Catholics for Obama?
President Obama is doubling down on
his persecution of the Church, particularly through the HHS mandate. Hercules Industries won an injunction against
the mandate, and the administration has appealed. And the President has made it clear that his
determinations of what violates Catholic consciences are more authoritative
than the judgments of actual Catholics, including the Pope.
Now we have Catholics in swing states
receiving phone calls from people claiming to be practicing Catholics
supporting Obama, asking them how they could really consider voting for Mitt
Romney, a Mormon. Now I doubt if many of
these callers are really Catholics, and if any are really practicing Catholics,
and I find it deeply offensive that they would suggest that a voter’s Catholic
Faith should make him a bigot.
Catholics, of any religious group, should have the historical awareness
to be sensitive to people being disqualified from public service due to their
religion.
It is clear that the President is
actively courting the Catholic vote while at the same time persecuting the
Church. And it is time for all of us
Catholics, especially those considering voting for the President, to take a
long, hard, honest look at ourselves.
I wrote not long ago of a conversation
I had with a professor of moral theology about the idea of an Obama vote
potentially being a mortal sin. He
acknowledged that it would be unconscionable to vote for a candidate who
supported racial segregation, and eventually agreed that the same must be said
about abortion. There are numerous
intrinsic evils supported and promoted by President Obama that make a vote for
him morally indefensible, but I would like to think a little more deeply about
abortion and segregation.
Most of our friends who are practicing
Catholics and Obama supporters would at least give voice to the pro-life
message. If pressed, they would also
claim that they would not vote for a candidate who supported racial segregation,
or slavery for that matter, regardless of that candidate’s positions on other
issues. My point today is not to argue,
but to encourage reflection, because I contend that in many cases, that is
exactly what they would do.
Let’s go back a few generations to the
time when Southern Democrats, the Dixiecrats, were a major force in the
Democratic Party. Many ran for President
and a couple could realistically have gotten the nomination. Our Democrat Catholic friends should imagine
being in that situation, with a Dixiecrat running against a Republican for the
President of the United States, in 1948, perhaps.
The Dixiecrat takes every position
that Barack Obama currently takes, and the Republican takes every position of
Mitt Romney. Most importantly, the
Dixiecrat has a “D” after his name on the ballot. He also, however, favors racial segregation,
or at least allowing states “choice” over segregation. He may even be personally opposed to
segregation, but he will not impose his morality on communities in states that
want it.
Would our 21st century
Catholic Democrats refuse to vote for such a candidate? Out of hand, almost all would probably claim
they would refuse. But I would ask them
to think a little more deeply about the question. Surely there were many people who thought
segregation was wrong, but voted for candidates who supported it because they
felt the culture and political climate made it imprudent to cast a vote on that
single issue. Many of these were
church-going people who considered their votes very reasonable, perhaps even
open-minded.
The modern Catholic Democrat may
object that that’s totally different from abortion today. But I contend that the only difference is
that we can look at issues like segregation with 20/20 hindsight. If we were living in that period, we would
have been in a culture that saw such things with gray areas all around. We would have gotten the same arguments that
we get today about abortion, and if we give in to them now, there is no reason
to believe we wouldn’t have given in to them then. Only the Church stands for human rights on
these issues with no gray areas. If we
are unwilling to let a Catholic conscience be our guide today, why do we
believe we would have done so 70 years ago?
The other difference is that abortion
is even worse than segregation.
Segregation denies the basic human dignity of a class of human
beings. Abortion does the same. Segregation denies certain people many of
their basic human rights. Abortion
denies certain people all of them.
It may sound like I am taking a
judgmental tone, but I am not. I only
judge the objective morality of actions, and would never judge someone’s
subjective culpability. Most have never
seriously thought about these things anyway.
I am writing this as a call for self-reflection. If you are a Catholic Obama supporter, please
take the time to consider what your political loyalty might really allow you to
support. There were many religious
people who opposed slavery that voted for candidates who promoted it. It was the votes of practicing Christians
that brought Hitler to power.
If you know a Catholic Obama
supporter, the opportunity may arise to lovingly pose these questions. For those of us who refuse to support
intrinsic evils with our votes, that is great.
But we are not off the hook, either.
The Republican Party is not the Catholic Party, and our participation in
it should serve the purpose of bringing our values to the party, not supporting
every platform position without question.
If all people of faith had refused to
allow their votes to advance the cause of slavery or segregation, the suffering
of countless men, women and children would have been ended generations earlier
than it was. The same is true of
abortion. If every pro-life person
refused to allow his or her vote to be used to advance the killing, the right
to life of every human being in this country would already be restored. It would never have been lost in the first
place.
At the time, men and women who stand
firm for these principles are labeled as closed-minded, judgmental, and
unreasonable by their opponents. But
history regards them as heroes. Let us,
as Catholic Americans, be labeled however we must, but in history, may we go
down as a generation of heroes. May we be
the ones who stopped the killing, who restored value in our society for every
human being, and may we receive our reward in Heaven.
