LETTER TO EDITOR: The Catholic vote

OPINION:

There are more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide. Sixty-four million of those Catholics reside in the United States. Considering the position of Sen. Barack Obama and his vice-presidential running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., on abortion, a woman’s right to choose and leaving a child who survives abortion to die, can Catholics vote for Mr. Obama without risking sinning or possible automatic excommunication? It would seem from the constant warnings by Catholic Church authorities on the matter of abortion that Catholics are fiddling with their faith status in supporting candidates who are abortion advocates.

That possibility was made all the more real by St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, who is the appointed prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature, when he declared recently that the Democratic Party “risks transforming itself definitively into a party of death.”

The archbishop was railing against the abortion issue and bioethics (cloning of humans) as being promoted by the Democratic Party, the pro-choice crowd and by Mr. Obama in speeches on the campaign trail.

As an Illinois senator in 2001, 2002 and 2003, Mr. Obama opposed and blocked legislation protecting aborted infants showing signs of life. In church terminology, this was tantamount to infanticide.

The Vatican and the American Catholic Church are gradually showing impatience with Catholic politicians who claim the mantle of “pro-choice” while, at the same time, proclaiming their Catholic faith as orthodox. This dichotomy of beliefs among politicians cannot continue to exist or be tolerated by the church hierarchy if that hierarchy is to be considered the church’s spiritual and moral leader. Voting for Mr. Obama may be aiding and abetting the abortion problem in the United States for many years to come.

In my opinion, it would seem that the Catholic Church in America must preach against the practice of abortion from its pulpits. Catholic politicians cannot have it both ways, being Catholic and pro-choice.

That condemnation also must be considered for those Catholic voters, “pro-choice,” or even “pro-life,” who vote for representatives espousing the aborting of the unborn or not helping aborted infants who have survived abortion.

RUDOLPH J.

GIRANDOLA

Upper Freehold, N.J.