I just finished reading your column, Catholics and single-issue voting. I am one of those Catholics. By conscience, I can’t vote for someone who advocates abortion rights. I guess it goes back to parents and a Catholic education that told me that I will know when something is not right.


All your points are well taken. I, a “single-issue Catholic,” have faith in more than the Church. I have faith that when the president beats a drum of war, the constitutional checks and balances will prevail and Congress will make the final determination if we go to war. Then Congress votes that the president can go to war against Iraq, including the Democratic leadership. I then think there must be something there that will make this a just war. Is that leadership clear of responsibility?


I know that the growth of industry has had an impact on the environment. I also see that the leading advocate that global warming is a man-made phenomenon and not a cyclical event is a former politician who has made over $100 million speaking on the subject. That leads me to question his science. I also see our industrial jobs are being moved to countries that do not have cost implications, among others, related to protecting the environment. Do we keep putting cost pressure on smaller businesses that do make things here so that they now feel they have no choice but to leave the U.S.?


I have faith in a Church that has been around for 2,000 years, run by men but influenced by the Holy Spirit. I listen to a conservative Pope (John Paul II) teach us about the sanctity of life. When he dies, the cardinals, with the help of the Holy Spirit, elect an even more conservative Pope. What is the Holy Spirit telling us Catholics? This issue, the sanctity of life, becomes the focus.


As a teenager, for a couple of weeks on the nightly news, I see kids about my age pulled out of the basement of a monster. At that moment, I believe in the death penalty. Then as I grow up, I understand that all systems are flawed. Emotion and human error come into play and the state does not have the right to take a life. The death penalty is not right.

 

With my wife, I go to the doctor and see our first child on an ultrasound. We see his heartbeat at six weeks. We see his forming hands and feet, his eyes. We show our families the picture we were given by the doctor. We hang it on the refrigerator. We don’t need the doctor, other scientists or even the Pope to tell us that this is a life. I know that abortion is not right.


Morality is legislated. We have laws from not allowing cloning to not allowing companies to fire people because of their age. These are laws because it’s the right thing to do, and we must protect the common good.


When I first held my eldest son, I realized that he was not an accident of molecules slamming into each other. He was a gift from God. Scientists have recently discovered that there is a part of our DNA that, at the very beginning, makes sure there is no other DNA like it. Amazing. That tells us each moment of conception is a new and different gift from God. These gifts need to be protected because they can’t protect themselves. Abortion is not right. It needs to be legislated to protect life.

 

 

 

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