Theologians discuss criteria for voters when candidates back abortion

A Catholic would be cooperating in evil by voting for a candidate for public office simply because of the candidate's support for legal abortion or euthanasia, said moral theologians contacted by Catholic News Service.

But -- with one major exception -- most of the theologians also concluded that a Catholic might still find morally acceptable reasons to vote for such a candidate in spite of the candidate's support for abortion or euthanasia.

Some theolgians insist in making simple matters more complicated than they are. In discussing "proportionate reasons":

Dominican Father Kevin O'Rourke, Christian ethics professor at the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy at the medical school of Loyola University in Chicago, said when the footnote speaks of a "proportionate reason" needed to vote for a candidate who supports permissive abortion or euthanasia laws, it refers to what moral theology calls "an application of the principle of double effect."

"When you foresee that your good action will also have an evil effect which you don't intend," he explained, "you justify that evil effect by saying there's a proportionate reason -- or, what I like to say, there's an adequate reason -- for allowing the evil."

In our current presidential debate, this is an exercise in hypotheticals. It is clear that there are no "proportionate reasons" that would allow a Catholic, who possesses a fully and rightly formed conscience, to cast a vote for or otherwise support John Kerry. While George Bush may think it is permissible to allow for abortion in the case of rape or incest, Kerry advocates the primacy of the so called "right to choose" - an unlimited and unrestricted choice to murder innocent unborn children. A Catholic is obligated to choose the candidate who would limit the evil - in this case, that would be George Bush.

A Catholic who has a fully and rightly formed conscience would agree with Germain Grisez:

But moral theologian Germain Grisez of Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., argued in effect that there would be almost no proportionate reason to vote for a candidate who opposes banning abortion over one who supports a ban, in view of the scope and horror of abortion.

..objectively, anyone who's supporting abortion in this country is a very unjust person," he added. "To justify voting for a person like that, one has to be in a situation where the only alternative is someone who's just as bad as that and worse. ... It goes straight to the character of the person and it's a very fundamental, horrible kind of wickedness -- someone who's willing to tear apart little babies and rip them to pieces and flush them down and do it on a grand scale, day after day, millions and millions of them, that's sickeningly wicked."

In this country alone, about 1.5 million children are summarily murdered annually. Globally, the number seems to be in excess of 60+ million per year. Nothing in the history of mankind can be viewed as worse than this atrocity, this plague which will doom our country and all others which embrace it. Those who suggest otherwise should pray to God for enlightenment.

Article here.