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Author Topic: Fr Taouk on voting  (Read 7149 times)

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Re: Fr Taouk on voting
« Reply #5 on: May 13, 2019, 02:00:46 PM »
There's not a blanket grave moral obligation to vote.  That's not really how positive precepts typically work.  That said, I think that sometimes there is.  Fr. Stephen Webber, one of my favorite priests and one who I'm sure everyone (who's met him) knows is of the Williamsonite formation and by no means a laxist or one who strives for human respect, convinced me that there was a moral obligation to vote against ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ marriage (this is consistent with the material quoted just above from Ladislaus).

Now that of course supposes the system actually works (i.e. that your votes are counted and so on).  If that weren't the case then there wouldn't even be a moral obligation to vote against something like gαy marriage, I don't think.  So any obligation of course presupposes that the system works the way it says it does.  

In terms of a moral obligation to (say) vote for Mitt Romney against Obama, I'm incredulous.  When it's a "lesser of two evils" decision, I think that the idea of selecting the lesser is conditioned on there only actually being two options; but there's at least one other option: don't vote!  Or vote for Christ the King, or whomever.  And voting for the lesser of two evils isn't analogous to voting for the sanctity of marriage, since voting for the sanctity of marriage is an intrinsic good, while voting for a neocon isn't.

Änσnymσus

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Re: Fr Taouk on voting
« Reply #6 on: May 13, 2019, 02:25:10 PM »
Quote
There's not a blanket grave moral obligation to vote.  
This is only true if your vote is only affecting politics.  Nowadays, politics and sin are intertwined (i.e. abortion) so you do have a moral imperative to vote.

Quote
In terms of a moral obligation to (say) vote for Mitt Romney against Obama, I'm incredulous.
Many politicians are clearly pro-abortion, so the obligation would be to vote against all openly pro-sin candidates. 


Re: Fr Taouk on voting
« Reply #7 on: May 13, 2019, 02:29:23 PM »
This is only true if your vote is only affecting politics.  Nowadays, politics and sin are intertwined (i.e. abortion) so you do have a moral imperative to vote.
Many politicians are clearly pro-abortion, so the obligation would be to vote against all openly pro-sin candidates.
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Well I would grant that in a case where a politician is actually anti-abortion.  But many "conservative" politicians wouldn't move to outlaw abortion, only to redefine its acceptability (but they do so short of saying it is never acceptable).  I don't have a moral obligation to vote for a man who is OK killing a thousand babies when the opposition is OK killing ten thousand.
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That isn't to say that it might not be prudentially wise to vote for a candidate who (say) wants to supremely limit abortions (even if not outlaw them) if they're up against someone who wants to completely open up the abortion industry.  I'm only talking about the existence (or lackthereof) of a moral obligation, and that doesn't exist for any politician who would not vote to outlaw abortion entirely.

Re: Fr Taouk on voting
« Reply #8 on: May 13, 2019, 02:31:37 PM »
There is nothing "inherently anti-Catholic" about the concept of the lesser evil nor about the language in which the concept is expressed, certainly not in the cited context. One needs to be pretty dense—or else very malicious—to assert that the concept is equatable with an inversion of the moral order. Moreover, anyone who thinks that distinctions of moral gravity cannot or should not be made either resides in the cradle or ought to return there forthwith.

For all I know, Father Taouk may indeed be the monster of depravity that this site's resident Caiaphases would have us believe. Yet from a reading of the instructions in the two Sunday bulletins, it is impossible to conclude anything so morally definitive. Clearly the second instruction backs away somewhat from certain implications in the first—properly and sensibly so, in my opinion, given the unfortunate absence nowadays of truly Catholic intellectual formation among laity and priests alike. Taken together, the two instructions may lack the comprehensiveness and lucidity possessed by the 2007 Angelus article, but as that is the worst that can be said about the instructions, Father Taouk's detractors might well be asked why they aren't content to stick with genuinely hard evidence that he subverts Catholic truth.

Offline Ladislaus

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Re: Fr Taouk on voting
« Reply #9 on: May 13, 2019, 02:39:45 PM »
There is nothing "inherently anti-Catholic" about the concept of the lesser evil nor about the language in which the concept is expressed, certainly not in the cited context.

Oh, there most certainly is, claudel.  For all your pseudo-intellectual blustering, you have no idea what you're talking about.

You have absolutely no substantial argument to make but resort to a cheap ad hominem -- "One needs to be pretty dense—or else very malicious—to assert that the concept is equatable with an inversion of the moral order. "

People usually resort to this when it's all they've got.  I'll rebut this with my equally gratuitous assertion, but in much less flowery language:  You're an idiot.