Unfortunately your comments are obfuscatory and accusation laden with nary a lick of evidence to support them. You throw partisan diatribe into the mix and equate it with the objective fact that two of the three possible candidates have publicly dedicated themselves to promoting objectively evil acts.

I agree that there are no candidates that are appealing but there are only two who, by their stated policy positions, eliminate themselves from prudential consideration by any faithful Catholic.

A person can make a prudential assessment that the president has become a cultural non-player with regard to the numbers of abortions performed. If abortion rates had dropped significantly under Reagan, Bush I or W, I think a case might be made. But they haven’t.

Under the Republicans, our executive branch has indulged in immoral and sinful behavior to conduct their war. That’s undeniable.

A politician’s pro-choice position might be wimping out, and I wouldn’t doubt it. But being in a direct chain of command for deceit, corruption, greed, torture, rape, and murder is more grievous matter than simply stepping out of the way and refusing to criminalize or advocate criminalization.

A radically principled Catholic has no choice among the major parties this year. Republican Catholics might trot out their 50 million babies, but I don’t think they have a leg to stand on criticizing other Catholics who make perfectly valid prudential choices for public servants who are the lesser of offered evils.

Steve provides some salient thoughts to consider in the way that many of us have been conditioned to view life. I would like to focus on his insight with respect to the allusion to the Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787. Implicit in this decision was the assumption that human beings may legitimately decide which other human beings are “persons” and which are not.

When a decision is made to deny some human beings personhood, word games are then played (e.g. subhuman, chimpanzee, nip, redman, kike, fetus) in order to justify our dehumanization of that other group of human beings. Once we falter on this principle, we have by principle, joined ourselves to the same camp as every other group of people who are guilty of some of the worst crimes against humanity. We may quibble with their criteria in choosing but we agree with their presupposition. There is no getting around this fact. If you think about it, this is implicit in your attempt to assign “value” to the lives of different human beings.

But the presuppositions associated with your question, in the context of the earlier discussion, indicate that you do not appreciate the distinction between the essential notions of formal and material cooperation in evil and the difference between jus ad bellum and jus in bello.

Jus ad bellum refers to the determination as to whether a war is just or not. Jus in bello applies to the morality of actions once a war has begun. While President Bush’s decision to send troops into Iraq will be something he will be judged by God for but it was not an intrinsically evil act. It will be a matter of what he knew and what he may have ignored and his culpability for having done so given the circumstances of the time. One will recall before jumping to hasty conclusions that the US had recently been attacked, that are only a handful of politicians of either party disagreed with the decision to go into Iraq, and many Democrats including Bill Clinton and John Kerry argued from their independent experience that Iraq had WMD and that Saddam Hussein was the biggest threat which had to be dealt with in this regard. It was not until in the 2004 reelection campaign when Howard Dean began to make progress with an anti-war platform that the rest of the Democratic candidates eventually, one by one, began to change their rhetoric which has only escalated since then. This later atmosphere is not the proper context for making such a decision about whether the war was just.

He may have some culpability for the deaths of innocents but he may not. That is between God and him. However, this is not the same as intending murder. Murder is the intentional taking of lives as an intended consequence. While it is clear that some of this occurred in Iraq, as it has in every war, this is the culpability of those who do it. The President only shares culpability in such acts to the degree that he violated the principles of jus ad bellum, unless you have some credible evidence that he is directing the purposeful taking of innocent lives.

While I would agree that all too many Catholics who supported the war perhaps too blithely dismissed the papal admonitions against the war as a difference in prudential judgment, in the end, they were correct in saying that applying the criteria of just war is a prudential judgment which lies ultimately with those authorities who have the sovereign responsibility for the security of a state. No Catholic bishop that I am aware of declared to any Catholic serviceman that he could not serve in the war because it was unjust. Thus, your assumption that culpability for those prosecuting the war for the deaths that come about because of it are of the same moral character as the culpability of those who promote policies whose purpose is the taking of innocent lives of unborn children is factually incorrect.

Formal cooperation with evil means that one intends the result, in this case the deaths of human beings. Material cooperation in evil, means that one participates in an act in which one can foresee the result will be evil, again the deaths of human beings, but he does not intend this result. Formal cooperation is never licit. Anyone who promotes abortion is guilty of formal cooperation in evil. Material cooperation in evil can in some cases be licit. This is the distinction which permits just wars. In general, material cooperation is allowed only under the principle of double effect and when the cooperation avoids a greater evil.

In the case of voting for someone who claims they will “end the war” (a completely other issue that I will avoid getting into) but will promote the innocent taking of unborn babies is simply not a matter of prudential judgment. It is explicitly wrong and can never be justified.

3,000 Contraceptive Abortions/murders = 1 three-year-old murder
12 first trimester abortion/murders = 2 toddler homicides

How many Down Syndrome people equal the value of one “normal” person?
How many physically disabled people equal the value of one “normal” person?
How many elderly people equal the value of a 30-year old?

It’s almost like currency. I guess our founding fathers tried to do this in the Constitution when they said blacks were equal to 2/5 of a person.

On the surface, I can certainly understand the tendency to question why we’d value an embryo as much as an adult. It’s because we tend to value only what we can see. And we can’t see much value in an embryo. The souls have the same value, though–even if we can’t directly observe it.

Can I view embryos and adults with the same value, but value protecting the life of one over the life of the other? I would prefer several thousand Emergency Contraceptive abortions over one murdered 3 year-old.

We don’t have the perogative of abandoning work toward *pro-life legislation* just because one or another candidate holds an economic platform that we might favor. It seems to be backwards to insist that we put aside what is most crucial - indisputably unjust laws about the right to life - in favor of policies about taxes, spending, and yes even about a war that may or may not be just (depending on who you ask).

When JPII says it is a duty to make choices that support life, “especially through legislative measures”, I don’t know how anyone can wiggle out of that. A candidate who is committed to legislative measures that makes (or keeps) abortion widely available has abandonded her moral duty (whether she knows it or not). Those of us choosing such a candidate will have done the same. Whether we or she (or he) supports just legislation after rejecting our primary duty to protect life . . . will be an arbitrary matter - incoherent at core and fickle at best.

By the way - it’s just not true that a pro-lifer in office doesn’t mean fewer abortions. Statistics show otherwise - especially on a state level, either. (Ooops - David mentioned that I see).

The number of lives taken, over 3000 a day.

It cheapens life and shows a loss of respect for the dignity of humans in the culture we live in.

There is no gray area with abortion as a moral issue. The Church teaches very clearly on this evil.

It make the quality of life a basis for political and legal control.

If, we as Catholics, believe that the Holy Spirit is the Giver of Life, how can we second guess His Will? Does He really error in the creation of new life?

There are very defined and clear differences in the candidates that are still running for president.

I wish to thank you for providing such a timely example of the confusion that Flynn’s actions can cause. Your comments manifest confusion between political affiliations and conformance to moral truth. They confuse moral absolutes against the purposeful taking of innocent lives with the prudential judgments about what is and is not just war (ad bellum et in bello). You also seem to confuse emotivism for rational thinking.

Perhaps your confusion can be attributed to a lack of proper formation in absolute moral norms and critical thinking skills. This is not meant as a slam, it is very common these days and I will admit to having suffered this same fate for very many years myself. However, Flynn does not have the same excuse. He has spoken eloquently about the inability to let one’s political views cloud their judgment about the fundamental right to life that all must uphold; especially Catholics. So the adjective faithful cannot be used to describe those Catholics who would support a proabortion politician. N.B. that the percentages who support any proabortion politician fall greatly among Catholics who meet their weekly Mass obligation; this ought to be a clear indicator where the modifier “faithful” ought to be applied.

By the way, a prolifer in oval office does in fact lead to fewer abortions world wide (though perhaps not so much in the US). The current President did so simply by implementing executive policies such as non-funding of overseas abortion programs and by removing the abortion promotion lobby from the US representation among the various UN bodies.

Another point, even if one were able to put opposition to US presence in Iraq on the same moral level as abortion the decision between a politician promoting staying in Iraq until the country has attained stability and one promoting abortion would still weigh in favor or the former. If one were able to classify his support of either under the doctrine of double effect then one must then look to the proportion of good to evil. More innocent lives of unborn children are taken every month in the US alone through abortion than have been lost on all sides in Iraq since the start of hostilities. But of course they are not equivalent and the evil of abortion eclipses the real and imagined evils associated with the Iraq.

Finally, I must say that you assume quite a bit about my political affiliations and my position with respect to Iraq. This is emblematic of an unreflective, partisan mindset. I will pray that you one day take your Catholic faith as the foundation of your thinking and demand your political affiliations accord with the moral truth revealed by God and attainable by reason. In such a day, even though we may perhaps still disagree about which particular policies best reflect the Catholic teaching about the requirement for harmony between solidarity and subsidiarity, we still might be able to have a Guinness together.

A prolifer in office doesn’t equal no more abortions or fewer abortions occurring. The difference in number of unborn lives taken under a rep. or dem. president is arguably very very few, if any. The Pope spoke out against the Iraq war on a couple of occasions, and we can count the number of lives claimed due to the Iraq debacle supported mostly by prolife politicians.

It’s peculiar that you almost fell off of your chair when reading about Flynn’s political activities. I suspect many (most?) faithful Catholics identify with Flynn. (We’re divided about even 50/50 red/blue, no?)

Your own loyalties are promoting the death of many. I simply can’t respect your views, and nope, we probably can’t get a Guinness together. Hillary 2008.