Voting Non-Negotiables

George Weigel talked to Raymond Arroyo on EWTN Thursday night about Catholics and the November election.

The Department of Health and Human Services abortion-drug, sterilization, contraceptive mandate, a poison fruit of Obamacare, he said, represents a “grave threat to the institutional integrity of the Catholic Church and to conscientious Catholic employers.”

“The bishops,” he acknowledged, “have made clear throughout the year, applying the teaching of several popes and the Second Vatican Council, that the inalienable right to life at all stages of life and in all conditions of life is a non-negotiable.”

(See Archbishop Lori here, Archbishop Chaput here, Bishop Conley here … )

“Religion freedom, as the first of human rights,” they have also articulated, “is a non-negotiable.”

“Whether the highest marginal tax rate should be 33 percent, 37 percent, 29 percent, or 24 percent is a negotiable,” he added, explaining the difference between issues that are subject to prudential judgment as opposed to these non-negotiable issues.

“There are certain issues,” Weigel added, “that are non-negotiable not simply ‘because the Church says,’ but because right reason tells us that a society in which the state can declare certain people outside the community of common protection is a danger to everyone.”