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Catholic Proportionalism when it comes to voting
Posted October 19, 2007 , By Joshua LeBlanc
*** See Update Below
Catholics can often be put between the proverbial "rock and a hard place" when it comes to voting sometimes. This seems to be the case in Louisiana in my district representative's election tomorrow. There are three candidates, a Republican and two Democrats. Contradictingly, the Republican and one of the Democrats supports allowing embyonic stem cell research and the other Democrat opposes it. The Democrat that opposes embryonic stem cell research supports allowing abortion in the cases of rape and incest and the Republic and other Democrat oppose it. This makes no sense whatsoever to me? How can you be against abortion but yet support embryonic stem cell research in the same breath? Catholics cannot support either position so we're faced with two options tomorrow: Vote proportinately and determine which is the lesser evil by combining them on all other positions or don't vote in this race at all. I don't believe it ever to be licit to not vote because not only is it a constitutional right, but it is also a duty as a Catholic. I will therefore spend this evening trying to determine which candidate I should vote for regarding this matter.
UPDATE: I contacted the campaign of the candidate I was interested in voting for and informed him that because he supported embryonic stem cell research that I as a Catholic could not vote for him in good faith. I was immediately contacted by his campaign to inform me that they had answered incorrectly to the survey question because it was written strangely (I have to agree the double negatives in the question were confusing. Anyway, this has been straightened out and I was informed that he doesn't support embryonic stem cell research so my voting decision will be easier tomorrow.
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