Voters’ guide

We attended Mass on October 14 at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Martinsville, New Jersey. The celebrant did not touch on the election issues here in the US as Archbishop Nicholas DiMarzio did but at the door after Mass was a brochure titled, “Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics” which was distributed free.

The 18-page booklet was published by the Catholic Answers Press of San Diego this year.

I find this guide relevant to us because of the issue of the Reproductive Health Bill that parallels those in the United States. In the US, the issue is Obama Care which tramples on Catholic doctrine regarding contraception, abortion and euthanasia, same sex marriage - the assault on religious liberty.

Since Catholic doctrine applies in the US as in the Philippines and elsewhere, I thought this guide will also help us make decisions during the election in May 2013. As far as I know, there is no clear guide on how we should, in conscience, vote this May elections, particularly for members of Congress.

There are doctrines that are non-negotiable. If they are negotiable, how can they be doctrines of faith? The Catholic Church rests on the truths of her founder, Jesus Christ and she is not at liberty to tinker with these articles of faith as others want her to do.

Many martyrs had died for this faith and it is the duty of “serious” Catholics not only to defend them but, in the words of the Holy Father, in his call for the New Evangelization, to share them.

The Guide identified five issues involving “non-negotiable moral values in current politics”. While it endorses no candidate, the Guide provides a basis on knowing who among the candidates advocate “endorse or promote intrinsically evil policies.” On the other hand, the Guide urges the voters to choose “those who promote policies in line with moral law.”

The Guide says that “Catholics have a moral obligation to promote the common good through the exercise of their voting privileges” because “it is not only civil authorities who have the responsibility for a country.” It cites the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2239) which says that “Service of the common good require(s) citizens to fulfill their roles in the life of the political community.”

On the other hand, the Guide cites the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith which says that “A well-informed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law that contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals.”

The Guide clarifies that “morality requires that we avoid doing evil to the greatest possible, even indirectly.” This is clear enough – if we vote for those who promote an intrinsically evil policy or law as the RH bill then we are also promoting, indirectly, that kind of evil.

We cannot, as Reps. Edcel Lagman, Janette Garin, Jeffry Ferrer and Senators Miriam Santiago and Pia Cayetano and Riza Hontiveros separate our being Catholics from being public officials. Neither can President Benigno Aquino hide behind being President to his duty to prevent an intrinsic evil.

The Guide further says that “some things are always wrong, and no one may deliberately vote in favor of them.”

Here is something interesting. What if we like a candidate who is a promoter of the RH bill? The Guide tells us that support of this candidate is an indirect support of “these evils” the candidate promotes.

In the American context in this 2012 presidential election, the Guide identifies five non-negotiable principles and it is “a serious sin to deliberately endorse or promote any of these actions” as they are intrinsically evil and fundamentally conflict with moral law: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and homosexual marriage.

These are not yet in the Philippines but we have contraception which is continuously opposed by the Catholic Church here.

Another important subject in this Guide is the issue of human life in relation to the justification of the promoters of the RH bill who claim that the bill is “human rights” or the “rights of women to health.”

The Guide quotes Blessed Pope John Paul II who said, “The common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights – for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture – is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other rights, is not defended with maximum determination.”

For us Catholics then, the main issue is that of the right to life, the fundamental right that is the “condition for all other rights.”  

The RH bill is a violation of the right to life and we must determinedly oppose it with our votes.*

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