Bishops: No Reason for Pro-Life Catholic to Back Pro-Abortion Candidate

Kansas City, KS (LifeNews.com) -- Two leading Catholics bishops have issued a statement making it clear that pro-life issues like abortion and euthanasia must be the top priority for Catholic voters. While not endorsing any candidate, the Catholic leaders say those issues should guide the choices Catholic voters make in November.

Kansas City, Kansas Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann and Kansas City - St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn address the questions in a joint pastoral letter released Thursday.

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The bishops provide Catholic voters with guidelines for choosing between two candidates who take different stands on life and death issues -- such as abortion, the death penalty and war.

"In such cases, the appropriate judgment would be to select the candidate whose policies regarding this grave evil will do less harm," they say. "We have a responsibility to limit evil if it is not possible at the moment to eradicate it completely."

With abortion claiming nearly 50 million victims in the United States, the bishops appear to make it clear that no other issue is more important than where the candidates stand on abortion as other life and death issues result in the destruction of far fewer people.

In fact, the bishops go on to say that there is no justification for supporting a candidate who supports legal abortions when there is a candidate who opposes them.

"The voter, who himself or herself opposed these [pro-abortion] policies, would have insufficient moral justification voting for the more permissive candidate," they write....

The Joint Pastoral, "Our Moral Responsibility as Catholic Citizens," can be read here.