“As long as we struggle with concupiscence in the flesh, we will continue to be the sort of creature who is, at once, something of a monster and something of a moralist. Neither can deliver the happiness we are made to seek.”

How can someone with such great understanding of man’s fallen nature not make a decision as how to vote in the past presidential election?

The eminent monstrous assault on the culture of life has never been greater since this past election has come to pass.

“Only the intervention of the grace of God in Christ can lift us off that karmic wheel” How true.

Agreed, the choice is not either or; monster or moralist, abortionist or torturer.

But with our works we must act to limit evil aspects as much as we can; transform the culture in whatever steps we can at the time in the correct direction. Measure the choices to then work to advance even further next time. We did this for over 35 years. Now this work is all about to be erased.

We didn’t get here overnight and we won’t fix it overnight either.

Evangelium vitae
"73…nations-particularly those which have already experienced the bitter fruits of such permissive legislation-there are growing signs of a rethinking in this matter. In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects."

"74… In order to shed light on this difficult question, it is necessary to recall the general principles concerning cooperation in evil actions. Christians, like all people of good will, are called upon under grave obligation of conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God's law. Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil. Such cooperation occurs when an action, either by its very nature or by the form it takes in a concrete situation, can be defined as a direct participation in an act against innocent human life or a sharing in the immoral intention of the person committing it. This cooperation can never be justified either by invoking respect for the freedom of others or by appealing to the fact that civil law permits it or requires it."

If what he's written on his site is accurate, Mark didn't "not make a decision as to how to vote." He voted the way his conscience led him. Whether you or I agreed with the way he voted doesn't matter. I think Mark laid out a good argumentfor his vote, and he's certainly not accountable to you or me for it.



And neither is the choice McCain or Obama.

It's always good to remember that when St. Augustine quotes himself with the "prayer" mentioned in the article, he is regretting that attitude he had in his youth. It came before his conversion.

...but I'm confused. I confess I'm not nearly as well read in the Catholic moral tradition as most that post here, but this line struck me:

"In fact, nobody can not will a good end."

Does this mean the will is automatically fixed on whatever desire points out to be the good? Desire, as I understand it, isn't always a good barometer for determing action.

Couldn't this be reduced to some sort of deterministic worldview where" human beings always do what they think will benefit them. No one would ever possibly choose to go to hell if they knew what was in store for them."

The thing is...people DO choose this and a plethora of other evils every day. They make excuses for themselves, but they still choose to do evil.

Can someone please clarify?

It is presumed that each person acts for his own good end, whether that good is an actual good or an apparent good (illusory, actually evil, etc) and therefore it requires us to properly form our wil lso as to know, understand and submit ourselves to do that which is God's will and therefore act in a truly moral manner.

People can know that what they are doing is wrong and still act in that manner. We call that sin. However when one asks them why they act, most people will not say they intended to do an evil act. They will put a "good" face to it. Further as Mark stated in his article, the end which they desire will a "good" even though the means and the act may be wrong.

I hope this doesn't further confuse the matter.

Happy Thanksgiving.

As for the article - very good.

sometimes nothing is scarier than a morally "relative" person with good intentions.

My definition of a good end as it pertains to this thread is a narrow focus to one’s perceived singular good at the expense of many others. A temporal world view.

There are seven deadly sins and seven corresponding virtues to over come these sins. If one conqers pride and is guilty of sloth and lust what has one actually accomplished.

The only “good end” is to love and honor God. This is the only thing we can give Him. While in this time on earth we can only attempt to do God’s will, a good end fraught with human frailty.

“So then, my beloved, obedient as you have always been, not only when I am present but all the more now when I am absent, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

Philippians
2:12

Andy K.,

I think Mr. Shea is just drawing a point from a truth recognized by even pagan philosophy, that, as Aristotle had it, all human action aims at some real or apparent good.

To be truly happy is a good, an unqualified, undilluted good and it seems clear that every human act aims at happiness. The question then is "what is true happiness?" along with its corallary "how might I best gain it?"

Here opinion varies widely but the wise throughout history have concluded that true happiness consists not of feelings and emotions nor of sentiment but rather of knowing and possessing the good. Happiness, therefore is intimately connected with Justice, the classical definition of which is each man doing that which is proper to his station and each receiving what he deserves.

In a Christian context this means that in order to be happy we must know, love and serve God as is only proper to our station as His creatures.

This is the primary Good at which our activity ought to aim. There are, however other, lesser, goods: security, wealth, pleasure, freedom etc. which is is appropriate to pursue. They may not be pursued out of proportion to their relative goodness however or valued more that a higher good. When we do wrong is is usually because we have valued an inferior good more than a superior good (the highest good, in fact, which is God) not because we desire evil but because we want the wrong good.

I think this is what was meant.

I guess my follow-up would be that if everyone always aims for what they perceive as "good" ends, it still seesm to me that everyone always intend good, right?

Yet there are 3 components to every moral action: object, action, and intention. action and object make sense, but where does "intention" fit into the schema of things if everyone always intends the good (even if it is merely perceived good)?

If Mr.Shea supported Barak H. Obama for president,then he followed a deformed conscious under the Catechism and his "great understanding " of man's nature is doubtful.
Resort to "Faithful Citizenship" for cover is fruitless after this election,it's shortcomings now transparent.Supporting Obama and claiming communion with the Church is itself and exercise in moral relativism."Karmic wheel"?

As I understand it from reading his blog, Mr. Shea supported neither Mr. Obama, nor Mr. McCain, based on his deeply held conviction that neither man is truly and convincingly pro-life. Mr. Shea is not among those in the "Catholics for Obama" camp.

I voted for a prolife third party candidate. My reference to the karmic wheel is intended to make clear that mere "religion" or "morality" apart from the grace of Christ cannot save. It's perfectly orthodox.

Another excellent article Mark- I have been reading Tony Hendra's book - Father Joe- and this article sort of dove tails with it- Tony was a notorious member of the ultra-liberal cynic-satirist founding fathers alongside Monty Python, National Lampoon et al- but he started out a wanna-be monk and had a lifelong spiritual advisor in "Father Joe"- it is a quite interesting journey and one full of examples of how it can be very problematic to divide the world into two neat camps- us versus them, the sheep and the goats- it would seem that that work is ultimately the work of our Lord and Saviour, and when we assume too much in our self and other assessments- well we tend to make some critical mistakes.

I, for one, find the Church's social doctrine to be a bit more complex than Republican/conservative good, Democratic/liberal bad- neither do I find the reverse to be true- and so I don't find a lot of companions or true friends in active political circles or blogs- everyone is so quick to demonize their perceived or real enemies and lionize those they find like-minded. Case in point is this past presidential election- almost to a man or woman everyone who blogs here or there seems fully convinced of themselves and their vote. We have those who insist that there could never be morally grave reasons for any Catholic to vote for Obama, and those who insist that voting for the lesser of two evils- either Obama or Mccain is surely a sin. It seems that many are angry that the Holy Spirit did not insist that the Catholic Hierarchy come out and clearly state that a good Catholic will cast their vote for such and such in the American Presidential election.

I can understand how many decent Catholics checked the facts and their consciences and came to many differing conclusions- I think we are all flawed to varying degrees and we all have blind spots, but the lack of humility and the rush to extreme judgments of individuals on the Left, Right and Middle surely is not the way to go forward. I think it would be better if we stuck to the issues and focused on converting actual people and actual leaders on the issues where we have strong teachings and evidence to put forth- we should leave off the demonizing of individuals and whole groups- love the sinner, hate the sin- and remember we are all sinners- and especially in politics it is very tough to line up 100% with the complete Catholic social doctrine since it offers more of a blueprint than a step-by-step how to manual.

Please don't take offense, but most Catholics would not even finish this article. Your just too smart. Here's the problem. Reading this article is like listening to your grandfather read the instruction manual for the fire extinguisher at the kitchen table as the house is ablaze and burning down around you.

Let's focus on re-educating the flocks about RIGHT and WRONG. I don't care what the outside world thinks. There's been too much of that in The Church.

This problem is not immorality; it's ammorality and apathy. These are the devil's tools.

The coming slaughter of innocence will make the choice we had this past election cycle even clearer. But I’m sure there will be the hard deniers, the over analysis, the woulda shoulda coulda crowd. Blah, Blah, Blah.

Politics and politicians are inherently evil, especially when they honor secularism more than Catholicism. Neither Jesus nor his Saints are running for elected office. Neither could they. We’ve had a two party system since the beginning. Pick one. The Choice couldn’t have been clearer.

Thank God we don’t have a laity democracy when it comes to electing Popes!

Politics and politicians represent society’s means to an end. Talk about perceived “good ends.” We can only make the best choice, move forward, while applying our faith at the same time and then leave it in God’s hands.

“He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8:7

We’re not voting for perfection here, we’re voting to advance towards good and limit evil. Voting for Mother Angelica of EWTN fame for president of the U.S still accomplishes an Obama culture of death win.

And I believe Mother Angelica would have been embarrased to get off so easy as in John 8:7

Every human action is a tight rope between deciphering good ends and cooperation with evil. After all why did it take the Church almost two thousand years to declare a Patron Saint of Statesmen and Politicians?

Some try to use Pope Leo XIII’s Immortale Dei to prove government is inherently good when in reality the Pope was only justifying a Catholic input and her benefits.

“God for its author. Hence it follows that all public power must proceed from God.”

“Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve Him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern”

“… love the Church as their common mother, to obey her laws, promote her honour, defend her rights, and to endeavour to make her respected and loved by those over whom they have authority”

Just as governments haven’t tried Catholicism and found it wanting; they found it difficult and unprofitable. So is it a surprise then when the Church finds so few holy politicians?

In fact all members of the Church, including her ministers, must acknowledge that they are sinners…still on the way to holiness…CCC 827

We are to endeavor to perceiver and not doing all possible things to stop Obama was a cop out excuse.

but with the same tone and force they also oppose, for example, "poverty in America," global warming, capital punishment, the war in Iraq – thus burying a moral absolute under a series of Democrat-friendly moral imponderables, and wantonly confusing an unambiguous doctrinal issue with a smorgasbord of secular judgment calls."

David Warren, Bishops, North of the Border

Thank you Mark, and others, for pointing out what I had overlooked. I've since read more from your blog and it's very good.Thanks for that as well.

Then surely it falls to educated, literate, articulate Catholics - i.e. you - to start a political movement to re-integrate the values that we know by reason and revelation to be true into the fabric of social and political life. Let no-one complain they don't have the necessary "captial" to make a start either!

What if Allen Keyes won the last presidential election?
At best maybe a handful of Democrats and much less than half of the Republicans would be included in his strict Catholic Caucus.
There would be two options:

• He would stifle most government legislative activity, which in my mind would be a good thing, but after four years of this would he stand a chance at getting reelected? Just think of the four years of personal attacks.
• Or Mr. Keyes could apply his absolute personal opposition to cooperate with evil actions, and then licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality.

In other words accomplish next to nothing or support the conservative caucus within the Republican Party which for better than worse has carried the pro-life message for over the last 35 years.

The current cultural winnowing didn’t happen overnight and neither will be its reversal.

Since 1535 how many Saint Thomas More’s have we had? (Patron Saint of Statesmen and Politicians)

All we have to show for almost five hundred years since Thomas More is one example of a righteous statesmen and some here on this blog and elsewhere belief we are ready for a strict Catholic Politician yet alone a so-called Catholic Caucus.

The closest I can think of was Pennsylvania’s Rick Santorum which the democrats successfully replaced with Catholic-lite Bob Casey Jr.

Hey, we're not Muslims here- there's no requirement in the gospel that we must have a Catholic government. In fact the truer we are to our faith these days the likelier we are to be despised and possibly martyred- which Jesus told us not to be surprised about.
His Kingdom is not of this world, Obama is not the enemy.
Thanks Mark for refusing to accept the world's terms, and keep on plugging for the gospel.

Of course Obama is not “the” enemy, but clearly he is an enemy of Pope John Paul’s culture of life. Even the USCCB has agreed on this. See web site attached.

When someone votes an implied absolute Catholic vote only, which in my mind is neither proven nor possible, while being publically critical of others supporting the very conservative caucus in the Republican Party that has carried the pro-life message since Roe v. Wade, and then yes, they are insinuating the requirement “that we must have a Catholic government”.

“refusing to accept the world's terms” is fine and dandy, but what does refusing to accept our two hundred and thirty year old political process of making no law respecting an establishment of religion accomplish?