Tom Kreitzberg writes…

I think you’re right that any pro-life political advocacy group that says “shut up until after the election” isn’t likely to have a loud voice after the election.

For that matter, it may be time for me to start putting “pro-life” in quotation marks when I use it in the context of political advocacy. “Pro-life” is a morally good position. “Opposed to most abortions” is a morally evil position. If we can’t tell the difference, *that’s* when we should shut up until after the election.

People are puzzled by the difference I see between a non-Catholic pol who ignorantly supports a rape and incest exception and a Ryan abandoning Catholic principle and moving toward supporting a rape and incest exception because his boss demands it.

The difference seems to me to be obvious. The non-Catholic pol who supports the exception doesn’t know any better. He is like the honest pagan who holds the cardinal virtues but still thinks suicide okay. Dante puts no pagan suicides in hell and no Christian suicides in limbo. Why? Those to whom much is given, much is required. The non-Catholic who ignorantly advocates an exception for rape can be taught. The Catholic who abandons the principle that innocent human life may never be deliberately destroyed is rejecting what he has been taught. He is not “improving on Obama”. He is teaching Catholics to betray a fundamental Catholic belief for the sake of power.

And, unlike the voter who can appeal to the principle of remote material cooperation for the sake of some proportional good–a lawmaker who declares that he will support destruction of human life when politically expedient has no such excuse. He is saying he will use the power we give him to support abortion in some cases, not that he will use his power to oppose abortion in all cases. His cooperation with evil, unlike ours, is not remote. It is direct and the stated policy of his administration with his name, as well as his boss’, on the press release.