Abp Chaput on voting for Obama: ‘I certainly can’t vote
for somebody who’s pro-choice’
PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 17, 2012 (
LifeSiteNews.com) - As the November general election
approaches, America’s Catholic bishops have been walking a fine line as they
strive to avoid appearances of partisanship while at the same time they wage a
high-profile battle against the Obama administration over religious freedom.
Earlier this month, one of the leading lights in the U.S.
episcopate insisted he “certainly” could not vote for Obama, while not
specifically endorsing his Republic opponent Mitt Romney.
Asked whether a Catholic could vote for Obama in good faith,
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia replied: “I can only speak in terms
of my own personal views. I certainly can’t vote for somebody who’s either
pro-choice or pro-abortion.”
In a
wide-ranging interview with John Allen, Jr. of the National
Catholic Reporter, published Friday, the archbishop drew a sharp distinction
between a candidate’s “prudential judgments” about how we care for the poor,
and his position on an intrinsic evil like abortion.
Responding to concerns over the budget proposed by
Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, which some Catholic bishops
and other critics had called immoral because it cut programs to the poor, the
archbishop pointed out that people of good faith can legitimately disagree over
the role of government in providing aid to the poor.
“Jesus tells us very clearly that if we don’t help the poor,
we’re going to go to hell,” he insisted. “But Jesus didn’t say the government
has to take care of them, or that we have to pay taxes to take care of them.
Those are prudential judgments.”
“You can’t say that somebody’s not Christian because they
want to limit taxation,” he continued. “To say that it’s somehow intrinsically
evil like abortion doesn’t make any sense at all.”
The archbishop, while noting he is a registered independent,
said he has “deep personal concerns about any party that supports changing the
definition of marriage, supports abortion in all circumstances, wants to
restrict the traditional understanding of religious freedom.”
Chaput also said the bishops’ Fortnight for Freedom campaign
in the summer was a success in raising greater awareness among Catholics about
the grave threat to religious freedom facing America.
“The history of the world demonstrates that if we aren’t
always on guard about religious freedom, we’ll lose it. It happens everywhere,
and it could happen in the
United States,” he observed.
“I would never have thought, even ten years ago, that we
would be dealing with it so quickly,” he added.
On the HHS mandate, Chaput said he “can’t imagine” the
courts would not overturn it. “If we don’t win, I’ll be astonished, and I’ll be
even more worried about the future of religious freedom in our country,” he
said.
“Those who oppose us on the mandates are very insistent. I
thought they would back down by now, but they haven’t,” he continued. “We have
to fight as vigorously in opposing them as they are in imposing them. Who’s
going to win? I don’t know. It will be whoever fights the hardest and wins the
hearts and minds of the people.”
Read the full interview at the National Catholic Reporter.
