A vast field for the apostolate has opened up on the national and international levels where the laity especially assist with their Christian wisdom. In loyalty to their country and in faithful fulfillment of their civic obligations, Catholics should feel themselves obliged to promote the true common good. Thus they should make the weight of their opinion felt in order that the civil authority may act with justice and that legislation may conform to moral precepts and the common good. #10

In this Blog post I wanted to highlight a point that is usually missed from the various election resources that you will see from either official or non-official Catholic. The call to be faithful citizens is by no means restricted to Election Day. Voting is an important civic responsibility and our Church calls us to participate in this duty. However, since no party or candidate can ever fully represent Catholic moral interest we are called to be ongoing active participants in the political process. We are encouraged to vote on election day and to be Catholic advocates every other day. Time and time again the Church reminds us that no party ever fully encapsulates the totality of the Catholic public morality and social teaching. We are encouraged to vote for a political agenda that best promotes the dignity of life and the common good but then we are also encouraged to push our representatives and political leadership (whether we voted for them or not) on issues and policies that are of concern to the Church’s teaching. As an example, if we vote for a politician who is against abortion but also in favor of the death penalty then we are urged on by our church to press that politician on the issue of the death penalty or any other position he or she may take that clearly contradict the Church’s teachings.

Many of will probably receive election resources and information from a variety of Catholic groups and organizations. If you trust these groups and organizations by all means you are encouraged to heed their information. However the Church cautions us with regards to “Catholic” organizations that offer resources that contradict the Church’s teachings. It is worth noting and promoting the Church’s caution here since some organizations and individuals have uttered errors on both sides of the American political spectrum:

There have been cases within some organizations founded on Catholic principles, in which support has been given to political forces or movements with positions contrary to the moral and social teaching of the Church on fundamental ethical questions. Such activities, in contradiction to basic principles of Christian conscience, are not compatible with membership in organizations or associations which define themselves as Catholic. Similarly, some Catholic periodicals in certain countries have expressed perspectives on political choices that have been ambiguous or incorrect, by misinterpreting the idea of the political autonomy enjoyed by Catholics and by not taking into consideration the principles mentioned above. – Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, DOCTRINAL NOTE on some questions regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life, #7

Officially the Church does not nor will it endorse any individual or party. The Church rightfully feels that this is outside of its jurisdiction as pronounced in the Second Vatican Council’s “Declaration of Religious Freedom”. It encourages the well formed Catholic to vote his or her conscience based on the moral principles and social teachings that it offers. It is the role of the Church to pronounce on these principles and teachings for the formation of the Christian conscience. Two official documents are worth consulting for this purpose:

• Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: By the United States Catholic Conferences of Bishops
• DOCTRINAL NOTE on some questions regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life: By the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith

The United States Catholic Conference of Bishops has a great political website, Faithful Citizenship, that gives the best and official Catholic resources regarding the elections and our political responsibility. I would like to encourage people and parishes to visit and promote this site. Parishes and Retreat Centers may want to consult the USCCB’s do’s and don’ts page with regards to what political activity they are and are not allowed to do. Also, by clicking on to this link you will find the seven key themes of Catholic Social Teaching.

With regards to the issues of Catholic concern I will offer a link to a previous blog post that we shared over the Church’s definition of “Intrinsically Evil” acts which define the more serious elements of concerns for the Church in protecting the dignity of the human person. But I will also leave you with this excerpt from the USCCB when they defined the Church’s moral position under the framework of the Consistent Ethic of Life.

Adopting a consistent ethic of life, the Catholic Church promotes a broad spectrum of issues “seeking to protect human life and promote human dignity from the inception of life to its final moment.” Opposition to abortion and euthanasia does not excuse indifference to those who suffer from poverty, violence and injustice. Any politics of human life must work to resist the violence of war and the scandal of capital punishment. Any politics of human dignity must seriously address issues of racism, poverty, hunger, employment, education, housing, and health care. Therefore, Catholics should eagerly involve themselves as advocates for the weak and marginalized in all these areas. – USCCB, Living the Gospel of Life, #23

From the moment this encyclical was produced moral theologians have offered their opinion in respect to this delicate matter. It is not my intention to add to that here. The reason I offer this reflection and the excerpt from the encyclical below is because outside of the academic discussion on the issues of Catholic morality I have noticed, and for a long time taken for granted, a singular interpretation of what is considered “intrinsically evil.” I was led to reread this encyclical because again I have heard this term being used in lay Catholic arguments regarding what some consider the absolute importance of certain social issues over others. In the case that affected me, it was considered that abortion and euthanasia was of preeminent importance and that other social issues such as poverty or torture were either secondary or outside the Church’s sphere of social concern. The rational given was because they are “intrinsically evil.” The difficulty with this position was that it stood against the consistent ethic of life principle, which the Church upheld in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae. Knowing that the position of Intrinsically evil acts was defined in Veritatis Splendor I chose to study this document and to find the difinitive position of the Catholic Church regarding this principle. Below is section 80 of this document.        

Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that “there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object”. The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such acts: “Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator”.

It has been my observation that a younger generation of Catholics is emerging that is not happy  with the partisan style of moral Catholicism that has been the recent status quo for American Catholics. The healthy tension between the individual conscience and the teaching authority of the Church will continue being debated as it has for generations before. But if we are to wrestle with valid principles then we must not do disservice to our Church and faith by allowing a divisive misinterpretation of any principle to hold sway. The Church does indeed believe that certain acts are “intrinsically evil.” In the above quote the Church defines these acts as Whatever is hostile to life itself and whatever is offensive to human dignity. Insofar as some of us are engaged with making statements on the Catholic concern of social issues we need to be challenged by the fact that our Church has adopted a consistent ethic in expressing its moral position on all issues that violate the integrity of human life and creation. Even in the principle of “intrinsically evil” acts this consistent ethic is again reiterated.

The “Consistent Ethic of Life” is a Catholic moral framework that has tried to build a bridge on the issues of life that have been fragmented by partisan politics in the United States.  The right has articulated this ethic is terms of issues that impact personal sexual morality while the left tends to articulate this ethic with regards to public social issues. For decades now members of the American Catholic/Christian community has tried to develop a movement to bridge this morality, the current consistent-life network is part of this movement. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago was a champion of this movement and he pushed the agenda of the “Consistent Ethic of Life” within the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. Through this ethic Cardinal Bernardin developed a consistent moral framework to address issues such as Abortion, Nuclear War, Euthanasia, and the Death Penalty. In his 1983 address Cardinal Bernardin defined the movement in this way:

If one contends, as we do, that the right of every fetus to be born should be protected by civil law and supported by civil consensus, then our moral, political and economic responsibilities do not stop at the moment of birth. Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker. Such a quality of life posture translates into specific political and economic positions on tax policy, employment generation, welfare policy, nutrition and feeding programs, and health care. Consistency means we cannot have it both ways: We cannot urge a compassionate society and vigorous public policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then argue that compassion and significant public programs on behalf of the needy undermine the moral fiber of the society or are beyond the proper scope of governmental responsibility.

In 1995 Pope John Paul II wrote his encyclical on this subject titled Evangelium Vitae. While the Pope certainly approved and promoted this consistent ethic in light of what he called “The Culture of Death” the issue focus was turned to abortion and euthanasia. The result was that although the concept of the “Consistent Ethic of Life” became the moral fabric for Catholic morality, here in the United States partisan politics continued to emphasize the issues that they considered important and took from the movement whatever supported their political position.

There can be no doubt that with this encyclical Pope Benedict XVI is looking at undoing this partisan stranglehold on American and western morality. In chapter one he informs that there is a consistent morality with two encyclicals by Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae (which addresses Catholic sexual ethics in terms of abortion and contraception) and Populorum Progressio (which addresses international economic development and global poverty.) The issue focus for Caritas in Veritate is the Global economy and the contemporary reality of poverty and development. It is with this social issue that Pope Benedict addressed the consistent moral framework. In so doing he is associating the “Consistent Ethic of Life” within these social issues, he reminds us in that openness to life is at the centre of true development.

The second chapter of the Encyclical gives us an update on the issue of human development from the time when Populorum Progressio was written. While Pope Benedict XVI comments on the ongoing social issues that Pope Paul VI wrote about he also introduces some new social concerns that have developed since then. This includes the further integration of globalization with its paradoxical increased of global wealth, poverty and inequality. As he concludes his analysis of poverty and development he connects the right to life within the social responsibility that we have to address global poverty and to promote a true definition of progress and development that is based on the dignity of the individual and the demands of justice. And so with regards to the issue of the global food crisis he tells us:

The right to food, like the right to water, has an important place within the pursuit of other rights, beginning with the fundamental right to life. It is therefore necessary to cultivate a public conscience that considers food and access to water as universal rights of all human beings without distinction or discrimination. (#27)