The Catholic Church teaches that it could be permissible to vote in an election for a pro-choice candidate if there are proportionate reasons for doing so. What kind of evil could be proportionate to abortion? Tim Staples answers.
Caller: So I was reading USCCB’s article “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.” I kind of understand that the basic premise of forming a conscience on who to vote for is that pro-life issues have to be preeminent, they have to be the number one; but it says something about if there are “proportional issues” that would counter that on somebody else’s agenda. And I was wondering, what is proportional? I don’t know, what are some concrete examples?
Tim Staples: That’s a great question, John. And that document, as you know, the USCCB’s document is good, and it maintains—it really toes the line on magisterial teaching. Because John, as you have rightly stated, the Magisterium has been clear. What comes to mind immediately for me is Christifideles Laici, paragraph 38, from Pope St John Paul the Great, where he makes clear as well that the life issues—and he says “the right to life,” he doesn’t single out abortion, but he says “the right to life”—after listing all these other rights that we have: a right to health, a roof over our heads, education, and more—he says if the right to life is not defended to the utmost, all other rights are merely “illusory.”
So you are correct. The Church teaches that the right to life is the preeminent issue. But now when it comes to the different issues like abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, physician-assisted suicide, and more, all of these are life issues. How do we prioritize?
The Church gives us a principle, and that’s what the USCCB does, gives us that same principle that when we’re considering these different matters, there can be, you know, proportionate reasons to vote for someone who—and I like to use this as an example: let’s say you had a kind of Osama bin Laden-kind-of-character running for president in the United States who just happens to be pro-life when it comes to abortion, but he’s in favor of genocide when it comes to all Christians, Jews, right, we could go down the list. Well, we could certainly vote for a candidate who is actually pro-abortion but is against things like genocide against, you know, 70 million Catholics, Christians, and so forth. That’s what we’re talking about and the what the bishops are talking about when we talk about proportionate reason. And so we really have to get down to brass tacks.
And of course the Church does not micromanage. The Church gives us the principles, and we gotta use (as we say in the Marine corps) our “brain housing unit” in order to apply these principles. And Catholics tend—you know, there can be good Catholics who disagree on this point—but I argue there simply is no proportionate reason. I know some argue that climate control is proportionate reason because we’re talking about the destruction of the planet. I think that is really wrong-headed, but the Church doesn’t micromanage this.
What we need to do as Catholics is take these principles—look, and I think, from just common sense, the life issue is the ultimate issue, abortion is the ultimate issue among the life issues. Now the Magisterium has not made that conclusion, that’s Tim Staples, but I think it’s grounded in solid principles. We’re talking about over 60 million babies slaughtered in America alone, and the number is growing. I simply cannot see a proportionate reason, barring something like Osama bin Laden for president. We have to consider the babies, my friends, and we have a real possibility, if we vote for life in the coming elections, my friends, we have the real possibility of actually overturning Roe v. Wade and saving untold hundreds of thousands of babies lives.