Vatican Official: US Catholic Bishops Is Partly To Blame For The Abandonment Of Pro-Life Teachings By Voting Catholics

Written by: Uncle Seth The Noble on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

Life Site News has the details…

A document of the US Catholic Bishops is partly to blame for the abandonment of pro-life teachings by voting Catholics and the election of the “most pro-abortion president” in US history, one of the Vatican’s highest officials said in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com.

Archbishop Raymond Burke, the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, named a document on the election produced by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops that he said “led to confusion” among the faithful and led ultimately to massive support among Catholics for Barack Obama.

The US bishops’ document, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” stated that, under certain circumstances, a Catholic could in good conscience vote for a candidate who supports abortion because of “other grave reasons,” as long as they do not intend to support that pro-abortion position.

Archbishop Burke, the former Archbishop of St. Louis Mo. and recently appointed head of the highest ecclesiastical court in the Catholic Church, told LifeSiteNews.com that although “there were a greater number of bishops who spoke up very clearly and firmly … there was also a number who did not.”

But most damaging, he said, was the document “Faithful Citizenship” that “led to confusion” among the voting Catholic population.

I picked up ‘Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship’ last year from my parish and was astounded by the confusion it presented to the Catholic voter. The voter guide split its ideology right down the middle for the most part as it supported most conservative moral teachings such as its opposition to abortion and homosexual marriage, but took a liberal stance on virtually every economic issue such as health care and immigration. It basically gave the voter the ability to justify within his or her own conscience any justification for those policies which he or she most desired, instead of leading on an issue such as abortion. The Catholic voter could in fact easily vote for a pro-abortion Democrat, for example, under the ‘other grave reasons’ clause for things like government sponsored health care, which the pamphlet called for. If the voter believes that the American health care system is a detriment to human life (like some liberals argue) than that issue could override or at least help justify voting for the pro-abortion candidate.

The language of the pamphlet itself was quite odd as it was quite reminiscent of a 1960′s style of thinking that focused on the theme of social justice. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with the church reiterating the importance of certain issues related to social justice, to me it downplays the tremendous success America has had over the past 40 years to overcome those burdens. America is the most compassionate and charitable nation in the history of the world and has bent over backwards to pay for many of its mistakes and make life just for the least among us. For the most part, the battle for social justice has been won by the forces of good, it is time we recognize this notion and focus our attention to greater evils, and that is to save our society from the fall of morality.

It’s quite strange to see a document put out by the Catholic Church that advocates certain political policies rather than see teachings that would instead dictate public policies. In other words, it appears that many of the positions taken from this document could have come out of the European Socialist playbook. It leaves very little space for gray areas for a country like ours that continues to address these issues, but from a different perspective than how our friends from across the pond have handled them. Bishop Burke appears to be on to something, and that is that a golden opportunity for the pro-life cause was lost because we as a community could not agree on what our priority ought to be. God bless the bishop for his courage to call it how he sees it…it’s up to us to support him in his quest to bring back focus to the Church.

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Topics: Christianity, Pro-Life/Abortion

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