Here is an e-mail forward I created a while back:
There is a misconception among many Roman Catholics in
the United States that the Church forbids voting for a
"pro-choice" candidate under any circumstances and
that they thus must vote Republican in any election
where the Republican is pro-life and the Democrat is
not. This is untrue.
In fact, Pope Benedict XVI, just a few years before he
became Pope, when he was a Cardinal heading the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said: "When
a Catholic does not share a candidates stand in favor
of abortion and/or euthanasia but votes for that
candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote
material cooperation, which can be permitted in the
presence of proportionate reasons.".
Father Thomas R. Kopfensteiner, a Fordham University
moral theologian, expounds on this point: "The defense
of life is not always the most urgent good [...] A
woman on a fixed income may choose a candidate whose
platform guarantees better medical care or
prescription drug coverage. A father whose son is at
war may support a candidate with a plan to end the
conflict. A community hard hit by job layoffs may
choose a candidate with a plan to provide more
immediate jobs to the area [...] These and other
issues may provide a serious enough or proportionate
reason to vote for one candidate over another. For a
voter to be guided only by the fundamentality of human
life risks falling into a radicalism that is foreign
to the Catholic moral tradition." (source:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0405868.htm).
Father Thomas also says, in response to those who
claim Roman Catholics should be single-issue voters,
"This naive approach to the formation of conscience
fails to consider the likely success of a candidate's
platform to limit the wrongdoing in either the near or
distant future.".
Also, let us remember that issues like people dying of curable diseases, of exposure to the elements, in war, and so forth are fundamentally life issues. Abortion is an important issue, but there are others. Most of these non-abortion life issues are addressed in a constructive, Catholic, way only or predominantly by Democrats.
Further, many of the Republican candidates running for
President in 2008 do not share the Church's view on
abortion in any event, either entirely or in part.
Rudolf Gulliani, the current front-runner, is openly
pro-choice. John McCain, though generally pro-life,
recently voted for the stem cell research that would
involve the destruction of embroyos (Even while two of
his Democratic Senate collegues voted against it
because of their pro-life stance!). Mitt Romney now
claims to be pro-life, but as recently as two years
ago claimed to be pro-choice. Fred Thompson also now claims to be pro-life, but was a very prominent advocate for the removal of the pro-life platform plank at the 1996 Republican convention. These are the four
Republican front-runners.
So, knowing that the four Republican front runners for
President in 2008 are weak on life issues, and that
*even if* the Republican Party reverses course and
does nominate a candidate who is strongly pro-life on
abortion that Roman Catholics who in good conscience
believe there are proximate causes to vote for a
candidate who is pro-choice may do so, here are some
reasons for Roman Catholics to vote Democratic in
2008.
The following are a few sample quotes from Popes,
Cardinals, and other church authorities that
fundamentally agree with the Democratic stance and
disagree with the Republican stance on some of the
major issues facing our country:
ON WAR:
"There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war
against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given
the new weapons that make possible destructions that
go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be
asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the
very existence of a 'just war'."
-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Later chosen as Pope
Benedict XVI), 2003 (Source:
http://www.cjd.org/paper/jp2war.html)
"The concept of a 'preventive war' does not appear in
the Catechism of the Catholic Church"
-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 2003 (Source:
http://www.cjd.org/paper/jp2war.html)
"[T]he war was useless, and served no purpose."
-Cardinal Renato R. Martino, on the Iraq War (Source:
http://www.americancatholic.org/News/JustWar/Iraq/)
"
t no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a
fit instrument with which to repair the violation of
justice"
-Blessed Pope John XXIII (Source: "Our Sunday Vistor:
What the Church Teaches" phamplet)
ON THE DEATH PENALTY:
"A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the
dignity of human life must never be taken away, even
in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern
society has the means of protecting itself, without
definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I
renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for
a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both
cruel and unnecessary."
-Pope John Paul II, January 27, 1999, St. Louis,
Missouri (source:
http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/criminal/appeal.htm)
"Respect for all human life and opposition to the
violence in our society are at the root of our
long-standing position against the death penalty. We
see the death penalty as perpetuating a cycle of
violence and promoting a sense of vengeance in our
culture. As we said in Confronting a Culture of
Violence: 'We cannot teach that killing is wrong by
killing.'
We oppose capital punishment not just for what it does
to those guilty of horrible crimes but for what it
does to all of us as a society. Increasing reliance on
the death penalty diminishes all of us and is a sign
of growing disrespect for human life. We cannot
overcome crime by simply executing criminals, nor can
we restore the lives of the innocent by ending the
lives of those convicted of their murders. The death
penalty offers the tragic illusion that we can defend
life by taking life."
-Administrative Board of the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops
April 2, 1999 (Source: source:
http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/criminal/appeal.htm)
ON POVERTY, UNIONS, WORKER'S RIGHTS, AND A LIVING
WAGE:
"[W]orkers' associations ought to be so constituted
and so governed as to furnish the most suitable and
most convenient means to attain the object proposed,
which consists in this, that the individual members of
the association secure, so far as is possible, an
increase in the goods of body, of soul, and of
property."
-Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum May 15, 1891 (Source:
http://salt.claretianpubs.org/cstline/rerum.html)
"Quite agreeable, of course, was this state of things
to those who thought it in their abundant riches the
result of inevitable economic laws and accordingly, as
if it were for charity to veil the violation of
justice which lawmakers not only tolerated but at
times sanctioned, wanted the whole care of supporting
the poor committed to charity alone."
-Pope Pius XI Quadragesimo Annon 1931 (Source:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/p...f_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno_en.html)
"To each, therefore, must be given his own share of
goods, and the distribution of created goods, which,
as every discerning person knows, is laboring today
under the gravest evils due to the huge disparity
between the few exceedingly rich and the unnumbered
propertyless,
must be effectively called back to and brought into
conformity with the norms of the common good, that is,
social justice."
-Pope Pius XI Quadragesimo Annon 1931
(Source:http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/p...f_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno_en.html)
"Both capitalism and Marxism promised to point out the path for the creation of just structures, and they declared that these, once established, would function by themselves; they declared that not only would they have no need of any prior individual morality, but that they would promote a communal morality. And this ideological promise has been proved false. The facts have clearly demonstrated it. -Pope Benedict XVI 2007 (Source: http://ncrcafe.org/node/1101)
"The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful destruction of the human spirit. And we can also see the same thing happening in the West, where the distance between rich and poor is growing constantly, and giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness." -Pope Benedict XVI 2007 (Source: http://ncrcafe.org/node/1100)
ON GLOBAL WARMING AND THE ENVIRONMENT:
The consequences of climate change are being felt not only in the environment, but in the entire socio-economic system [...] such activity has a profound relevance, not just for the environment, but in ethical, economic, social and political terms as well [...] [Global warming] will impact first and foremost the poorest and weakest who, even if they are among the least responsible for global warming, are the most vulnerable because they have limited resources or live in areas at greater risk. [...] The earth is our common heritage and we have a grave and far-reaching responsibility to ourselves and to future generations [...] The environmental consequences of our economic activity are now among the worlds highest priorities [...] It is becoming rapidly ever clearer that if these, the worlds life support systems, are spoiled or destroyed irreparably, there will be no viable economy for any of us [...] Environmental concerns have to be understood as the basis upon which all economic and even human activity rests.
-Archbishop Celestino Migliore, apostolic nuncio 2007 (Source: http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=24053&page=1)