In Election, Protecting Conscience as Important as Ending Abortion

In reference to my post yesterday, a reader writes (with my emphases):

In my opinion, a better question is whether abortion is really the end-all election issue many conservative Catholics make it out to be. What if there were an issue as important as abortion that Catholics need to consider? I think there is. And I think it is conscience rights.

Since at least 2009, when the debate surrounding the Affordable Care Act was swirling, I have been appalled by how conservative Catholics, especially clergy (including bishops), have been trying to manipulate the consciences of American Catholics by telling them they cannot vote for Democrats, even pro-life Democrats, under pain of mortal sin. This became even worse in 2012 with Obama’s re-election campaign, and is at a fever pitch now.

Here is what Gaudium et Spes says:

Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator (GS 27).

Here, in this document from Vatican II, the Council Fathers equate abortion and “attempts to coerce the will itself” as “infamies.” They are listed together as grave offenses against the Creator (which I think was a title for God chosen deliberately here to recognize the human person, in his totality, as the apex of God’s creative work).

I believe a Catholic could, in good conscience, choose to abstain from voting in this election or vote for a third-party candidate. But I will vote for Hillary Clinton for two major reasons:

One, to make the most emphatic statement I can in rejection of Donald Trump by voting for the person with the best chance to defeat him. Two, and even more importantly, to take a stand for conscience rights against the conservative Catholic clergy and laity who are attempting to frighten Catholics away from voting for Clinton by telling them (falsely) that those Catholics who vote for Clinton will go to hell if they do. I did that in 2012 [by voting for Obama], and I will continue to do it at least until priests and bishops stop doing this and repudiate having ever done so, once and for all.

And the problem is not just that some try to manipulate and frighten Catholics away from voting for Mrs. Clinton. Many also will try to manipulate and frighten you away from not voting for Mr. Trump—even if you say you will vote third party, or stay home.

In my own case, several people have hijacked discussions on my Facebook wall in order to write long and graphic descriptions of what happens during an abortion. Or to say that sixty million dead babies are pleading with us to vote for Mr. Trump.

Yesterday, someone tweeted to me a graphic picture of a bloody and dismembered baby as the kind of thing I would be responsible for—not if I vote for Mrs. Clinton, but merely if I refuse to vote for Mr. Trump.

This is emotional manipulation. It is the tactic, not of thinkers, but of bullies.

And so my reader is exactly right to take this stand for conscience.

Because—and this is what I was trying to point out through the challenge in my prior post—when it comes to Trump vs. Clinton, no one has any reason to believe that Mr. Trump will be any better on the abortion issue. All you can do is appeal to your unthinking faith in what Mr. Trump has “promised.” Trump said it, I believe it, that settles it.

But where is the actual evidence that Mr. Trump’s “conversion” to the pro-life cause is actually in earnest, and not just an election year play to the conservative base? No such evidence exists.

But Trump said it, I believe it, that settles it.

Do you really mean to tell me that Mr. Trump has been so scrupulously honest in all things, that we can take him at his word when he speaks of his pro-life sentiments? or when he promises to appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court?

Really?

But Trump said it, I believe it, that settles it.

In fact, in Mr. Trump’s case, there is good reason not to put faith in his pro-life “conversion.” He claims to have become pro-life because of the child of friends who decided to keep him rather than abort him, as they had originally intended. And the child, said Mr. Trump, turned out to be a “superstar.”

But what if the child had not been a “superstar”? What if he’d turned out to be a “loser,” or what if he had been born with Down’s Syndrome?

In fact, Mr. Trump was asked that very thing. Here is his answer.

I’ve never thought of it. That’s an interesting question. I’ve never thought of it. Probably not, but I’ve never thought of it. I would say no, but in this case it was an easy one because he’s such an outstanding person.

Don’t lie to yourself: Mr. Trump is not pro-life; he is pro-“superstar.”

But Trump said it, I believe it, that settles it.

So where does that leave us? That leaves us in an election where abortion is a non-issue. And that is where my reader’s appeal to conscience comes in, and is exactly right.

Attempting to emotionally manipulate Catholic voters into voting for Mr. Trump (because abortion) is an evil as great as abortion itself, because—as the Church tells us in Gaudium et Spes—one’s conscience is an integral part of his very life.

I find it ironic that the very people who are so insistent upon the primacy of prudential judgment on issues like waterboarding, or the death penalty, or immigration, suddenly act as though decisions about voting are not areas of prudential judgment. Somehow abortion is the only issue that matters in these cases. And even when there is no evidence that Trump actually means it when he claims to be pro-life, we are supposed to accept his word as though it were His Word.

Trump said it, I believe it, that settles it.

But voting is always a complex and individual moral calculus, involving a great many questions apart from abortion. And so Cardinal Ratzinger says That it is licit to vote for a pro-abortion candidate so long as you do not do so because the candidate is pro-abortion. Your vote must be justified by an effort to avoid “proportionate” evils.

How about these for proportionate evils? Donald Trump:

• is endorsed by Kim Jong-Un, Vladimir Putin, Islamic terrorists, Neo-Nazi terrorists, the KKK, the Chinese Communist Party, Serbian war criminal Vojislav Seselj, Russian Fascist Aleksandr Dugin, and convicted murderer Don King
• praises Saddam Hussein, tweets Mussolini quotes, uses pictures of Nazi soliders in his campaign material.
• pledges to use libel laws against dissenting journalists, in violation of the first amendment
• refuses to condemn violence engaged in by his supporters, promising to pay their legal fees, and once claimed he could murder someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any support
• calls for the execution of Edward Snowden
• calls for war crimes by advocating the killing of terrorists’ families
• promises to do “unthinkable” things in response to terrorism
• speaks out against the Geneva Conventions as a hindrance
• threatens to shoot down Russian planes
• wonders why we just can’t use our nukes
• calls for global nuclear rearmament
• says the Chinese government “showed strength” by cracking down on the protesters in Tiennamen Square
• promises to seize oil fields in the Middle East
• says he wants to invade Syria with 30,000 soldiers
• promises a return to more brutal forms of execution than lethal injection
• asks Russia to commit espionage against the United States

And on and on and on. But you can check out the link above, which includes documentation of these and every other charge against Mr. Trump.

In this election, mr. Trump’s pro-life credentials are in enough doubt that there is no chance I would ever overlook everything else. “Trump said it, I believe it, that settles it” does not persuade me. I will not vote for Mrs. Clinton—I have always said that I will vote third party—but a Catholic (like my reader above) who decides that he or she must vote for Mrs. Clinton in order to stop Mr. Trump is acting with a Catholic conscience as fully-formed as anyone else’s, and is absolutely right to protest against the emotional bullying and manipulation that other Catholics, including clergy, engage in.

“Vote for Trump or the babies will die” is not a way to win people to your way of thinking. Especially when it’s not true.

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