Posted on 09/29/2006 11:24:18 PM PDT by Antioch
An attempt to recapture the Catholic vote has been launched by Democratic supporters. A new 2006 Voter Guide has been put out by "Catholic in Alliance for the Common Good" (CACG) a group headed up by Alexia Kelley who in 2004 worked as a religion advisor to John Kerry in the closing weeks of his campaign.
An initial printing of one million copies of "Voting for the Common Good: A Practical Guide for Conscientious Catholics" will be distributed nationwide through on-the-ground organizers and partner networks in all 50 states, says CACG. The groups admits in a press release that the new voter guide is a response to the original "Catholic Voters Guide" issued by Catholic Answers last year.
The new voter guide has been described as "slick" by the Catholic League for its deceptive wording which falsely leads Catholics to consider abortion as just one of many important social justice issues to be taken into account when electing politicians.
Commenting on the new 12-page booklet, Catholic League president Bill Donohue said "The voter guide is a slick attempt to get the abortion albatross off the necks of Catholic Democrats, but it's a failed effort-the noose is still there. Instead of listening to James Carville and Paul Begala, who have counseled Democrats to drop their opposition to parental notification laws and their support for keeping partial-birth abortion legal, the best Catholics in Alliance can do is say it is opposed to abortion. But it makes it painfully clear that it will never join any effort to ban any abortions, including partial-birth."
Donohue added that "On August 2, 2006, Catholics in Alliance issued a news release urging the Senate to raise the minimum wage, an issue which the Catholic Church has no official position on, one way or the other. But the group has no statement urging anyone to vote against partial-birth abortion, an issue which the Catholic Church officially opposes."
The guide lists serious issues to consider but mentions abortion as only one of several issues including poverty, jobs, immigration, minimum wage, and nuclear disarmament, the typical leftist Catholic "seamless garment" approach that has confused many Catholics in the past. The guide advises that while abortion should be considered when voting it should be considered as only one of a whole host of other issues, none of which has resulted in the actual deliberate killing of millions of Americans as has abortion.
The Catholic Democrats' guide contradicts the guidance of Cardinal Ratzinger prior to his election to the papacy. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote a doctrinal note, approved by then-Pope John Paul II, which stated: "[A] well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals." The doctrinal note added, "laws must defend the basic right to life from conception to natural death . . . Analogously, the family needs to be safeguarded and promoted based on monogamous marriage between a man and a woman."
The guide does quote Cardinal Ratzinger from a brief he prepared for the US Bishops Conference of Bishops speaking of the ability to vote for a candidate who supports abortion. He stressed that voting for such a candidate because of his support for abortion would be a grave sin, but such an action may be taken for "proportionate reasons".
Exceptions to the rule of never voting for pro-abortion candidates are made in the case where the only two candidates are supporting abortion, where one would restrict it severely and the other would permit abortion on demand.
As Bishop Rene Henry Gracida, of Corpus Christi Texas, explained in September 2004, it is not enough to make a mental reservation that a voter is not supporting a pro-abortion politician because of his stand on abortion. The reasons to support the politician must be objectively 'proportionate.' He further states that the usual reasons cited, a candidate's stand "on war, or taxes, or the death penalty, or immigration, or a national health plan, or Social Security, or AIDS, or homosexuality, or marriage," are not important enough. They are, he says, "simply lacking in proportionality."
Bishop Gracida exemplified the point stating, "Consider the case of a Catholic voter who must choose between three candidates: Kerry, who is completely for abortion on demand, Bush, who is in favor of very limited abortion, i.e., in favor of greatly restricting abortion and Peroutka, a candidate who is completely against abortion but who is universally recognized as being unelectable," he wrote. "The Catholic can vote for Peroutka, but that will probably only help ensure the election of Kerry. Therefore the Catholic voter has a proportionate reason to vote for Bush, since his vote might help to ensure the defeat of Kerry and might result in the saving of some innocent human lives."
Additionally numerous US Catholic Bishops have stated that abortion trumps other considerations when voting. Writing in Columbia Magazine in September 2000 Bishop James T. McHugh, Bishop of Rockville Centre, NY, wrote, "Catholic citizens especially should affirm a personal stance that respects and sustains human life and makes it unmistakably clear to all candidates and officials that this will be a determining factor in their choice of candidates.
In October 2000 Chicago's Cardinal Francis George stated "[Abortion is] a defining issue not only personally but also socially. Poverty can be addressed incrementally, but the death of a child is quite final."
Denver's Archbishop Charles Chaput said in October 2000 "It is impossible to advance human dignity by being 'right' on issues like poverty and immigration, but wrong about the most fundamental issue of all - the right to life."
Father Thomas D. Williams, dean of the theology school at Rome's Regina Apostolorum university, recently told Zenit News that according to Catholic teaching, "the social injustice that most cries out to Christian conscience is the deliberate and massive attack on the most vulnerable members of society, the unborn."
Fr. Williams added, "The Church's defense of social justice embraces any number of key life issues, and attention to one does not lessen the importance of the others. Abortion, however, stands out among them as a unique case meriting singular attention."
Sorry Bernardin groupies, the issue here is S-I-N sin. Sin, in the proper sense, is ALWAYS a personal act, since it is an act of freedom on the part of an individual person and NOT properly of a group or community. An individual may be conditioned or influenced by numerous external factors or be subjected to tendencies and habits linked with his personal condition. BUT the person's freedom and therefore his responsibility and guilt is still his. This truth cannot be disregarded in order to place the individuals' sins on par with social ills. Social sin eternally points to the individual: in a real and tangible way, each individual's sin in some way affects others. Like the communion of saints, social ills are the result of a "communion of sin," whereby a soul that lowers itself through sin drags down with itself the church and, in some way, the whole world. Conversely, in the magnificent mystery of the communion of saints, it has been possible to say that "every soul that rises above itself, raises up the world." The seamless garment argument promulgated by this heretical booklet is a barrier which blocks the each soul's need for the salvation by the blood of Christ.
Dems fighting very dirty.
If anyone has a jpg of this fake voters guide, please post it, so that if it's spotted on "the rack" in the narthex we can toss it out.
Thanks for posting this. It's important for all Catholics to know about it.
Dems fighting very dirty.
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You got that right. It's unbelievable.
Thanks for posting the picture of the cover. Typical crappy artwork of the dissenters, easy to spot.
""Voting for the Common Good:..."
Catholics are NOT called to minister to the common good. We are called to live an uncommon life following Jesus who was unequivocal is his teachings. There is no gray area in Christ. One cannot speak to the Church and say that it does not have authority over one's conscience.
Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics
Copyright © 2004, Catholic Answers.
All Rights Reserved.
HOW THIS VOTER’S GUIDE HELPS YOU
This voter’s guide helps you cast your vote in an informed manner consistent with Catholic moral teaching. It helps you avoid choosing candidates who endorse policies that cannot be reconciled with moral norms that used to be held by all Christians.
On most issues that come before voters or legislators, the task is selecting the most effective strategy among several morally good options. A Catholic can take one side or the other and not act contrary to the faith. Most matters do not have a "Catholic position."
But some issues concern "non-negotiable" moral principles that do not admit of exception or compromise. One’s position either accords with those principles or does not. No one endorsing the wrong side of these issues can be said to act in accord with the Church’s moral norms.
This voter’s guide identifies five issues involving "non-negotiable" moral values in current politics and helps you narrow down the list of acceptable candidates, whether they are running for national, state, or local offices.
You should avoid to the greatest extent possible voting for candidates who endorse or promote intrinsically evil policies. As far as possible, you should vote for those who promote policies in line with the moral law.
In many elections there are situations where all of the available candidates take morally unacceptable positions on one or more of the "non-negotiable" issues.
In such situations, a citizen will be called upon to make tough choices. In those cases, citizens must vote in the way that will most limit the harm that would be done by the available candidates.
In this guide we will look first at the principles that should be applied in clear-cut races where there is an unambiguously good moral choice. These same principles help lay the groundwork for what to do in situations that are more difficult.
Knowing the principles that are applied in ideal situations is useful when facing problematic ones, so as you review the principles you should keep in mind that they often must be applied in situations where the choice is more difficult. At the end of the guide we will offer practical advice about how to decide to cast your vote in those cases.
YOUR ROLE AS A CATHOLIC VOTER
Catholics have a moral obligation to promote the common good through the exercise of their voting privileges (cf. CCC 2240). It is not just civil authorities who have responsibility for a country. "Service of the common good require[s] citizens to fulfill their roles in the life of the political community" (CCC 2239). This means citizens should participate in the political process at the ballot box.
But voting cannot be arbitrary. "A well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law that contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals" (CPL 4). A citizen’s vote most often means voting for a candidate who will be the one directly voting on laws or programs. But being one step removed from law-making doesn’t let citizens off the hook, since morality requires that we avoid doing evil to the greatest extent possible, even indirectly.
Some things are always wrong, and no one may deliberately vote in favor of them. Legislators, who have a direct vote, may not support these evils in legislation or programs. Citizens support these evils indirectly if they vote in favor of candidates who propose to advance them. Thus, to the greatest extent possible, Catholics must avoid voting for any candidate who intends to support programs or laws that are intrinsically evil. When all of the candidates endorse morally harmful policies, citizens must vote in a way that will limit the harm likely to be done.
FIVE NON-NEGOTIABLES
These five current issues concern actions that are intrinsically evil and must never be promoted by the law. Intrinsically evil actions are those that fundamentally conflict with the moral law and can never be deliberately performed under any circumstances. It is a serious sin to deliberately endorse or promote any of these actions, and no candidate who really wants to advance the common good will support any action contrary to the non-negotiable principles involved in these issues.
1. Abortion
The Church teaches that, regarding a law permitting abortions, it is "never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or to vote for it" (EV 73). Abortion is the intentional and direct killing of an innocent human being, and therefore it is a form of homicide.
The unborn child is always an innocent party, and no law may permit the taking of his life. Even when a child is conceived through rape or incest, the fault is not the child’s, who should not suffer death for others’ sins.
2. Euthanasia
Often disguised by the name "mercy killing," euthanasia is also a form of homicide. No person has a right to take his own life, and no one has the right to take the life of any innocent person.
In euthanasia, the ill or elderly are killed, by action or omission, out of a misplaced sense of compassion, but true compassion cannot include intentionally doing something intrinsically evil to another person (cf. EV 73).
3. Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Human embryos are human beings. "Respect for the dignity of the human being excludes all experimental manipulation or exploitation of the human embryo" (CRF 4b).
Recent scientific advances show that often medical treatments that researchers hope to develop from experimentation on embryonic stem cells can be developed by using adult stem cells instead. Adult stem cells can be obtained without doing harm to the adults from whom they come. Thus there is no valid medical argument in favor of using embryonic stem cells. And even if there were benefits to be had from such experiments, they would not justify destroying innocent embryonic humans.
4. Human Cloning
"Attempts . . . for obtaining a human being without any connection with sexuality through ‘twin fission,’ cloning, or parthenogenesis are to be considered contrary to the moral law, since they are in opposition to the dignity both of human procreation and of the conjugal union" (RHL I:6).
Human cloning also involves abortion because the "rejected" or "unsuccessful" embryonic clones are destroyed, yet each clone is a human being.
5. Homosexual "Marriage"
True marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Legal recognition of any other union as "marriage" undermines true marriage, and legal recognition of homosexual unions actually does homosexual persons a disfavor by encouraging them to persist in what is an objectively immoral arrangement.
"When legislation in favor of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic lawmaker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favor of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral" (UHP 10).
WHICH POLITICAL OFFICES SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT?
Laws are passed by the legislature, enforced by the executive branch, and interpreted by the judiciary. This means you should scrutinize any candidate for the legislature, anyone running for an executive office, and anyone nominated for the bench. This is true not only at the national level but also at the state and local levels.
True, the lesser the office, the less likely the office holder will take up certain issues. Your city council, for example, perhaps will never take up the issue of human cloning but may take up issues connected with abortion clinics. It is important that you evaluate candidates in light of each non-negotiable moral issue that will come before them in the offices they are seeking.
Few people achieve high office without first holding a lower office. Some people become congressional representatives, senators, or presidents without having been elected to a lesser office. But most representatives, senators, and presidents started their political careers at the local level. The same is true for state lawmakers. Most of them began on city councils and school boards and worked their way up the political ladder.
Tomorrow’s candidates for higher offices will come mainly from today’s candidates for lower offices. It is therefore prudent to apply comparable standards to local candidates. One should seek to elect to lower offices candidates who support Christian morality so that they will have a greater ability to be elected to higher offices where their moral stances may come directly into play.
HOW TO DETERMINE A CANDIDATE’S POSITION
1. The higher the office, the easier this will be. Congressional representatives and senators, for example, repeatedly have seen these issues come before them and so have taken positions on them. Often the same can be said at the state level. In either case, learning a candidate’s position can be as easy as reading newspaper or magazine articles, looking up his views on the Internet, or studying one of the many printed candidate surveys that are distributed at election time.
2. It is often more difficult to learn the views of candidates for local offices because few of them have an opportunity to consider legislation on such things as abortion, cloning, and the sanctity of marriage. But these candidates, being local, often can be contacted directly or have local campaign offices that will explain their positions.
3. If you cannot determine a candidate’s views by other means, do not hesitate to write directly to the candidate, asking for his position on the issues covered above.
HOW NOT TO VOTE
1. Do not vote based just on your political party affiliation, your earlier voting habits, or your family’s voting tradition. Years ago, these may have been trustworthy ways to determine whom to vote for, but today they are often not reliable. You need to look at the stands each candidate takes. This means that you may end up casting votes for candidates from more than one party.
2. Do not cast your vote based on candidates’ appearance, personality, or "media savvy." Some attractive, engaging, and "sound-bite-capable" candidates endorse intrinsic evils, while other candidates, who may be plain-looking, uninspiring, and ill at ease in front of cameras, endorse legislation in accord with basic Christian principles.
3. Do not vote for candidates simply because they declare themselves to be Catholic. Unfortunately, many self-described Catholic candidates reject basic Catholic moral teaching.
4. Do not choose among candidates based on "What’s in it for me?" Make your decision based on which candidates seem most likely to promote the common good, even if you will not benefit directly or immediately from the legislation they propose.
5. Do not vote for candidates who are right on lesser issues but will vote wrongly on key moral issues. One candidate may have a record of voting in line with Catholic values except for, say, euthanasia. Such a voting record is a clear signal that the candidate should not be chosen by a Catholic voter unless the other candidates have voting records even less in accord with these moral norms.
HOW TO VOTE
1. For each office, first determine how each candidate stands on each of the issues that will come before him and involve non-negotiable principles.
2. Rank the candidates according to how well their positions align with these non-negotiable moral principles.
3. Give preference to candidates who do not propose positions that contradict these principles.
4. Where every candidate endorses positions contrary to non-negotiable principles, choose the candidate likely to do the least harm. If several are equal, evaluate them based on their views on other, lesser issues.
5. Remember that your vote today may affect the offices a candidate later achieves.
WHEN THERE IS NO "ACCEPTABLE" CANDIDATE
In some political races, each candidate takes a wrong position on one or more issues involving non-negotiable moral principles. In such a case you may vote for the candidate who takes the fewest such positions or who seems least likely to be able to advance immoral legislation, or you may choose to vote for no one.
A vote cast in such a situation is not morally the same as a positive endorsement for candidates, laws, or programs that promote intrinsic evils: It is only tolerating a lesser evil to avoid an even greater evil. As Pope John Paul II indicated regarding a situation where it is not possible to overturn or completely defeat a law allowing abortion, "an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality"(EV 73; also CPL 4).
Catholics must strive to put in place candidates, laws, and political programs that are in full accord with non-negotiable moral values. Where a perfect candidate, law, or program is not on the table, we are to choose the best option, the one that promotes the greatest good and entails the least evil. Not voting may sometimes be the only moral course of action, but we must consider whether not voting actually promotes good and limits evil in a specific instance. The role of citizens and elected officials is to promote intrinsic moral values as much as possible today while continuing to work toward better candidates, laws, and programs in the future.
THE ROLE OF YOUR CONSCIENCE
Conscience is like an alarm. It warns you when you are about to do something that you know is wrong. It does not itself determine what is right or wrong. For your conscience to work properly, it must be properly informed—that is, you must inform yourself about what is right and what is wrong. Only then will your conscience be a trusted guide.
Unfortunately, today many Catholics have not formed their consciences adequately regarding key moral issues. The result is that their consciences do not "sound off" at appropriate times, including on Election Day.
A well-formed conscience will never contradict Catholic moral teaching. For that reason, if you are unsure where your conscience is leading you when at the ballot box, place your trust in the unwavering moral teachings of the Church. (The Catechism of the Catholic Church is an excellent source of authentic moral teaching.)
WHEN YOU ARE DONE WITH THIS VOTER’S GUIDE
Please do not keep this voter’s guide to yourself. Read it, learn from it, and prepare your selection of candidates based on it. Then give this voter’s guide to a friend, and ask your friend to read it and pass it on to others. The more people who vote in accord with basic moral principles, the better off our country will be.
ABBREVIATIONS
CCC Catechism of the Catholic Church
CPL Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Notes on Some Questions regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life
CRF Pontifical Council for the Family, Charter of the Rights of the Family
EV John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life)
RHL Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation
UHP Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons
when they start horse trading God, I start looking into asbestos suit stocks.
The title makes me suspicious; "voting for the common good". Like "Campaign for human development", it's too abstract. I hate "pc" sounding titles on anything.
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Agreed. You may find this interesting, then:
About Us
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good is a non-partisan non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the fullness of the Catholic Social Tradition in the public square. Founded in 2004, our goal is to provide information to Catholics about Church social teaching as it relates to public participation in our society, and to advance the prophetic voice of the Catholic social tradition.
From its earliest inception, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good has served as an 'open-source' organization. As such, it works to build and support the Catholic social justice movement through communication, grassroots outreach and coordination. Catholics in Alliance is a resource for Catholics inspired by our faith's core teachings about justice, human life and dignity, peace, poverty and the common good.
Our Vision
We envision a society shaped by the values of justice, human dignity and the common good, where faithful American Catholics can embrace the fullness of the Church's social justice teachings when participating in democratic society.
As Catholics, we inherit a rich Catholic social tradition whose inspiration reaches well beyond our own faith community. The papal Encyclicals and letters that make up this tradition are based on Jesus' call to love one's neighbor and serve the least among us, and the Hebrew Scriptures' prophetic commitment to justice and righteousness.
Our Catholic tradition calls us to participate actively in public life in the service of human dignity, social justice and the common good. These teachings – to put community before self, principle before profit, and the public interest before political expediency – are central to our Catholic tradition. Catholics in Alliance is committed to creating the necessary conditions for a culture of life – a culture that reverences the life and dignity of the human person over greed and materialism, and over the politics of division.
The site:
"Typical crappy artwork of the dissenters, easy to spot."
It looks a lot like art work on OCP publications.
I wonder who produced it?
Who is listed in the credits for the art?
I wonder if they are OCP folks?
The cover looks like several layers of aborted doves.
**If anyone has a jpg of this fake voters guide, please post it, so that if it's spotted on "the rack" in the narthex we can toss it out.**
Good idiea!
It is the new term for Cafeteria Catholics.
Abortion because of its willfull slaughter of innocent lives is the issue.
That's just what I was thinking, it looks like something published by OCP or GIA. If they were smart they would have put a traditional icon on the cover. But they're so deluded that they probably think we like that stuff.
OTOH, the majority of post-V2 poorly catechized Catholics will probably quickly identify that artwork is "catholic" since that's all they ever see nowadays.
Is this published by any Catholic organization or diocese? Does it have an imprimatur?
I guess the next step for these folks is to publish the CCCC - Counter Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Is this published by any Catholic organization or diocese?"
It is apparently published by the Center for Educational Design and Communication (CEDC)- http://www.cedc.org/. CEDC is sponsored by the Society of the Sacred Heart - http://www.rscj.org/.
The entire pamphlet is on their website.
Seems to me like a bunch of new age "nuns".
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That's a very good question.
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