U.S. bishop slams
Dem platform for endorsing ‘intrinsic evils’
Co-authored with John Jalsevac
SPRINGFIELD, IL, September 25, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com)
– The bishop of Springfield, Illinois has issued a
hard-hitting letter in his diocesan paper, slamming the Democratic Party
platform’s support for abortion and gay ‘marriage’ and urging Catholics to bring
their consciences to the ballot box.
Citing the events
that transpired at the Democratic National Convention when the last
remaining reference to God was removed, and then reintroduced into the party
platform, Bishop John Paprocki insisted that this debacle was not the worst of
the DNC platform problems, and that the platform’s pro-homosexual agenda and
pro-abortion planks “explicitly endorse intrinsic evils.”
This year the Democratic party platform took the most extreme position on
abortion of any of the party’s platforms, expressing support for abortion on
demand with taxpayer funding. Bishop Paprocki also noted that while previous
platforms had said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” the new
platform removed “rare,” leaving only “safe and legal.”
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To those who might criticize him for speaking on a political matter, the
bishop wrote: “My job is not to tell you for whom you should vote. But I do have
a duty to speak out on moral issues. I would be abdicating this duty if I
remained silent out of fear of sounding ‘political’ and didn’t say anything
about the morality of these issues.”
Remarking on the Republican Party Platform as a contrast, Paprocki said,
“there is nothing in it that supports or promotes an intrinsic evil or a serious
sin.”
Preempting a frequent criticism of the Republican party’s position permitting
the use of capital punishment, the bishop cited Catechism of the Catholic Church
(paragraph 2267) which outlines the circumstances under which capital punishment
is permissible. That paragraph states: “Assuming that the guilty party’s
identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching
of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the
only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust
aggressor.”
Bishop Paprocki also corrected those who argue for prioritizing the
preferential option for the poor over human rights for the preborn and defense
of marriage in determining one’s vote: “One might argue for different methods in
the platform to address the needs of the poor, to feed the hungry and to solve
the challenges of immigration, but these are prudential judgments about the most
effective means of achieving morally desirable ends, not intrinsic evils.”
“Again,” the bishop concluded, “I am not telling you which party or which
candidates to vote for or against, but I am saying that you need to think and
pray very carefully about your vote, because a vote for a candidate who promotes
actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you
morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious
jeopardy.”
