US Bishops Are Rewriting Voter Guide To Include Same-Sex Marriage As ‘Intrinsic Evil’

America’s Catholic bishops are meeting to wage another battle against LGBT people and same-sex marriage.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is meeting this week and rewriting the Catholic Church’s voters’ guide to include a massive assault on LGBT people and same-sex marriage. Even though the issue has been decided by the Supreme Court, America’s Catholic bishops have decided to increase the mention of same-sex marriage literally tenfold – it was mentioned only once in the most recent edition (2007) – and to include it in the section that deals with “intrinsic evil.”

“Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” published by the Catholic Church in America, offers advice to voters on how to decide for whom to vote. 

“Catholics often face difficult choices about how to vote,” the 2007 edition notes. “This is why it is so important to vote according to a well-formed conscience that perceives the proper relationship among moral goods. A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter’s intent is to support that position.”

Now, as Michael Sean Winters at the National Catholic Reporter writes, same-sex marriage will be included in the section on “intrinsic evil,” and in examples of “intrinsic evil,” such as abortion or racism.

Noting that “Pope Francis did not think it necessary to mention the issue directly even once during the six days he was here in the U.S.,” Winters says the Bishops “should have the honesty to rename it ‘Forming Consciences for Fighting Same-Sex Marriage.'” 

He also says, “at a time when racial tensions are at their worst in my adult lifetime, the proposed text equates same-sex marriage with racism, calling them both intrinsic evils, even though civil same-sex marriage is not, and cannot be, an intrinsic evil.”

“Even within the section on intrinsic evil, it is shocking that same sex marriage now gets more ink than abortion.”

Current USCCB president Joseph Edward Kurtz has likened same-sex marriage to abortion, saying in 2010 of Prop 8, “today is like 1970 for marriage,” and asking, “If you had seen Roe v. Wade coming three years out, what would you have done differently?”

After the Supreme Court’s June ruling on same-sex marriage, Kurtz called it “a tragic error that harms the common good and most vulnerable among us, especially children.”

 

Image via United States Conference of Catholic Bishops/Facebook