{"id":2789,"date":"2008-09-24T07:43:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T07:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/weighing-grave-moral-reasons-this-election-year.html"},"modified":"2008-09-24T07:43:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-24T07:43:00","slug":"weighing-grave-moral-reasons-this-election-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/weighing-grave-moral-reasons-this-election-year.html","title":{"rendered":"Weighing “grave moral reasons” this election year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several days ago, I linked to a New York Times article<\/a> about how the Catholic vote may be split this election year. <\/p>\n

This morning, two bishops — including my own — have responded in a Letter to the Editor<\/a>: <\/p>\n

To the Editor:<\/p>\n

\u201cAbortion Issue Again Dividing Catholic Votes\u201d (front page, Sept. 17) says the bishops\u2019 statement \u201cForming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship\u201d would \u201cexplicitly allow Catholics to vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights if they do so for other reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually, the bishops said candidates who promote fundamental moral evils such as abortion are cooperating in a grave evil, and Catholics may never vote for them to advance those evils.<\/p>\n

A Catholic voter\u2019s decision to support a candidate despite that gravely immoral position \u201cwould be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.\u201d<\/p>\n

This standard of \u201cgrave moral reasons\u201d is a very high standard to meet. The bishops added that \u201ca candidate\u2019s position on a single issue that involves an intrinsic evil, such as support for legal abortion or the promotion of racism, may legitimately lead a voter to disqualify a candidate from receiving support.\u201d This is timely in light of offensive comments on race quoted in the article.<\/p>\n

What the article calls the \u201crunning debate between Catholics\u201d \u2014 with some saying \u201cabortion is the only issue\u201d and others saying \u201cyou have to look at the whole teaching of the church\u201d \u2014 is not a dilemma for the bishops. One must look at the whole teaching of the church on justice and peace, serving the poor and advancing the common good \u2014 beginning with a fundamental priority on protecting innocent human life from direct attack as in abortion.<\/p>\n

(Bishop) William Murphy<\/p>\n

(Bishop) Nicholas DiMarzio<\/p>\n

Brooklyn, Sept. 19, 2008<\/p>\n

The writers, the bishops of Rockville Centre and Brooklyn, are chairman and former chairman, respectively, of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several days ago, I linked to a New York Times article about how the Catholic vote may be split this election year. This morning, two bishops — including my own — have responded in a Letter to the Editor: To the Editor: \u201cAbortion Issue Again Dividing Catholic Votes\u201d (front page, Sept. 17) says the bishops\u2019…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us"],"yoast_head":"\nWeighing "grave moral reasons" this election year - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/weighing-grave-moral-reasons-this-election-year.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Weighing "grave moral reasons" this election year - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Several days ago, I linked to a New York Times article about how the Catholic vote may be split this election year. This morning, two bishops — including my own — have responded in a Letter to the Editor: To the Editor: \u201cAbortion Issue Again Dividing Catholic Votes\u201d (front page, Sept. 17) says the bishops\u2019…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/weighing-grave-moral-reasons-this-election-year.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-24T07:43:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Deacon Greg Kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Weighing \"grave moral reasons\" this election year - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/weighing-grave-moral-reasons-this-election-year.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Weighing \"grave moral reasons\" this election year - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"Several days ago, I linked to a New York Times article about how the Catholic vote may be split this election year. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}