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St. Louis Archbishop Burke Confirms Voting For Pro-Abortion Candidates is a Sin

If Neither Candidate is Fully Pro-Life Catholics Must Vote for the One Who Would Limit

ST. LOUIS, October 4, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The long-awaited clarification letter from St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke on the issue of voting for pro-abortion politicians has been released in the St. Louis diocesan newspaper.

Rather than backing down from his former statement that voting for a pro-abortion politician constituted a sin, Archbishop Burke has widened the scope of his direction against voting for anti-life politicians. "There is no element of the common good that could justify voting for a candidate who also endorses, without restriction or limitation, the deliberate killing of the innocent, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, human cloning or same-sex marriage."

The St. Louis church leader emphasized that "These elements are so fundamental to the common good that they cannot be subordinated to any other cause, no matter how good."

Answering a common objection based on candidates' support for the death penalty and war, the Archbishop wrote: "Procured abortion and homosexual acts are intrinsically evil, and, as such, can never be justified in any circumstance. Although war and capital punishment can rarely be justified, they are not intrinsically evil; neither practice includes the direct intention of killing innocent human beings. . . . One cannot justify a vote for a candidate who promotes intrinsically evil acts which erode the very foundation of the common good, such as abortion and same-sex 'marriage,' by appealing to that same candidate's opposition to war or capital punishment."

Adding a new element to the debate on voting faithfully, Archbishop Burke notes that when those who do not have a pro-life candidate abstain from voting, rather than voting for the candidate who would at least limit abortion, they are failing in their moral duty.

Burke states, "While I respect very much the sentiments of those who are so discouraged with the failure of our public leaders to promote the common good that they have decided not to vote at all, I must point out that the Catholic who chooses not to vote at all, when there is a viable candidate who will advance the common good, although not perfectly, fails to fulfill his or her moral duty, at least, in the limitation of a grave evil in society."

See the Archbishop's full statement:
http://www.stlouisreview.com/article.php?id=7051

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