Some in the combox on my previous post have accused me of being unfair to Mark Shea. Perhaps they are right. I really don’t have any insight into why Mark is taking the position that he is and it was probably rude of me to speculate in this area. From everything I have seen, Mark is Catholic first and partisan is certainly further down on the list. So my apologies to Mark and our readers for this aspect of my post.
With that said, I stand by my opinion that were Catholics to follow Mark’s lead and sit it out or to vote for a non-contending third party candidate increases the likelihood that the pro-death candidate and the pro-death party are victorious in November. The ramification of that victory could mean many more deaths over generations. To me that qualifies as cooperating with evil, even if unintentionally.
Again, apologies for the stupid speculation. But please, please don’t sit this election out.
September 20, 2008 at 7:57 pm
“Any Catholic that does not vote against the evil of Barack Obama’s agenda by voting for John McCain (especially since he has selected an enormously pro-life vice-president) is not working on the side of life.”
This is absolutely absurd and untrue. There is absolutely NOTHING that says a Catholic MUST vote the lesser of two evils to prevent a greater evil from happening. We MAY vote for John McCain, but we MAY also vote for a 3rd party candidate. If, and that’s a big if, one could guarantee that John McCain would appoint pro-life judges and one could guarantee that those pro-life judges would send Roe back to the states, then perhaps we’d be talking something different. But we are not. There are ZERO guarantees in any election–this year is no different.
September 20, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Really appreciate your apology. Obviously there are strong feelings on this issue. Let’s all try to be aware that even IF we are right we can still push people the wrong way by our lack of charity. And how much worse if we are wrong.
I want to address a couple of issues that came up in earlier comments.
1) Have we made progress on abortion?
Answer: Yes we have! No space here for all the details, but here’s a quick synopsis.
Abortions are down 25% from their peak in ~1990 — that’s 400,000 fewer dead babies every year.
The abortion rate and abortion ratio have also been falling, and the latest figures (2005) show levels at their lowest since 1974.
Having looked into it in a lot of detail, I would say that major factors in the decline are:
* pro-life education
* state level laws such as: parental notification, stopping public funding (both these have been shown in peer-reviewed publications to reduce abortion rates), women’s right to know (such a law recently led to the closure of South Dakota’s only remaining abortuary)
* a supreme court that has upheld these restrictions
2) Would an Obama victory lead to many more deaths, perhaps millions over his term(s)?
A. Yes, extremely likely. As the USCCB pro-life media campaign on FOCA notes,
“You Can’t Reduce Abortions by Promoting Abortions …
Radical abortion rights groups and their allies in Congress are promoting the extreme pro-abortion agenda of the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA). If they have their way, reasonable, widely supported and constitutionally sound abortion regulations will be knocked down nationwide. Unlimited abortion-on-demand will become our national policy.
And the abortion rate will go up, not down.”
Obama has pledged to sign FOCA. As I noted earlier, abortion rates have been declining. Even if McCain takes no major actions on the life issues, it seems likely that the decline will continue. However, with Obama it is virtually certain that the decline will reverse.
This doesn’t even take into account funding for organizations such as UNFPA and IPPF that promote and perform abortions overseas. Under the Mexico City policy, Republican presidents from Reagan to GW Bush have cut off funding to such agencies. In at least one case, a UN agency (UNESCO) changed its policy as a result and stopped promoting abortion. It’s difficult to estimate exactly how many lives have been saved by this but it’s certain that many have. Of course, Obama (like Clinton) would reverse this policy.
Then there are embryonic stem cells. It is true that McCain did vote for funding of ESCR; however, he has never supported the creation of embryos by cloning or other methods for this purpose. In fact, he has voted against “fetal farming” and would outlaw cloning (which is currently legal but not federally funded). As against Obama who is all for creating such embryos as well as cloning, only to kill them for their stem cells. Even on this sub-issue, and even if McCain doesn’t reconsider (as he is reportedly doing), McCain’s policy is much more pro-life than his opponents and would result in far fewer deaths of tiny humans.
3) Does “not voting” send a strong message that we want more pro-life leaders?
A: I would say not. There are too many other reasons for not voting, ranging from apathy to illness to disillusionment with the democratic process. There is also no way for them to figure out from a missing vote which particular issue the voter was upset about. i.e. you could have not voted McCain because you liked his pro-life position but not his position on Iraq or it could be the other way around. I believe it would be much more productive to directly contact the candidates — info to do this is readily available online — and tell them where you stand and what you expect.
I also hope that the CA voter has not been totally “sitting out” the elections because several issues have come up in the last few years that deserve his say, such as: ESCR funding, definition of marriage, and parental notification for minors considering abortion.
4) What about the Supreme Court?
A: Well, it is true that there is no guarantee that the judges McCain nominates will be solid constitutionalists. But there is a fighting chance of it. I wouldn’t say there are zero guarantees, though, — with Obama, the opposite is guaranteed.
Heartfelt thanks to all who are working to rebuild the culture of life in so many different ways!
Please also consider: If we are not able to end an evil, aren’t we called to limit it? If we can reasonably expect that one candidate’s policies will result in significantly more deaths of innocents than another’s, and if our vote can help keep the worse candidate out of office, isn’t that a good thing to do?
September 21, 2008 at 12:47 am
I agree with Marie about what Catholics MAY do, but here’s something else to put in the mix as people are deciding what to do.
Many of the real pro-life battles are won or lost not in Congress but in the regulations written by agencies, which are in turn drafted by political appointees of the administration –of which there are about 10,000, drawn from the activists and campaign workers of the President’s party.
During the Clinton administration (during which I was a pro-life lobbyist) that meant facing the opposition on a daily basis not just of the President and Congress, but of thousands of bureaucrats with an entrenched anti-life, anti-family and anti-church agenda. There were antagonistic regulations against pro-life organizations and crisis pregnancy centers, there was the banning of Boy Scouts from using Federal Parks because they wouldn’t have homosexual troop leaders, the list was lengthy, I assure you.
If you are working for a crisis pregnancy center or any grassroots, pro-life, pro-family group, you need to understand that the difference between being able to continue working and facing constant regulatory harrassment aimed at shutting you down is also riding on who wins the election –and whose activists fill those 10,000 posts.
September 21, 2008 at 2:57 am
Blah blah blah. It’s the same thing I hear every four years. “You MUST vote for the Republican because the Democrat is Satan and the Republican will appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices and we will have fewer abortions and blah blah blah.” And then we get a Republican president and we get “Sandy baby” O’Connor, Anthony “Ted” Kennedy, David “dimwit” Souter, etc, etc, etc. Don’t you people get it. The Republican Party will never, NEVER be responsible for ending abortion, because it would mean the end of the Party, and the Party is the only thing that matters. Sure, they’ll give us Clarence Thomas once in a while (to appease the stupid pro-life voters who keep voting for them with no results), but they will make sure that we never NEVER get the majority needed on the Supreme Court to end abortion. Abortion in this country is legal until birth, and sometimes after birth if the bellybutton is not out yet (according to our great pro-life Supreme Court Justices) and 20 years of Republican Presidents has not changed that one iota. Even when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress we couldn’t get one measly hearing on the Human Life Amendment, but we get hearings all the time on stupid issues like major league baseball and why their gluteus maximus muscles appear so large. Our great Republican pro-life Presidents won’t use their bully pulpit to lift one finger to advance the pro-life message. Sure, they’ll send a recording over to the March for Life every year, but they don’t even have the guts to show up in person. So, no, I won’t be voting for the Republican or the Democrat and no, I’m not waiting for the perfect candidate. I only vote for good candidates and I don’t consider John McCain a good candidate. I’ll probably write-in a vote, which will be tossed in the trash uncounted. So much for “democracy”. I go to the grocery store and I get to choose from 50 kinds of noodles, but I vote for President and am given the choice of two dimwits. No thanks. See you in four years and we can replay this whole conversation again just like we did in the last 5 elections.
September 21, 2008 at 5:35 am
RC2,
Yeah, but if you do that, you eliminate any issue for Mark to write about so as to drive traffic to his site!
September 21, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Scott — I’d like to see a list of those that are starting Project Gabriels and adopting disabled kids and are also sitting this election out. I can’t imagine that list to be too long. No, McCain isn’t perfect, but remember, they did adopt a child that was handed to them from the arms of Mother Teresa. That’s got to count for something.
Net
September 21, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Marie Duchesne — If Catholics do not help keep “The One” from being elected President of the United States, then who will?
I’ve got an aborted baby in heaven that is working a double shift with her “young friends” making sure the evil agenda of Barack Obama does not come into fruition upon this earth. And I ask her constantly, through prayer, what I can do to keep that from happening, and she tells me to “speak up.” I’m sorry if I came across too harshly. 🙂
Net
September 21, 2008 at 11:16 pm
I want to confirm what RC2 said. Our state legislature went Democrat at the 2006 elections, making all 3 branches of government Democrat controlled.
Within a month, no more, multiple bills were introduced by the new leadership:
* attacking pregnancy resource / crisis pregnancy centers
* creating funding for ESCR / cloning
* increasing burdens for homeschoolers
* creating “gay” marriage in all but name
* preventing “discrimination” based on sexual orientation, meaning you cannot refuse to hire a practicing homosexual even if you run a Christian bookstore (or choir?)
With a lot of hard work, pro-life and pro-family citizens were able to stop the first three, but the last two passed. At which point the court system stepped in and blocked initiatives which would have returned the issues to the people.
We expect the anti-life bills to reappear at the next legislative session.
None of these items even got to the stage of being a problem while the Republicans controlled the legislature. This is simply reality, not a partisan diatribe.
Pax.
September 22, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Therefore, there have been elections where in all good conscience I could not vote for either the Republican or Democrat candidates, and I both resent and challenge the morality of those who would say this is somehow “allowing” a particular candidate to win.
I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. If I have two major candidates, my goal is to minimize evil. If you don’t vote, or vote for a vanity third party candidate, then you effectively cast a half a vote foe each of the major party candidates. If you are not using your vote to minimize evil, then you are making it more likely that the maximum evil will be elected.
This sounds like formal cooperation with evil to me.
I thought about this quite a bit, and I had subscribed to Mark Shea’s suggestion not to vote for either. I thought that I would be able to help send a message to the Republican party that their pro-life base was not to be trifled with.
Then I looked at it critically. Now is not the time to be making a statement. There is too much at stake. What would I say to all those aborted babies when I met them at my final judgment? “Both candidates were evil”?
September 22, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Anonymous (one of the many) said: This reminds me of Revelation 3:16 (‘So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.’)
Hmmm. You don’t think this could also be interpreted as “whoever is lukewarm about supporting ALL Catholic teaching, and not just the ones we find convenient during election time, will be spat out by God”? I absolutely agree with Scott and Mary on this one. Voting for candidate a or b just because one may do x and the other might do y is simply NOT a lithmus test to one’s commitment to any particular issue, let alone to Catholicism. Anonymous who is obviously too cowardly to put a name to his errant ramblings is most certainly wrong here.
September 23, 2008 at 4:11 am
This sounds like formal cooperation with evil to me.
It isn’t.