who are worried about voting for Kerry because of his pro-choice position. I provide it below.
In my informal encounters, this is by far the most common answer I've received from Catholics who explain why they intend to vote for Bush. Some would vote for Bush anyway. But plenty would like to be assured that it's OK to vote for Kerry in principle.
More below the fold.
Think about it: Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, Wisconsin et cetera all have sizeable Catholic populations. If my experience here in LA is anything to go by, this is easily the single biggest issue stopping Catholics from casting a vote for Kerry.
But here's a top Vatican cardinal explaining in an authoritative letter to US Bishops
how it IS permissible for Catholics to vote for a pro-choice candidate.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sent a letter in June to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He concluded: ''A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.''
All you as a canvasser have to do to is provide them with a 'proportionate reason'.
Here's a good one: tell them that Bush preferred to give away $20 billion per annum to the richest 3300 households by abolishing the estate tax, but refused to meet a funding request of $10 billion per annum from the World Health Organization for a program that would save 8 MILLION lives per year in Africa. That's about six times the number of abortions annually in America.
Oh, and Bush is a warmonger who might lead us into even worse wars than Iraq. E.g. with Iran or Syria, in which the insurgents might actually use those damn biological weapons or nuke devices that we never found in Iraq, killing millions.