Kathleen Sebelius, Caroline Kennedy, Sister Simone Campbell, Eva Longoria, and VP Joe Biden also call themselves Catholic.  They all came out on to stage with the message “I am Catholic but…”  They showed their support for abortion, contraception, and gay marriage – all things that the Catholic Chruch teaches are evil.  Bishop Thomas Olmstead of Phoenix talks about “Rebutting the Catholic but syndrome” in a column from 2004.

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry or what. My biggest problem with their message is how many times that they talked about values.  They wouldn’t know a value is it jumped up and bit them in the rear.  How do you have values when you deny and boo God three times?  How do you have values when abortion, contraception and gay marriage are at the center of your platform?  Those aren’t Catholic or Christian values! 

I have said many times in the past that the Catholic Church is not a smorgasbord where one can pick and choose what they want to believe.  That would be like ripping pages out of the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” or “The Bible” because you don’t agree with what is printed on those pages. We can’t do this! Those who do this are “Cafeteria Catholics”. 

We have an obligation as Catholics not only to learn what our Church teaches but to follow those teachings. Every time we receive Holy Communion we not only receive the True Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, we also affirm that we accept and believe all of the teachings of the Catholic Church.  That’s why we don’t have an open communion table.  That’s why the bishops of Sebelius, Biden,  and some other Cafeteria Catholics have asked them not to receive communion. 

So back to my friends and relatives who are Catholic.  What does the Church teach about voting?  Can we weigh the moral or life issues versus the social issues?  Not according to our Catholic bishops. Can we vote for Obama?  Simply put, the answer is no, because there is a clear cut distinction between Obama and Romney. 

Just this past week, the Bishops of Kansas had a column that ran in the local diocesan newspaper, “The Catholic Advance”. "Bishops: Election Year Priorities for Catholic Voters"  

 

They are clear that

 “not all political issues carry the same weight.” 

They list five of these issues as 

 

"Not Negotiable

1.      Abortion

2.      Embryonic Stem Cell Research

3.      Euthanasia

4.      Assisted Suicide

5.      The Redefinition of Marriage

 

"These issues are intrinsically evil. Something is understood to be intrinsically evil if it is evil in and of itself regardless of our motives or the circumstances. These matters are not negotiable for they contradict the natural law, available to everyone through human reasoning, and they violate unchanging and unchangeable Catholic moral principles.”

"Catholics who depart from Church teaching on these issues separate themselves from full communion with the Church.”

 

The Bishops separate other issues as public policy. 


These include: 

“immigration, poverty, environmental protection, criminal justice, health care, and many many others.

 

Catholics should not be indifferent to these issues because they bear directly upon the common good.  The bishops, however, do put a different weight upon them because

“Holy Scripture and Scared Tradition do not tell us what levels various government programs should be funded at or whether the federal government, state, or local government, the private sector, or some combination of the above are best equipped to deal with certain problems.”

 

The bishops go on to put a priority on the intrinsically evil issues.

 

“While it may run counter to the prevailing political culture, the moral imperative of ending abortion, which has claimed the lives of over 50 million unborn Americans since 1973, takes priority over even critically important issues like restoring America’s broken economy. Catholics have a moral obligation to use all of the means at their disposal as voters and as public officials to resist intrinsically evil public policies, even if it means subordinating their political preferences on other important concerns.”

Pope John Paul II in his 1988 exhortation “Christifideles Laici says 
 

“ 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 fundamental right and condition for all other personal rights is not defended with maximum determination.”

At this point I will emphasize that The Catholic Church is not trying to tell us what political party to belong to or vote for. Their job is to simply help us form our consciences. As most Catholic Bishops will tell you, it is not their duty to tell you for whom to vote, but they do have an obligation to speak out on moral issues.  The Catholic bishops said in their column: 

“The Church has a constitutional right, like other organizations, to express its viewpoint on matters of public policy. However, the Catholic Church is not a political interest group. Rather than instructing Catholics who to vote for, the Church’s role in the political process is to illuminate the moral dimension of the various political issues, and to form the consciences of Catholics so that they can make morally informed judgments as both voters and elected officials

 

Now let’s look at the two candidates.  How do they stack up on the non-negotiable issues?  In a perfect world both candidates would stand with the Church on all of these issues and we could then move on to the public policy issues.  That however is not the case this year. 

1. Abortion – President Obama is the most pro abortion president that this country has ever seen.  As an Illinois State Senator, he voted 3 times against laws that would protect babies born alive after failed abortions. He also has a 100% track record against bills that would ban partial-birth abortions.  Check out his complete pro abortion record asour president. 

At one time Mitt Romney was also pro-choice, but about halfway through his term as Massachusetts Governor, he had a conversion declaring that he was pro-life.  What caused him to change? The pressure to change the law protecting embryos from lethal stem cell research.  Romney sat down and had discussions with pro life doctors and came away convinced that all human life begins at conception.  Romney still isn’t 100% pro-life as he leaves an exception for cases as rape or incest or to save the life of the mother. He also believes that federal funds should not be used to pay for it.  The difference is clear. Here is what he would do if elected president.

2. Embryonic Stem Cell Research - There is also a clear choice here. During his first term as president, President Obama announced the signing of Executive Order 13505 Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells.  He also supports federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.  Romney while supporting stem cell research is against the practice of cloning or embryo farming as a source for cells because it takes away new life.  Mitt Romney believes that there should be ethical lines drawn, President Obama does not.

3 and 4.  Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide – There is not a clear choice between the candidates on these issues… President Obama on the issue

"one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.”

suggests that he would support euthanasia or assisted suicide.  Romney while not making any clear statements on the issues has gone on record as supporting the right of the family to make such decisions.  On this issue, I’m not sure I would trust either candidate with my life.  Note to self:  Make out living will!    

 

5. The Redefinition of Marriage - There is a clear choice here.   While President Obama has a history of flip flopping on this issue his latest statements suggest that he would support same sex marriage.  Mitt Romney is against gay marriage. 

“I believe we should have a federal amendment in the constitution that defines marriage as a relationship between a man and woman, because I believe the ideal place to raise a child is in a home with a mom and a dad."

 

It is obvious that neither candidate measures up 100% to the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Bishops of Kansas City in a Pastoral Letter 4 years ago addressed this possibility. In this case,

 

“the appropriate judgment would be to select the candidate whose policies regarding this grave evil will do less harm. We have a responsibility to limit evil if it is not possible at the moment to eradicate it completely.

 

The voter, who himself or herself opposed these policies, would have insufficient moral justification voting for the more permissive candidate.”

That is the case here as both candidates do not measure up 100%. It is obvious that President Obama is the most permissive candidate when it comes to the non-negotiable moral issues and that the policies of Mitt Romney would limit the evil. In this case a Catholic who votes for President Obama

 

“promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.” - BishopThomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, IL

Those are the facts. That is why a Catholic can not vote for President Obama.  Does that mean that as a Catholic you have to vote a straight Republican ticket. No!!!  There are candidates who are pro-abortion in the Republican party, just as there are candidates who are pro-life in the Democratic party. As a Catholic you should always evaluate each candidate and race separately by the above standards.  Does this mean that we are one issue voters?  NO!  What it does mean is that one issue can disqualify a candidate. 

For more on this issue check out the "Voters Guide for Serious Catholics",  or listen to this radio show from Catholic Answers - "How to Vote like a Catholic".