On Christian Democracy: The Catholic Obama Vote
October 5, 2008 by admin 
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By Robert Christian
Can a pro-life Catholic vote for Barack Obama? Many, including a person who wrote a letter to the editor of this paper, claim that it would be an act of moral equivocation or perhaps simply an immoral act to vote for Obama.
Pro-life Catholics, however, are neither required to be single-issue voters, nor should they vote based on a single issue. The protection of unborn life is just one issue, albeit a grave and important one, that Catholics must consider when they vote to protect and extend the common good.
A commitment to the common good extends to fighting poverty, ensuring that people have their most basic needs met (including healthcare), opposing the unjust use of force in any context, ensuring that workers earn a living wage, supporting families, protecting religious liberty, protecting the environment, and many other issues.
Some argue that abortion is the most important issue and should trump all others. They point to over a million abortions in a year.
There are 47 million Americans without health insurance. There are 37 million Americans living in poverty. The minimum wage does not allow workers to provide for their families’ most basic needs. There are people who have worked hard their whole life and have to choose between paying for their medicine or food. There are around a billion people living on less than a dollar a day in the world.
The elevation of abortion over these other issues involving millions and even billions of people is indefensible. One is free to argue that conservative answers are more appropriate to addressing these injustices. It should be clear, however, that it is nonsensical to exclude consideration of these issues when one is trying to discern for whom they will vote.
A pro-life Catholic who is committed to the common good should feel as though neither candidate is perfect. The dominant wings of the Republican and Democratic parties contain policies that are contrary to the common good. In fact, Senators McCain and Obama are two very good candidates from two enormously imperfect parties.
All Catholic voters need to look at McCain and Obama’s positions on every issue, their moral character, their ability to achieve positive results, and any other relevant factors, and cautiously and carefully determine which candidate will protect and extend the common good.
Catholics must consistently and relentlessly fight for the common good to protect the sanctity of human life, dignity of the person, and fundamental equality of all people. Neither party and neither candidate show a total commitment to the common good.
Thus, Catholic citizens must fight to push their parties toward the common good. Until then, wisdom is required for each person to determine for whom they vote. Only someone with a narrow view of justice or a partisan agenda could argue otherwise.
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The resort to the poverty argument is an old ploy. But it demands that the government do the work. It denies personal responsibility. ["I gave at the office" = "I voted for a candidate who promised to eliminate poverty"].
Is there one candidate who is for poverty? for war? for low wages? The War On Poverty increased poverty in this country.
The minimum wage decreases avilable jobs and increases unemployment. Government health insurance creates an enormous and generally ineffective bureaucracy, reducing available health services [v. Great Britain, France]
The proposals are paper schemes, like building a house on paper.
Yet more.
The National “Catholic” Reporter has a pro-abortion article by a lady professor at Boston College to which there was a reply:
Submitted by CT (not verified) on Fri, 10/17/2008 - 03:13.
“Professor Cahill’s reflections miss an essential dimension of Catholic moral analysis, namely, the difference between negative moral norms and positive ones. Negative norms, so-named because of what is “not” to be done, bind on consciences semper et ad semper, that is, at all times and in every instance. Positive norms, by contrast, bind at all times but not in every instance. It is never morally permissible to kill an innocent, but the conditions of what constitutes a just wage, or fair housing, or support for the unwed requires the exercise of prudential reasoning and thus admits a variety of responses.
“To suggest that the negative prohibition against the killing of the innocent is to be considered as equally compelling as the positive obligation to provide a liveable wage is to grotesquely confuse the matter. They are not equally binding on consciences in any case and thus not in matters concerning the coming election. Good people can differ on how to meet our positive obligations to meet the needs of the poor. There can be no difference among good people when considering the murder of the innocent, because such people, by willing even indirectly what is objectively grave evil, exclude themselves from the category of the good.
“Any political party which deliberately facilitates the killing of innocent life on a routine basis thereby excludes itself from the realm of viable political options concerning the positive obligation to promote the common good.
Very well said, Robert. Unfortunately, the majority of bishops, who agree with the approach you’ve written here, are too quiet right now when we need to be hearing their voices most. Those few bishops who espouse a radical-right, single-issue, non-traditional stance, are making many uninformed Catholics think that a vote for Obama somehow tells God that they favor abortion.
Robert,
I am very glad to see that you fully appreciate your obligation to vote your conscience, which must necessarily be informed by your Catholic world view. However, there is a tremendous difference between preferring one candidate over another because you believe that one particular candidate has a superior approach to achieving positive results or the common good that we as Catholics are obligated to pursue, and dismissing a position taken by a candidate that is in direct contradiction to God’s law because you believe that more good will ultimately be achieved.
In the United States of America, we the people are the source of all political power. Elected officials are our agents, exercising our political power by proxy (through holding elected office). We can all agree that scripture prohibits us from doing evil that good may result. Thus, electing an official to exercise your political power in pursuit of any amount of evil (whether electing the official for the direct purpose of pursuing evil, or simply acquiescing to the use of your political power for evil by electing someone who has either expressed intent to do so or has shown a propensity to do so), simply because you believe that more good will result from the pursuit of an agenda that includes doing evil, seems to me to be directly in violation of the word of the Lord.
Pursuing an inferior or less efficient or effective means of effecting the common good is not per se sinful, particularly when the means is only less efficient or effective than conduct that necessarily includes doing evil (i.e., pursuing an agenda that includes doing evil). I would certainly agree that no political candidate today (that I am aware of) pursues what I believe to be the most effective agenda to achieve those goals that we as Catholics and Christians are obligated to pursue, but I do not believe you can simply turn a blind eye to a candidate’s direct hostility to God’s law by voting for a candidate that promises to support the slaughter of innocent unborn or partially born children simply because you believe the candidate to have a superior method for achieving other good.
If all of the candidates take positions that you believe to be in direct pursuit of evil, then you cannot, in good conscience vote for any of the candidates (but you also cannot shirk your obligation to avoid complicity in evil by abstaining from exercising your political power when you know that so doing will likely result in the pursuit of evil, or that it will increase the likelihood that your political power will be exercised in the pursuit of evil).
I am not trying to tell you who to vote for (this election is already over; doing so at this point would be futile anyway). However, electing an agent (a political office holder) that you know will exercise your political power in pursuit of evil is the same as exercising your political power in pursuit of evil yourself. Liking a candidate, or even genuine belief in a candidate’s superior effectiveness as a leader or steward of your political power does not excuse you from God’s prohibition against doing evil that good may result, whether by actively voting for that candidate, or by apathy in failing to oppose their attempt to so exercise your political power. If you have no real alternative, then you have no real political power anyway, and you can sleep with a clean conscience.