ROME — A new report suggests that Catholic Democrats at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) “see no problem” with their party’s pro-choice platform, despite Church teaching that abortion is murder.
In her August 22 article, “Catholics at the DNC: You won’t go to hell for voting Democratic,” Heidi Schlumpf of the progressive National Catholic Reporter offered a survey of opinions from Catholics present at the DNC.
After speaking with a number of Catholics in attendance, Schlumpf found that “most Catholic Democrats at the convention say they enthusiastically support the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket and see no problem with their party’s pro-choice platform.”
They said, rather, that “their faith informs their political views and is the foundation of the values that prompt them to vote Democratic.”
An August 21 panel of Catholics at the Democratic National Convention titled “The Importance of Catholic Voters” was sponsored by Catholics Vote Common Good, a left-wing nonprofit seeking to “engage Catholic voters who are concerned about issues of social justice, immigration, climate change, and the scourge of White Christian Nationalism.”
The national co-chair of Catholics Vote Common Good, Patrick Carolan, who is also co-founder of the Global Catholic Climate Movement, said that those on the left need to offer their own version of what it means to be Catholic and Christian.
“We’ve allowed the other side to co-opt the term ‘pro-life.’ Pro-life doesn’t start and end with abortion,” he said. “We have to talk about pro-life being everything.”
“You’re not going to go to hell for voting for a Democrat,” Carolan stated as a message to Catholic voters.
“I’m not worried about going to hell,” echoed Bibiana Boerio, a delegate from Latrobe, Pennsylvania. “I believe the world is too complex for black-and-white simple answers.”
A piece Thursday by Carl R. Trueman in First Things noted that “abortion has the status of a creedal non-negotiable in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party.”
When Planned Parenthood set up a mobile clinic offering free abortions just a few blocks from the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, it was “simply actualizing the central plank of the Democrats’ election campaign.”
The new tone in the party no longer regards abortion “as a necessary evil but as something exhilarating, something to be proud of and rejoice over.”
The relativization of abortion by Catholic Democrats as just one issue among many is redolent of efforts by prominent Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, who promoted the national kickoff of Catholics for Biden in 2020.
Father Reese published an essay insisting that it is acceptable for Catholics to vote for Catholic candidates such as Biden who openly support abortion-on-demand.
The former editor-in-chief of America magazine declared that “a Catholic Democrat can vote for Biden, even if his policies promote abortions and gay marriage, as long as the voter’s intent is not to support those positions.”
“A Catholic Democrat might feel impelled to vote for Biden despite his position on abortion and gay marriage because of other morally grave reasons, for example, his positions on racism, immigration, global warming and COVID-19,” Reese contended.
The priest acknowledged that “most Catholic Democrats agree with Biden that abortion should be legal” anyway, which removes any moral obstacle for supporting him.
In their teaching document on the political responsibility of Catholics called Faithful Citizenship, the U.S. bishops underscored the gravity of abortion, which they described as the “preeminent” issue for Catholic voters.
“The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives destroyed,” the bishops declared.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.”
Abortion “is gravely contrary to the moral law,” the Catechism declares, and, therefore, a person who procures an abortion incurs excommunication from the Church “by the very commission of the offense.”
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