What Is the 'Other Issue' in This Year's Election?

By Mary Beth Bonacci
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 10/14/04)

Well, it’s time for my quad-annual (or whatever you’d call something that occurs every four years) election column. Since it’s something I write every four years, it sometimes occurs to me that maybe I could just go back to whatever I wrote four years ago and basically repeat it.

Not this time.

This election is unique, for so many reasons. It is particularly unique for Catholics. For the first time in my lifetime, and only the third time in history, we have a Catholic candidate on the presidential ballot.

And, for the first time in my memory, Catholic leaders are warning American Catholics that voting for candidates who hold certain positions constitutes "cooperation with evil" and calls into question the voter’s worthiness to receive holy Communion.

Ironically, the candidate who holds those positions is the Catholic candidate. What’s a Catholic to do?

So many Catholics say, "Sure I’m pro-life. But that’s only one issue, and I’m not a one-issue voter." They disagree with John Kerry on abortion. But they plan to vote for him because they agree with him on various other issues. They point to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s recent letter, which they believe said that a Catholic may vote for a pro-abortion candidate as long as they don’t vote for the candidate because he supports abortion.

Nice try, but that’s not what Cardinal Ratzinger said. Not even close.

In the letter, "On Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion," Cardinal Ratzinger made it clear that a Catholic who votes for a pro-abortion candidate because he supports abortion is guilty of formal cooperation with evil and may not receive holy Communion. He went on to say, however, that a Catholic who opposes abortion may vote for a pro-abortion candidate "in the presence of proportionate reasons."

What are "proportionate reasons?"

Abortion is, quite simply, the quite brutal extermination of an innocent human life. It is legal through all nine months of pregnancy, and it happens 1.3 million times every year in America. Abortion remains legal in this country thanks to pro-abortion politicians who promote pro-abortion legislation, fight pro-life legislation and appoint pro-abortion judges. Any time an American votes for a pro-abortion politician he helps that politician stay in office and thus helps abortion remain legal. That’s cooperating in abortion. It’s a serious sin.

When would it ever be okay to vote for a candidate who supports abortion? One case might be when both candidates support abortion, but one candidate supports more limits on it than the other. Or both candidates support abortion, but one candidate’s political party does not, so that helping that party keep or regain control of Congress might help the pro-life cause. Another case might be when the pro-life candidate supports something even more morally heinous that abortion — a condition I can’t imagine ever applying here in America. What in this country could possibly be more heinous than the extermination of 1.3 million innocent lives every year?

Nor do we have two pro-abortion candidates. George W. Bush has, in fact, shown himself to be the most pro-life president in history. He signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, among others. He reinstated Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City policy, preventing federal funds from being used to perform or promote abortion. More important still, he speaks out in defense of the unborn at every opportunity, calling on us to create a "Culture of Life."

Kerry, on the other hand, is vehemently pro-abortion. He actually received a 0 percent rating from National Right to Life for his absolutely consistent Senate votes to protect and expand the "right" to murder unborn children at every stage of development. He has said that he would vote against "any restrictions on age, consent, funding restrictions or any law to limit access to abortion." He told Larry King that his first executive order as President would be to repeal the Mexico City policy. He voted six times against banning the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure, in which a fully viable infant’s skull is pierced with scissors and his or her brains sucked out.

For a guy with a reputation for flip-flopping, he’s been remarkably consistent on abortion.

This election is vitally important. Several Supreme Court justices are on the verge of retirement. Their replacements will undoubtedly determine the fate of Roe v. Wade. Kerry has pledged to appoint only pro-abortion justices.

A Kerry administration would enshrine the "right" to abortion in America for an entire generation, if not longer. It would cost untold millions of unborn children their lives. What "other issue" could possibly be more important than that?

Bonacci is a frequent lecturer on chastity.

Copyright ©2004 Arlington Catholic Herald.  All rights reserved.