All the bubbles were filled but one. Mulling over my absentee ballot, I couldn't help but smirk at the irony staring me right in the face - that after nearly two years of campaigning and myriad hours of exposure to each presidential candidate, I couldn't put pen to paper and make a choice.
As a Catholic from a very conservative Colorado county, I grew up believing that I could never, never, ever bring myself to vote for a pro-choice candidate, but as that ballot stared back at me, issues about social and economic justice, war and immigration also began to swirl in my mind. Lines that seemed so black and white turned gray. My pen stood still.
In the end, I, like 47 million other Catholic voters, did make a choice, and I refuse to believe that any such thoughtfully cast vote can ever constitute "material cooperation with intrinsic evil" as some Catholic priests are currently arguing.
The Rev. Jay Scott Newman of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, S.C., echoing a few extreme statements from other priests, has said that "when a plausible pro-life alternative exists," any Catholics who vote for a pro-choice candidate "place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law."
His stinging remarks, which I first heard in a CNN soundbyte, go on to say that Catholic Obama supporters "should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."
When I heard that, I bristled. I shouted, I got livid.
First of all, people seeking the sacrament of penance should go because they are motivated from within, prompted by their own hearts to seek forgiveness. To be commanded to confess from the pulpit is to me a perversion of this beautiful aspect of the sacrament. Even if your priest does deem a vote for Obama as sin, how penitent can you really be if you truly feel you made the right choice?
Confusing the issue even further is that the Vatican and higher Church officials don't ever name names or promote one specific candidate over another, instead urging Catholics to instead take certain principles into account when voting. In the gray area surrounding elections, what qualifies as "sin"?
Moreover, to make one of your followers go to confession for a political choice, religiously influenced though it may be, is highly disrespectful to me. The reality is that even though the practice of abortion in the U.S. is horrifying to many Catholics, it's still only one issue among many that citizens must face when they step into the voting booth. I would argue that to blindly ignore the other issues at stake and only vote for pro-life candidates, whoever that may be in a given election, is irresponsible.
As true advocates of life, don't we have just as much a responsibility to consider which candidate will bring an end to the Iraq War, which Pope John Paul II strongly opposed and the Vatican considers unjustified? Some estimates place civilian casualties as high as 90,000 deaths. How, then, can I pull the lever for a supposedly "pro-life" John McCain who boasted on the campaign trail that staying in Iraq for a million years would be "fine with him"?
Voting is a balancing act. Obviously, some Catholic voters did feel that Obama's other "pro-life" promises - for example, working toward peace in Iraq, ending human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay and bringing social and economic justice to America's poor and working classes - do balance his abortion stance. They made their choice thoughtfully, and with concern for the greatest good. I refuse to believe that Catholic Obama voters are "eating and drinking their own condemnation" at the Eucharist when they voted in a manner that they feel is promoting God's will on earth.
LeeAnn Maton is the assistant news editor.
lmaton@luc.edu
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