Archbishop’s Pastoral Letter Cites Five ‘Non-Negotiables’
by PATRICK NOVECOSKY
Register Correspondent
ST. LOUIS — If Sen. John Kerry becomes president, he will be the second Catholic in the White House. Catholics haven’t had the opportunity to vote for a major-party Catholic as president for the past 44 years.
But with only days to go before the election, George Marlin, author of The American Catholic Voter — 200 Years of Political Impact, said Kerry has to be very concerned that practicing Catholics will turn out against him.
Because Kerry’s relationship with the Church is so much a part of the news, his record on abortion has become better known. He voted six times to keep partial-birth abortion legal. That doesn’t make him popular.
Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis is one of several bishops who have said that Kerry shouldn’t receive Communion because of his record. Now he has issued a groundbreaking pastoral letter on voting (read it on page 9) that goes a step further.
Not only are Catholics morally obliged to vote, Archbishop Burke said in the letter published Oct. 1, but they must do so in accordance with the moral teachings of the Church. He focused on the same five “non-negotiable” conscience issues that Catholic Answers focuses on in its recent voter’s guide: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, cloning and homosexual “marriage.” (To read the Register’s editorial about these issues, and articles about each one, go to www.ncRegister.com.)
In the third presidential debate Oct. 13, held in Tempe, Ariz., Kerry said he “respects” the views of bishops who said it would be sinful to vote for a candidate who supports abortion and embryonic stem-cell research but disagrees with them. “I believe that choice, a woman's choice, is between a woman, God and her doctor,” he said. “I will not allow somebody to come in and change Roe v. Wade.”
Marlin said when the bishops focus on such statements, Catholics turn away from Kerry.
“I think that will be one of the great ironies,” he said. “As I’m watching the trends go forward in the key swing states, President George Bush’s lead is expanding, and if the trend continues, I think the real trend of the 2004 campaign will be that practicing Catholics emerged to defeat a man who was baptized a Catholic, served as an altar boy and claims that he is a believing and practicing Catholic.”
Catholic voters such as Marguerite Ozburn say they appreciate hearing from bishops. “It’s refreshing to have a bishop who puts things in black and white that will help people who are on the fence,” said the St. Louis-based communications specialist.
Ozburn is one of several Catholics the Register interviewed over the course of five months on how they are approaching this year’s elections. The Catholic Voter series, which concludes with this issue, examined life issues, Catholic voting patterns, immigration, the economy and Catholic opposition to the war in Iraq.
Sue Bordelon, a parishioner at St. Pius X Church in Lafayette, La., is another. She said statements like Archbishop Burke’s have had a big impact on her.
“I began contemplating this election two years ago, and nobody was talking about it,” she said. “I was yearning for information and someone to instruct me. I felt in my gut that I could commit a sin in the voting booth had I voted with an ill-formed conscience.”
Not All Agree
Archbishop Burke’s letter, “On Our Civic Responsibility for the Common Good,” declares that the five non-negotiable issues “are so fundamental to the common good that they cannot be subordinated to any other cause, no matter how good.”
The archbishop’s thesis, however, doesn’t sit well with all Catholics, according to Chris Korzen, spokesman for the Catholic Voting Project. It fails to examine a broad spectrum of issues of concern to voting Catholics, he said.
“Archbishop Burke’s pastoral letter is his personal theological opinion and is intended as guidance for voters within his archdiocese,” he said in a statement. “Speaking as a collected assembly, however, the U.S. bishops have consistently promoted ‘Faithful Citizenship’ as the standard that American Catholics should use to inform their conscience when weighing electoral choices. The bishops explicitly warn against single-issue voting in ‘Faithful Citizenship’ and assert that ‘it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine.’”
Archbishop Burke’s letter notes that Catholics should examine a broad range of issues, but that “serious moral issues” must carry more weight than others.
“The Catholic voter must seek, above every other consideration, to protect the common good by opposing these practices which attack its very foundations,” the letter said. “Thus, in weighing all of the social conditions which pertain to the common good, we must safeguard, before all else, the good of human life and the good of marriage and the family.”
Universal Law
As for whether the statement is his “personal theological opinion,” Archbishop Burke, a canon lawyer by training, told the St. Louis Review, the archdiocesan newspaper, that his letter is “the presentation of Catholic teaching, not particularly the teaching of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.”
Given Kerry’s pro-abortion stance, some political pundits have called Archbishop Burke’s letter partisan. But Ozburn firmly disagrees.
“He addresses that in the letter,” she said. “He writes that his responsibility as a bishop clearly requires him to speak out on critical moral issues.”
This is where Archbishop Burke’s letter hits home, said Dr. William May, professor of moral theology at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Washington, D.C.
“Too many Catholics look upon the teaching of the Church as input,” he said. “In Veritatis Splendor, (Pope John Paul II) stresses that the Church teaching is not something that is just imposed upon believers.
“We have an obligation to act in accordance with our own judgments of conscience, but our judgments of conscience can’t be erroneous. The error could be attributable to us because we’re too lazy to find out the truth. We need advice, and we should look for it,” May said.
“Put it this way: If we want advice on sexual morality, would we talk to Mother Teresa or would we talk to Hugh Hefner? In forming your conscience, look for it where you’ll find the truth.”
Patrick Novecosky writes
from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Catholic News Service contributed to this report.
© 2004 Circle Media/National Catholic Register. Reproduced with permission.