ROME – With less than a month to go before the United States presidential election, the cardinal archbishop of Washington has stressed the importance of having a broad understanding of key national challenges and has urged Catholics not to be single-issue voters.
Speaking to Crux while in Rome for this month’s Synod of Bishops on Synodality, Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington said, “No political party and certainly no individual candidate that I’ve experienced embraces the full range of Catholic social, moral teaching.”
“Obviously, the reverence, the respect of human life is a dominant concern,” he said, but added that the “umbrella of respect for human life” must also cover issues such as immigration, imprisonment and capital punishment, poverty, racism and depression among young people.
The Church must provide “a larger vision of, what does it mean to respect human life?” Gregory said, saying, “all who are engaged in public office have an obligation to help us to understand better the full panoply of human dignity.”
On the issue of abortion and whether a Catholic can in good conscience vote for a pro-choice candidate, Gregory said, “If you isolate it in those terms, does that mean you dispense with voting for someone who denigrates immigrants, who promotes capital punishment?”
“Yes, it is foundational, the dignity of unborn life, but does it dispense with all of the other awful proposals that are out there? Can I sleep saying I didn’t vote for this person because of their position on abortion, but I’ll ignore the other issues that also fall under the umbrella of the dignity of human life?” he said.
As Catholics, he said, “We have to say, look, it’s foundational, it’s the first moment of human dignity, but it’s not the last.”
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Please read below for the second part of Crux’s interview with Cardinal Wilton Gregory:
Crux: There are two big events on the calendar for right now: the upcoming presidential election, and the current Synod of Bishops. I want to start with the election. Our last election was very polarized and very contentious. How would you describe this year’s election cycle? Is it as tense as last time, in your view?
Gregory: I think it is very tense, probably more tense than the last time. I think the fact that President Biden withdrew from the election, that’s put a different spin on things. Obviously, as the vice president is now the nominee, that brings with it its own baggage, or possibilities. But I also think that the thing that has really ratcheted up the climate is the exposure that social media provides.
In the past we’ve always had contentious elections where the candidates were accusing each other of disastrous policies or promotions of policies, or they were taking very critical positions against their opponents. But those election cycles were pretty much limited to newspapers, radio, and even more recently, television. It meant that the messages, even if they were very hostile and sometimes, they were quite hostile, they were limited.
Today it’s 24-seven and it means that you can probably not escape it even if you’d like to, because it’s in your face constantly. And that changes the climate. Now it has the possibility of letting us be more informed of the issues, but it also has the possibility of wearing us down and making us grow weary of the issues, the attacks, the personal diatribes. There’s a certain sense, at least from what I’ve heard from people, to say, I’ll be so glad when it’s over. It’s like, let’s get back to life. And I think that changes the climate.
With Joe Biden stepping out and Kamala Harris stepping up as the Democratic candidate, naturally issues such as race and gender have also become a factor in this election. Beyond those things, what issues do you think voters should keep in mind when they cast their ballots?
Certainly, I think the issue of the international situation that we are currently in, there’s violence on so many different fronts. Certainly, in the Holy Land, Palestine, the Middle East, in Sudan and Haiti, almost any part of the globe there’s some violence going on. So that’s a key concern. The economy is also one. How do families in the United States make a living wage? How do families with children find care for their children if both parents have to work? What about violence on our streets? What about the racial disparity that’s still out there and still very much a factor in American life? Those issues are really of paramount importance to people as well. They should be.
So, I would think that those are the things that folks should focus on. The awful experience in our nation of gun violence. How many mass shootings are we willing to tolerate? Mass shootings of completely innocent people who happen to be in a grocery store, kids who happen to be in school or people who are in a public venue. That violence, perpetrated too frequently by the proliferation of guns designed for mass annihilation, often in the hands of people who have mental or emotional problems. Those are issues that should be uppermost in the minds and hearts of our populace.
Catholics always seem to find themselves in a tough spot during elections, and this year too they are torn between choosing between a strictly anti-migrant candidate and a firmly pro-choice candidate. Pope Francis returning from Asia recently said Catholics need to just examine their conscience and choose the “lesser of two evils.” What would your advice be?
I don’t think I could improve on the advice the Holy Father gave. If I’m not mistaken, the context of his comments was predicated on some election issues that he had faced when he was the archbishop of Buenos Aires. It was a contentious election there, and he told people, if I can cite correctly, learn the issues, pray and vote your conscience.
No political party and certainly no individual candidate that I’ve experienced embraces, the full range of Catholic social, moral teaching. We just don’t have that. And I don’t know if we’ve ever had that. The issues that we face are unique to our times. Obviously, the reverence, the respect of human life is a dominant concern, and it has to provide the umbrella, covering a whole range of concerns, beginning with the life of a child waiting to be born, but also embracing the life of those people who may be looking to end their lives for what they believe would be a legitimate cause.
That umbrella of respect for human life has to cover those who are fleeing their nation because of fear, political, economic or violence, and they’re coming to the shores of our nation looking for the same gifts and potential that immigrants have always sought. A better life for themselves, a future for their children. It involves the rights of those who are imprisoned. The use of capital punishment really is no longer justified. We can remove people who are violent and should be removed from public, the public venue.
The issue of poverty. How is it that so many families find it necessary to have both parents employed so that they can provide a reasonable and secure home environment for their children? The fact that young people seem to be subject to so many emotional social pressures that just were not so prevalent a generation or two ago, young people who face the serious issue of feeling helpless, suffering from depression. We, at least in my life, tended to think that youth and adolescence and young adulthood were filled with possibilities and joys. There were always individuals who had particular issues, but now more and more, our young people, they’re dealing with depression, and all of those issues that I’ve just named, and many others, have to be a part of our concern for the dignity of human life.
In your view, how can all of these issues be better integrated for Catholics? They tend to be seen as partisan issues, so how can they be better integrated, so Catholics see all of them as belonging to an overall prolife attitude?
I think one of the things that we have to do on the part of the church is to provide a larger vision of, what does it mean to respect human life? Why? Why is human life, why does it enjoy the value that it has? Because it’s God given. And we as a church, certainly the pastors of the church, but not just the pastors, all who are engaged in public office have an obligation to help us to understand better the full panoply of human dignity, that we never lose it. It comes as a gift from God, from the moment of our conception, and it’s never removed until we stand in front of God’s throne.
Can a Catholic, then, ever in good conscience vote for a pro-choice candidate?
If you isolate it in those terms, does that mean you dispense with voting for someone who denigrates immigrants, who promotes capital punishment? In other words, yes, it is foundational, the dignity of unborn life, but does it dispense with all of the other awful proposals that are out there? Can I sleep saying I didn’t vote for this person because of their position on abortion, but I’ll ignore the other issues that also fall under the umbrella of the dignity of human life? Whether it be the issue of racism, whether it be the issue of economic disparity, all of those things. I’ll close my eyes to all of the others because of this one issue. We have to say, look, it’s foundational, it’s the first moment of human dignity, but it’s not the last.
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