ARCHBISHOP BURKE: If a Catholic knowingly and deliberately votes for a person who is in favor of the most grievous violations of the natural moral law, then he has formally cooperated in a grave evil and must confess his serious sin. Since President Obama clearly announced, during the election campaign, his anti-life and anti-family agenda, a Catholic who knew his agenda regarding, for example, procured abortion, embryonic-stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage, could not have voted for him with a clear conscience.
That quotation was taken from this interview here.
As a non-Catholic, I have a few questions.
1)Does this kind of political commentary by archbishops make Catholics feel uncomfortable? Even though I agree with the archbishop’s take on these issues, frankly I would feel uncomfortable if LDS Church leaders were making statements like this.
2)Why do Catholic church leaders emphasize abortion, SSM and embryonic stem cell research and not, for example, support for the death penalty and support for the Iraq war, both of which the Catholic church opposes? I am sure there’s a good reason for this, it’s just an honest question to which I don’t know the answer.
3)Will the Catholic church begin excommunicating pro-abortion politicians?
It is worth pointing out that during the 1930s President Grant openly encouraged Latter-day Saints to vote against Franklin Roosevelt, the kind of statement prophets and apostles have not seen fit to make lately. (Consider, for example, how moderate and nonpolitical former Birch Society member Ezra Taft Benson turned after becoming Prophet). It’s been a very interesting change.
(To answer at least one of my own questions, I would like to point out that I lived in Latin American for many years and knew hundreds of Catholics. The general feeling they had was that they ignored political advice from their church leaders. This is something we did also during the 1930s, consistently voting for FDR despite Pres. Grant’s admonitions).