"One family of faith fulfilling the mission of Jesus Christ..."

I do not normally spend much time at online Catholic forums. They pretty much discussion nothing but abortion. Everything leads to abortion, "Just Faith" is a bad program because it does not focus on abortion, "Renewal" is a bad program because it talked about something other than abortion...

People even try to specifically curtail abortion in their discussions ("NOT AN ABORTION THREAD!" in the subject line), but to no avail. But I was searching for more information on Fr. Newman's situation, which I wrote about a few days ago. For some reason I actually clicked on the Google result that I knew would take me to Catholic Answers. Predictably, the broadest consensus was that Newman was 100% right, should be made a bishop, and any Catholic who voted for Obama should be excommunicated. But the post below from "AgingCatholic" made a lot of sense to me:

Originally Posted by James Tetreault  I totally agree!

The problem, of course, is that we are not Protestants. We are part of an apostolic Church. We have the Vicar of Christ as our undisputed moral leader. That leadership gave us some specific instructions on voting:

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/co...litica_en.html

Read #4 in its entirety. For better or worse, Rome makes it clear that it is "incoherent" and a "detriment" to the faith to elevate individual teachings at the expense of others. The section then concludes with a list of 9 examples (highlighted in the text) of moral principles that do not permit compromise.

If there was any doubt if Rome was serious, Pope Benedict cleared the matter up in Sacramentum Caritatis:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/be...itatis_en.html

See #83, "Eucharistic consistency". The Pope cites the above document and reiterates that the values "are not negotiable".

This presents a huge problem for US Catholics, because all our major party presidential candidates hold intrinsically evil positions, including abortion. In this case, the words are not hyperbole. Abortion is an absolute, that is, there are no recognized licit applications. So, as Pope John Paul II explained in Vertitatis Splendor, some acts can be deemed intrinsically evil.

Fortunately, in addition to a Pope, we have a college of bishops, whose job is to help us properly apply Church teaching in our particular culture and circumstances. Since there is only one Vicar of Christ, and all bishops' authority belongs to him, the bishops try to work collectively and in communication with Rome, since only when they are in communion with Rome are they acting as authentic teachers. The USCCB, working in such a collaboration, produced a document on developing a proper moral conscience for Faithful Citizenship:

http://www.usccb.org/faithfulcitizen...CStatement.pdf

If one looks to chattering by the laity, you can find dismissals and complaints, but conservative Catholic theologians, like Fr. Richard Neuhaus, have been extremely complimentary of the document's doctrinal accuracy. This should be no surprise, since very conservative Bishops, like Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, oversaw its preparation.

If we look at #27-#30, we find that the bishops reiterate Rome's instructions regarding our requirement to not elevate certain teachings at the expense of others. However, the bishops also give some guidance on what to do in a moral dilemma like the one we face. #36 and #37 acknowledge that such dilemmas exist and list a variety of options available to dealing with them. One of those options is to apply a concept normally referred to as "proportionate reasons". We know that this did not just come out of nowhere, because we have a leaked letter from then Cardinal Ratzinger to the bishops which explains the concept as well as some of its limitations.

The key is at the end of #37: 

Quote:

"In the end, this is a decision to be made by each Catholic guided by a conscience formed by Catholic moral teaching."

This is not a random concept, but a core Catholic teaching. See the Universal Catechism:

Quote:

"A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed." - CCC 1790

Catholics cannot go against their certain moral conscience, because to do so puts their salvation in peril. But the second part is important to, we must be mindful that, even when we are CERTAIN we are right, we must remain mindful that we can be wrong, and act accordingly. In their statement on voting, the Bishops did not ignore this, going back to #29, where they explained that we cannot compromise some teachings at the expense of others:

Quote:

29. The second is the misuse of these necessary moral distinctions as a way of dismissing or ignoring other serious threats to human life and dignity. Racism and other unjust discrimination, the use of the death penalty, resorting to unjust war, the use of torture, war crimes, the failure to respond to those who are suffering from hunger or a lack of health care, or an unjust immigration policy are all serious moral issues that challenge our consciences and require us to act. These are not optional concerns which can be dismissed. Catholics are urged to seriously consider Church teaching on these issues. Although choices about how best to respond to these and other compelling threats to human life and dignity are matters for principled debate and decision, this does not make them optional concerns or permit Catholics to dismiss or ignore Church teaching on these important issues. Clearly not every Catholic can be actively involved on each of these concerns, but we need to support one another as our community of faith defends human life and dignity wherever it is threatened. We are not factions, but one family of faith fulfilling the mission of Jesus Christ.

The Bishops are bringing up an even broader point, about the breadth of our obligation to Christ. But perhaps most importantly, when we are not acting in the spirit and name of Christ, we are not acting as true Catholics.