The Most Reverend Bernard W. Schmitt, Bishop of the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese, has issued a press release on Oct. 20 stating: "abortion is the greatest moral evil of our age". While not mentioning specific candidates, he states, "A Catholic who deliberately votes for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion is guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil", and, "When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, such an action can only be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons." My personal favorite quote is, "All evils are not equal".
More below the fold....
The statement was posted on the diocese's Web site (
http://www.dwc.org/news/oct2104.shtml) and will be printed in its newspaper, The Catholic Spirit, which will be delivered to homes beginning Oct. 30. The letter was mailed Thursday to 137 parishes in the Wheeling-Charleston diocese and is expected to be distributed to 82,000 parishioners.
Pax Christi USA, an Erie, Pa.-based group of more than 200 Catholic organizations has run full-page newspaper ads in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, urging Catholics to consider more than abortion before casting a ballot.
Pax Christi USA spokesman Mike Jones said Catholics also must contemplate war, poverty, health care, capital punishment, mistreatment of immigrants, racism and other issues when voting.
"Abortion is a travesty but it is not the only life issue," Jones said. "Life does not end at birth. If you isolate one aspect of our religious teachings, it does disservice to our entire faith. It's disappointing."
You can read about Pax Christi's call to "Vote for the Common Good" here: http://www.paxchristiusa.org/news_events_more.asp?id=798