I recently dined at a restaurant with some friends. The menu was extensive and there were specials in addition to the regular dinner items. It took me quite some time to choose, annoying our waitress as well as my friends, but my final selection turned out to be fabulous – warm salmon over a bed of greens with vinaigrette dressing. The meal, in fact, was far better than the conversation, which centered on politics and became somewhat heated.
Yes, the primaries are over and the general election is right around the corner, presenting us with some pretty difficult choices. My advice to the Catholic voter? Read the menus. All of them. Carefully and thoroughly.
First, there is the Catholic Church menu. Our Church offers a healthy variety of public concerns that we must pay attention to before entering the voting booth. There are the issues that have a special claim on our conscience, the ones that are about safeguarding innocent human life: abortion, torture, euthanasia, embryo research. There are other critical issues affecting life and death as well, like war and capital punishment. Life is sacred, the most fundamental good and the condition of all other rights. Human life is owed our respect as well as the protection of the law.
Indulge me just one more word about abortion. It is what it is: the destruction of defenseless human life before birth. It is not “choice” or the “freedom to choose.” We must challenge the candidates with the direct question, “Freedom to choose what?” Recalling my dinner the other night, nobody said to the waitress, “I think I will choose.” I said, “I think I will choose the salmon special,” and my friend said, “I choose the chicken parmesan.”
Public officials are charged with defending the defenseless and caring for the common good of all. That is their job. At the very least, they need to finish their sentences.
Moving on, the Church menu also features many issues affecting human dignity: access to health care, food, housing, and jobs that enable families to earn a living wage; empowering parents to choose the best education for their kids; combating discrimination, abuse, hunger and homelessness; promoting traditional marriage.
The Catholic menu is not cafeteria-style dining. The Bishops say that no issue is optional for the Catholic voter. Every issue affecting human life, human rights and human dignity must be considered.
Once that is done, you need to examine the other menus. There are many of them this year, at the local, state and federal levels. In the Presidential race, there are two: the “Change You Can Believe In” menu and the “Country First” menu. These menus are slick, artfully designed, and crafted in slogans. You’ve got to ask questions about these menus to get to the heart of what they are truly serving up.
What do they say about the legal status quo on abortion? What do they say about ensuring access to health care, reducing poverty, decreasing energy prices, cleaning the environment? What will they do about ending the war, promoting alternatives to embryo research, reducing crime, serving the needy? How will they protect our children from predators and our grandparents’ retirement security? What do they propose to strengthen public and religious schools? What will they do to jumpstart the economy or fix the broken immigration system?
If you can, find out the specific ingredients in each recipe. And make sure you know how much the entrees are going to cost — that health insurance plan, the teen pregnancy prevention program, the affordable housing proposal — and who’s going to pay for them.
Sometimes it is difficult to find anything at all on the menu that pleases us. But we still have to eat. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that exercising our right to vote is morally obligatory (#2240).
In the end, we all have to make choices and select candidates. It takes a good deal of reading, reflection and prayer. While it’s easy to let our politics drive our faith, it’s much harder to allow our faith to inform our politics.
Last week I received a campaign flyer from a Congressional candidate ensuring me that, if elected, she would “protect my freedom to choose.” I chuckled. I already have the freedom to choose — the freedom to choose the men and women who will make decisions for us in these troubled times and lead us into the future. Every opportunity to vote is an opportunity to shape policy, defend life, and promote justice and peace.
Bon appétit!

(Kathleen M. Gallagher, a native of Long Island, is director of Pro-Life Activities and of the Catholic Advocacy Network for the New York State Catholic Conference.)

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