Catholics: morally obligated to oppose laws upholding abortion, euthanasia
I wish to respond to the article entitled Pax Christi: Voting for common good means considering a range of issues in your Oct. 7 publication.
In the organizations’ statement, Life Does Not End at Birth, the authors state the incontrovertible truth “all life is sacred.” However, the conclusion that they assert “in spirit Catholics are called to vote on the wide range of life issues that are accountable to holding up the dignity of humanity: war, poverty, health care, abortion, capital punishment, mistreatment of immigrants and racism, to name a few” is dangerously misleading insofar as it cites a host of life issues without any distinction thereby suggesting that all are morally equivalent. They clearly are not!
War and capital punishment compel us to look to the doctrines by Augustine and Aquinas and articulated in our Catechism. Just War Theory provides a moral framework for a measured response to external threats to the order, peace and security of society. Capital punishment is justifi able when the perpetrator remains a threat to that same order, peace and security and after all other options are exhausted. In practice both require a careful examination of motive in the context of complex issues of justice and mercy and are designed to regulate society’s response to objective moral evil while respecting the dignity of victims and perpetrators alike.
For direction on the proper disposition toward the social; injustices that lead to poverty, inadequate health care, unjust limitations on immigration and racism we defer to the Gospels in which Christ directs us to look beyond societal context to the dignity of the person created in God’s image and act accordingly. And while most Catholics probably agree with and hold to these principles, we can understand and accept the diversity of opinion regarding their implementation.
Not so with abortion (in all forms) and euthanasia. The child or elderly person who is destroyed is wholly innocent. Considerations of justice and mercy do not enter into the decision. These acts blatantly disregard the humanity and dignity of the person (and in the case of abortion, the child’s mother) and subordinate the fundamental right to life of these most vulnerable to the will of those perpetrating the killing. They are intrinsically evil acts morally, spiritually equivalent to the ancient practice of human sacrifi ce and they strike at the very core of Christian Charity, virtue that informs Christian morality and ethics.
Abortion and euthanasia are clearly of a different order of evil than those others cited above. Consequently, we as Catholics (and indeed all human beings) are morally obligated to oppose civil laws that uphold these practices and hold lawmakers who propose such laws and perpetuate their effects accountable, even at the expense of accepting other lesser evils in the process. To do otherwise suggest complicity.
Douglas R. Merkler,
Blairstown
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law