Extraordinary and Compelling

I don't agree with several of the moves Fr. Araujo makes in his excellent post below.  For example, in parsing Ratzinger's nota bene, he quotes from Ratzinger's reaction to a document by the US Bishops that was addressing, not the question of voting, but the question of how Catholics should behave when they hold public office.  These are very different questions.  While there is a logical gap between what is immoral and what should be illegal, there is an even greater gap between how one votes and what actually becomes illegal.  (Consider, for example, in the abortion context, the implications of George W. Bush's failed nomination of Harriet Myers for the Supreme Court; Reagan's nomination of O'Connor and Kennedy; and Bush Sr.'s nomination of David Souter for arguments that pro-life Catholics MUST vote Republican because of abortion.)  In light of these differences, it seems to me that statements made by the magisterium with regard to the behavior of public officials can not be applied unproblematically to the evaluation of the behavior of voters.

That said, I think that, conceding the reasonable point that not all issues are to be weighed the same, reaosnable Catholics can disagree about the weight to be given particular issues, including within that calculus their own assessment of the likelihood that their vote will result in legal change (see my point above about supreme court nominees) and their own assessment of the likely effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of legal change with respect to a particular issue.  While Fr. Araujo assumes that abortion should be the most weighty issue due to the gravity of its evil, it seems to me that the calculation is far more complicated than merely concluding that, because abortion is such an important moral question, it must be presumptively decisive in determining how to vote.  The fact that abortions are carried out in private and that they will therefore likely continue to occur in great numbers even if it is legally prohibited mitigates against the weight to be assigned to abortion in comparison to evils perpetrated directly by the state, such as the death penalty, waging of an unjust war or the advocacy of torture.  To be clear, I am not here taking a position that abortion is less significant than these other issues, but I do think the analysis is more complicated than merely weighing the gravity of the moral harm of abortion itself.  The voter is entitled to consider these other factors as well.

Even assuming that I agreed with Fr. Araujo that the circumstances that would justify voting for a pro-choice candidate must be "extraordinary and compelling," reasonable Catholics can obviously disagree about what constitutes "extraordinary and compelling" circumstances (and I don't take Fr. Araujo to be arguing to the contrary).  For my part, I would have to say that I think the current circumstances merit that characterization under almost any definition.