Consistently Pro-Life

Some Clarifications

After writing a recent article entitled Rethinking what it means to be Pro-Life, quite a few people expressed concerns about my reflections. Some seemed to feel that I had betrayed the pro-life cause, which is most certainly not the case. We need to be more pro-life, not less. Emotions are high as this presidential election approaches, and my public discussion about my own voting preferences distracted readers from the basic Catholic guidelines that I hoped to share. Let me reemphasize that I am neither endorsing nor denouncing any candidate, nor speaking as an official representative of my parish, but sharing some principles for forming our consciences, along with an examination of my own conscience. Let me retrace my steps a bit to clarify.

1. Abortion is not the only intrinsic evil.

As I explained in my previous article, abortion is the political issue that I’ve focused on for most of my adult life. It is a grave injustice that Catholics must continue to fight. At the same time, there are a number of other intrinsically evil acts that have no place in a just society, some of which I’ve overlooked in the past. Some examples identified by the Catholic Church include euthanasia, human cloning, redefining marriage, torture, targeting non-combatants in war, deportation, and treating the poor as disposable (FCFC 22-23). My original article unintentionally implied that all of these evils have the same weight. John Paul II said:

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 and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination (Christifideles Laici, 38, quoted in FCFC 26).

2. Single-issue voting does have risks.

Still, the US Bishops document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship says:

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 if a candidate's position on a single issue promotes an intrinsically evil act, such as legal abortion, redefining marriage in a way that denies its essential meaning, or racist behavior, a voter may legitimately disqualify a candidate from receiving support (42).

I used to balk at statements like that. I’ve wanted the US bishops to say, “A Catholic can never vote for a pro-choice candidate! How could anyone in good conscience vote for a politician who supports murdering innocent children through abortion? What other issue matters?” Both the Pope and the US bishops have always refused to make such an absolute statement, and I realized for the first time this election season why they’ve been very wise in that hesitation.

My defining crisis of conscience came when Donald Trump announced on Fox News, “When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself.” Donald Trump defended and intensified these threats during the second presidential debate. A conscience that doesn’t start sounding alarms at that statement isn’t working properly and isn’t consistently pro-life. Can we say that a candidate who supports killing children through abortion is absolutely disqualified from consideration, while cheering on someone who thinks it’s alright to kill the innocent children of terrorists? I’ve been voting Republican because I want to defend the sanctity of life. It’s true that there are a whole lot more children killed by abortion than by this kind of potential strategy of war, but cooperation with this type of grievous immorality shouldn’t be taken lightly on either side of the political aisle.

As I began to reflect on the predicament of two presidential candidates, who have both advocated serious intrinsic evils contrary to Catholic teaching, I realized how spiritually risky single-issue voting really can be to a person who sincerely wants to do and teach God’s will. Our holiness depends on consciences that consistently embrace what is good and reject what is bad wherever we see it, but I had unintentionally been training my conscience over the years to only reject the evils of the Democratic Party, because they support abortion, the one evil that was most obvious to me. My primary goal in life is to be a saint and to help others to be one, but you can’t become a saint with only half of a conscience. To deaden our consciences to the sin of abortion is spiritually dangerous, but deadening our consciences to other issues is also a great risk to our holiness and our Christian witness.

In fairness, a friend has pointed out that Donald Trump has back-peddled on these strategies somewhat more recently, but I was unaware of that when writing my original article. Perhaps I would have never published it if I were aware of the change.

3. Let your conscience form your voting. Don’t let your voting form your conscience.

The main point of my article was rather simple and remains valid: Consistently form your conscience according to sound moral reasoning, informed by the truths of Scripture, Tradition, and the teachings of the Church. Just as it is wrong for Catholic Democrats to ignore issues like abortion, euthanasia, and religious liberty, it’s wrong for Catholic Republicans to ignore issues like the separation of families through deportation, the torture of detainees, and the targeting of non-combatants. All of these and more are identified as intrinsic evils in Catholic teaching that should weigh heavily on our hearts, even if the right to life is the clearest and takes priority. Even on the more negotiable issues, like the economy, we should form our consciences with the wisdom of Catholic Social Teaching rather than simply embracing whatever our party platform or favorite political pundits say.

I think it’s fair to say that even faithful Catholics are pretty uninformed about Catholic Social Teaching. As I mentioned previously, some of us have dismissed the idea of “social justice” altogether, even though it’s an essential part of Christianity, rooted in the Old Testament prophets and in the teachings of Jesus. Even though my academic background is in theology, it’s only recently that I’ve begun to study Catholic Social Teaching in any depth, believe it or not. We’ve given the political Left a monopoly on such topics, but their policies are often divorced from traditional Christian morality and personal responsibility. It’s time for all Catholics to reclaim Catholic Social Teaching through diligent, faith-filled research and reasoning, integrating these concerns into our own politics. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church is a comprehensive guide, and the USCCB has a number of helpful resources.

4. There is still room for discernment in this election.

What do we do when there are serious evils on both sides of the presidential election that a well-formed conscience should reject? This is the quote from the US Bishops that I had in mind when writing my first article:

When all candidates hold a position that promotes an intrinsically evil act, the conscientious voter faces a dilemma. The voter may decide to take the extraordinary step of not voting for any candidate or, after careful deliberation, may decide to vote for the candidate deemed less likely to advance such a morally flawed position and more likely to pursue other authentic human goods. (FCFC 36).

Which of the two main candidates is less likely to advance morally flawed positions and more likely to pursue authentic human goods? I share the opinion of my pro-life friends that Donald Trump’s policies are much better, especially now that I’m aware that Donald Trump has retracted some of his previous statements. I’ll also add that the GOP Platform is more pro-life than it’s ever been, and the Democratic Party’s Platform is more pro-abortion than it’s ever been. Still, in this election I’ve sympathized for the very first time ever with Catholic friends who’ve told me that they are thinking about voting for the Democratic candidate in opposition to the Republican one. I've emphasized to friends that many of Hillary Clinton’s policies are egregiously contrary to the good of the nation and of the Church, especially with regard to religious freedom, but it’s disingenuous to pretend that our own candidate squares perfectly with the Gospel and Catholic moral teaching.

Some Catholics seemed to want me to say unambiguously that a Catholic would be guilty of mortal sin for voting for Clinton. As troubling to me as the idea of voting for a pro-choice candidate is, I would be lying if I said that it is absolutely forbidden, and it is unnecessarily divisive to perpetuate that claim. The US Bishops explain:

There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position even on policies promoting an intrinsically evil act may reasonably decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil (35, emphasis mine).

I’ll let Colin Donovan from EWTN offer a more in-depth explanation here. By admitting that, I’m not suggesting that anyone should vote for Hillary Clinton, as I’ve repeatedly said – I’m just being an honest representative of the parameters of Catholic teaching.

5. Don’t defend the indefensible.

Whenever a Catholic voter chooses to support a candidate that advocates intrinsic evils, they cause scandal if they don’t make it clear that they reject those sins themselves. If a Catholic supports Hillary Clinton, most will naturally assume that the Catholic also supports legalized abortion-on-demand. Faithful Catholic Democrats who publicly campaign for Clinton do have an obligation to explain that they are voting for her for other reasons, to make their opposition to legalized abortion and other evils known, and to avoid defending her flawed policies. Because we don’t hear these types of clarifications from Catholic Democrats, I think it’s safe to assume that most of them aren’t particularly worried about the evils she supports, but have numbed their consciences to the issues because of partisan affiliation. This is a grave concern.

But here’s the thing: The same principle applies to Catholic Republicans like myself. If we choose to campaign for Donald Trump or any other candidate, people will naturally assume that we support all that he stands for, unless we tell them otherwise. It’s been very troubling this political season to see other Christians who go out of their way to defend actions and policies that are indefensible, as if the flaws of “our” candidate should be ignored for the sake of political gain. The mental gymnastics that I’ve seen online in attempts to defend things like the targeting of terrorist families, torture, or sexual misconduct are not much different than the mental gymnastics of those who try to claim that abortion is not really that big of a deal. The language I’ve heard demonizing immigrants has no place among faithful Christians. The greatest strength of the pro-life movement and of the Church must be well-formed consciences and a clear moral witness, but defending evil in any context compromises both.

Being candid about my own personal voting considerations alienated some of my friends and readers unnecessarily – though it was apparently effective in getting people’s attention. I’ll remind everyone once again that my passion is moral formation according to the truth, not political strategy, and I’ll openly admit that voting for an obscure third-party candidate is not an effective political strategy. As I tried to make clear in my original article – though it seems unsuccessfully – my primary goal is to help faithful Catholics examine the moral issues in our lives through a non-partisan lens, so that we can better shape the politics and culture of the future.

Let’s start a four-year novena, praying that our next presidential election is less painful than this one.