With national, state and local elections weeks away, several bishops
have become unabashedly vocal in highlighting the issues they think
should determine Catholics' votes.
As has become expected in national elections, several have focused on
abortion, all but naming President Barack Obama while alleging that
Catholics cannot vote for candidates who do not seek its
criminalization.
Also topping the list this year for particular attention is same-sex
marriage and, with the first Catholic face-off for the vice presidency
in U.S. history, how Catholics should consider the church's social
teaching when deciding which political party would better help those
facing economic hardship.
While the bishops have said they aren't telling anyone for whom to
vote, some seemingly have given Catholics few, if any, options.
Citing the Democratic Party platform plank supporting "safe and
legal" abortion, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., told
Catholics in his diocese that their salvation was in "serious jeopardy"
should they vote for that plank.
"I am not telling you which party or which candidates to vote for or
against, but I am saying that you need to think and pray very carefully
about your vote," Paprocki wrote Sept. 23 in his diocesan paper, Catholic Times,
"because a vote for a candidate who 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."
Archbishop John Myers of Newark, N.J., warned Catholics that
disagreement with the church's official teaching on same-sex marriage
"seriously harm[s] their communion with Christ and His Church."
"I urge those not in communion with the Church regarding her teaching
on marriage and family ... sincerely to re-examine their consciences," Myers wrote in a 16-page pastoral statement Sept. 25.
"If they continue to be unable to assent to or live the Church's
teaching in these matters, they must in all honesty and humility refrain
from receiving Holy Communion until they can do so with integrity."
The bishops' statements came as a new poll suggested that support for
Obama among Catholics had surged since June, despite a well-publicized
dispute between the U.S. bishops and the presidential administration
over a mandate requiring coverage of birth control in health care plans.
Obama led among Catholics 54-39 percent according to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center Sept. 16 and released Sept. 27.
Speaking with NCR, two prominent theologians questioned the validity and wisdom of some of the bishops' statements.
M. Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of law and theology at the University
of Notre Dame, said that a potential problem with bishops' statements
on same-sex unions is that they address the issue in the abstract -- not
taking into consideration a number of other questions about how
candidates would act while in office, or if the issue would even come
up.
"I don't know if they can say this has to be the priority that you're
voting on ... without any consideration of what the alternatives are
and how likely electing someone is to actually make those things
happen," Kaveny said.
"Treating issues in an abstract way and just tying a candidate to a
position on an abstract issue doesn't go far enough in considering who's
going to be the best leader of the country," she said.
Jesuit Fr. James Bretzke, a professor of moral theology at Boston
College's School of Theology and Ministry, questioned the perennial
arguments that a candidate's reluctance to criminalize abortion should
necessarily mean he or she loses Catholics' votes.
Even though a candidate may be unwilling to push for the overturning of Roe v. Wade,
the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, Bretzke
said, she or he may support policies that would reduce the number of
abortions "in the composite."
To support that assertion, Bretzke cited a 2004 letter from
then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, to Cardinal
Theodore McCarrick, then the archbishop of Washington and head of a U.S.
bishops' task force on Catholic politicians.
"When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of
abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other
reasons ... [it] can be permitted in the presence of proportionate
reasons," Ratzinger wrote in that letter.
Same-sex marriage will be on the ballot in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington in November.
Bishop Alexander Sample of Marquette, Mich., argued against same-sex marriage as well as abortion in all cases in the second article of a four-part series on the election published in his diocesan paper, The U.P. Catholic, Sept. 21.
"Any threats to human life or any efforts to force the Church, her
institutions or individuals to violate the sacredness of human life and
the dignity of the sexual intimacy in marriage must be opposed," Sample
wrote.
"This is absolutely 'non-negotiable' when it comes to weighing the issues before us in any election cycle," he concluded.
The church's teachings on social and economic policy, known
collectively as Catholic social teaching, has come into the limelight at
numerous points this election cycle.
A number of prominent Catholic advocates, including some 90 scholars at the Jesuit-run Georgetown University
and the Catholic lobbying group NETWORK, have charged that Republican
vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan stands opposed to those teachings.
Ryan, who is a U.S. Congressman from Wisconsin, put together the
Republican's failed 2012 federal budget proposal, which, according to
the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, would have cut
federal programs to benefit low-income earners by some $3.3 trillion.
A series of letters to Congress this spring from the U.S. bishops'
Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development said Ryan's budget
"fails to meet ... moral criteria."
An April letter, for example,
decried a proposal to slash funding for the Child Tax Credit, which the
bishops called "one of the most effective anti-poverty programs in our
nation."
Earlier in September, Paprocki defended Ryan's application of
Catholic social teaching in a homily in Green Bay, Wis., during a Mass
dedicated to judges and other public officials, arguing Ryan made
"prudential judgments" in line with Catholic morality.
Paprocki said that the bishops on the domestic justice committee were
"simply making a prudential judgment that this program is a necessary
practical means to feed the hungry."
"Reasonable minds can come to different conclusions about more effective ways to alleviate hunger," Paprocki continued in the Sept. 20 homily.
When questioning the bishops' election statements, Kaveny also noted
that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has changed his views
over the years on whether abortion should be legal.
In previous elections, including his successful 2002 race for
governor in Massachusetts, Romney had said he believed abortion should
not be legislated by the federal government, but left to state
governments.
"Suppose maybe some of these bishops believe Romney has flopped his
last flip, but suppose somebody voting doesn't," Kaveny said. "The
Catholic church can't say there's a teaching of faith that you have to
believe Mitt Romney is what he says."
Breaking from a nearly 35-year practice, the U.S. bishops' conference
did not issue a new guiding document for Catholic voters this election
cycle, choosing instead to reissue the statement
they formulated in 2007, titled "Forming Consciences for Faithful
Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic
Bishops of the United States."
The document focuses on four policy areas the bishops say Catholics
should pay particular attention to when voting: issues of war and
pro-life concerns, family matters, social justice, and international aid
and development.