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Update October 19, 2020 at 4:28 p.m. Eastern time: This article has been updated to make clear that although the article was published by the Fraternity of St. Peter, it does not necessarily reflect the view of the FSSP in general. The article the FSSP published was an opinion piece written by an anonymous FSSP priest.

October 19, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — An article published by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) pointed out that “any Catholic who supports” pro-abortion Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden “would be in proximate cooperation with evil and would commit a grave sin, regardless if someone says he or she is ‘personally opposed to it’ also.”

The FSSP is a young community of priests attached to the traditional liturgy. The anonymous FSSP priest who authored the article emphasized that “Mr. Biden should have a firmer conviction and certainty of the natural law right every human being has to life.”

“His private ‘belief’ in this matter cannot be divorced from his public policy; he cannot observe a public stance that is either directly contrary or indifferent to it without committing grave sin and causing scandal,” Friday’s article stated.

“The stance on life is not a disagreement in perspective or approach between political parties. It is a moral absolute that admits no compromise, and is the issue that must rise to the top on election day. Abortion, which is the ugly daughter of a contraceptive and divorce-happy culture, must be eradicated, along with its own ugly daughters of pornography, prostitution, sex trafficking, and child exploitation.”

The FSSP priest also asked that since “everyone should be treated with dignity,” as Biden put it in a recent ad, and “all confessional faiths” have this same goal, “where does he place Catholicism in the mix? Is it just one among many ‘equal’ faiths, one among many ‘equal’ paths to God?”

It is “most normal to want to know how seriously Mr. Biden believes, because it is legitimately expected that the Catholic Faith inform how Mr. Biden intends to govern if he were elected to the presidency,” the article assured its readers.

According to traditional Catholic teaching, “the Church is there to guide the administration and exercise of temporal power, to call out its abuse, but never to usurp it. While mindful of our Lord’s words to render to Caesar what is his, and to God what is God’s, the Church insists that, if there is a conflict between the two, the problem must be on the side of Caesar.”

While “a Catholic president, or legislator, or judge” should not all of a sudden “proclaim Catholicism to be the national religion of our country,” as that would run contrary to the Constitution — an arrangement characterized as “not ideal” — he still has to act in accordance with the Faith.

“[A] Catholic president has the moral obligation to attempt to rid our land of immoral and evil laws and organizations on account of his profession of Faith, while also promoting the influence of the Church and her welfare,” the FSSP article explained. “If a Catholic candidate is on record in support of evil laws and organizations, either personally or by affiliation with a political party whose official platform supports these, he has a moral obligation to recant, abandon the party if he cannot immediately change it, and do whatever is within his power to correct any damage he has caused.”

The abortion issue is characterized as most fundamental in this context: “To say that there are more pressing moral and social issues that plague our country is to completely miss the point; poisoning the river at its source poisons the lake into which it flows.”

“There is a hierarchy of moral issues, and so a grave error on the fundamental right to life poisons how all life is regarded and demands correction, especially from a Catholic who has been given the power or influence from God, the source of all authority, to attempt to do so,” the article added.

The article concluded with a number of questions about Biden.

“Where is his moral compass then? Can he even have one? Is Jesus Christ True God and True Man, who died on a Cross and rose from the dead, to Joseph Biden? Or is Jesus Christ just some philanthropist who came to teach us how to be ‘nice’ to each other without pricking the conscience about the silent screams in the background?”

“Is Mr. Biden more a reed shaken in the wind of public opinion, a product of political ambition, in stark contrast to the fortuitous and convicted John the Baptist whom Herod had to put to death when his warnings became inconvenient?” the priest asked.

Earlier this week, Bishop Thomas Paprocki said that voting for Biden in the upcoming election would require “a proportionately grave reason that outweighs the killing of 860,000 babies per year,” adding that even the death penalty is no such reason.

On the one hand, Paprocki said, capital punishment, unlike abortion, is not intrinsically evil. “While abortion is considered to be an intrinsic evil, the death penalty has been called ‘inadmissible’ by Pope Francis, which is not the same as calling it an intrinsic evil, but is more of a prudential judgment about its efficacy,” he argued.

Additionally, far more people are killed by abortion than by capital punishment, the bishop explained. “While over 860,000 abortions took place in our country in the last reported year, there were a total of 22 executions of prisoners in seven states in 2019, with zero executions in the State of Illinois.”

Fr. Michael J. Stinson, the FSSP’s superior for North America, encouraged Catholics in his October newsletter to “pray for and defend their Church like they would their own mother.”

“Mindful of the lengths that a mother will go to care for her children,” Stinson explained, “it is most natural then that children have a similar instinct towards their mothers. While children can never return in full all their mother has given them (nor would a loving mother ever expect that), they must do something, and so Catholics must pray for and defend their Church like they would their own mother.”

Moreover, “[w]hile our first obligation and line of defense is remaining in a state of grace and cultivating a practical devout life by prayer and the Sacraments, other obligations arise when we see the Church (and country) threatened by anti-God, anti-religious, anti-life, and lawless forces, even from those who profess to be loyal to the Church,” Stinson explained.

“In the month ahead, we must summon the graces of our Confirmations and remind ourselves and others that Catholics are bound to believe the entire deposit of Faith and the moral teachings which flow from it, and so to vote accordingly,” he added. “In so doing, we speak in a way that clearly defines us as children truly loyal to the Church, and we will be assured of God’s blessing in having the courage to contribute to the cause of His right hand.”