| Politics

It is much like the autumn of 1860, when the nation was (as usual) divided on many issues, but one in particular exercised the conscience and stoked the passions of everyone: the intrinsic moral evil known as slavery.

BRITISH COLUMBIA (Catholic Online) - Back in August, I wrote a series of three articles for Catholic Online and thedivinemercy.org about the upcoming presidential election, entitled “The Quandary for Catholics.” In those articles I reviewed the three most pressing life and death issues of moral concern facing the nation today: abortion, healthcare, and war and peace. I concluded that from the standpoint of Catholic Social Teaching, there are solid arguments that can be presented for the positions staked out by both Obama and McCain on the best way to extend health coverage to the uninsured, and the best way to approach the conflicts in the Middle East. However, the abortion issue remains (as Deacon Fournier so aptly phrased it), “the 800 pound gorilla in the room” of this election.

On this matter, Sen. Obama clearly, unequivocally, and unapologetically supports what the church considers an “intrinsic moral evil”: the continuation (and even expansion) of the legal permission to kill unborn children in their mothers’ wombs. In most respects, Sen. McCain opposes this extreme moral evil. This issue, I said, should be the “tipping point” for Catholic voters in this election. As I wrote back in August: “Those who understand and accept the Church’s Social Teaching, with its recognition of human life as an absolute value and priority, simply cannot support [Obama’s] candidacy in the upcoming presidential election without seriously violating their conscience.”

Those articles generated plenty of comment and debate. Sadly, it seems that since that time, Catholic Obama supporters have continued to duck and weave, finding new reasons for marginalizing the issue of abortion in this campaign, and for the dubious contention that an Obama presidency would actually result in a lower abortion rate than an administration run by his relatively Pro-Life opponent. The hour is late; the election is nearly upon us. But it’s not too late for sincere Catholics of good will to cease from engaging in convoluted rationalizations that simply lead us all to “lose sight of the forest because of all the trees.” This article is a final plea (from me anyway) to Catholic Obama supporters please to reconsider your position. So much is now at stake.

It is much like the autumn of 1860, when the nation was (as usual) divided on many issues, but one in particular exercised the conscience and stoked the passions of everyone: the intrinsic moral evil known as slavery. The two main candidates were the Republican, Abraham Lincoln, and the Democrat, Stephen Douglas. Lincoln was hardly a pure anti-slavery candidate: he only proposed new legal limits to the spread of the institution of slavery, confining it to the southern states where it already existed, and keeping it out of the new American states and territories forming in the west. He believed that the institution of slavery, so strictly confined, would gradually wither away. Douglas was hardly a pure pro-slavery candidate: he simply proposed the continuation of the right of all states of the union, new or old, to choose for themselves whether or not to keep slaves. Lincoln was therefore only relatively anti-slavery; he did not support an immediate national ban on slavery, only greater restrictions of it. The pure abolitionists thought of him as compromiser, or even as disingenuous on the issue. Douglas was the “pro-choice” candidate of the day. He wanted to keep the legal status quo with regard to this intrinsic social evil, and protect freedom of choice by each state. Two “third party” candidates were on the ballot too, but neither of them had any chance at all of winning.

Can anyone doubt that for those who understand the Church’s Social Teaching (and not many U.S. Catholics did at the time) the morally right thing to do was to choose the lesser of evils and vote for Lincoln? Can anyone doubt that a Douglas victory would have resulted in the continuation and probable extension of the evil institution of slavery on the American continent for at least another generation? This election was a turning point in American history. But what would you say if there were sincere, well intended people at the time who argued: “Look, like it or not slavery is an institution in this country that is legally protected and here to stay. So let’s support the candidate who can best bring us all together as a nation, and whose economic policies will help the cotton trade, providing the nation’s economically beleaguered cotton farmers with enough financial security that some of them won’t even bother to keep slaves any longer: they will be able to pay hired hands instead. That candidate is the highly principled and eloquent orator, Stephen Douglas. Statistics show that when times are good down south, the plantation owners are less likely to look for slave labor and more likely even to free their slaves. You see, Douglas will do more good for the slaves indirectly than any ...