RICHMOND, Virginia, September 14, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — The standing ovation that pro-abortion Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine received at his Catholic parish demonstrates Catholics’ confusion about the Church’s moral teaching and the difference between social ills and intrinsic evils, an area priest explained to his parishioners.

Father Robert Novokowsky, FSSP, the pastor of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Richmond, wrote in his pastor’s column that the “enthusiastic support was given to a ‘devout Catholic’ politician despite his perfect pro-abortion voting record” showed “confusion in the local Church.”

Upon becoming Hillary Clinton’s official running mate, Kaine’s parish, St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, gave him a standing ovation at Mass.

“I know that he's definitely against capital punishment and works to help defend those who are on death row,” Kaine’s pastor, Father Jim Arsenault, told NPR. “The church has a teaching with regard to we're pro-life, and we believe in that seamless garment of life. We respect sometimes lawmakers make difficult decisions.”

“[Kaine’s] support for abortion was gladly overlooked for the sake of his other accomplishments,” Novokowsky wrote, but historic Catholic teaching does not back up the “seamless garment” argument that always equates abortion with war and capital punishment.

“True and time-honored Catholic morality judges according to the nature of the issue itself, not by any artificial criteria, like public opinion,” Novokowsky wrote. “Imagine if a Catholic politician supported racism instead of abortion. Would they be given a standing ovation? Which evil is worse: killing an ethnic baby in the womb, or being prejudiced? Society does not judge according to the nature of thing. Neither does the ‘seamless garment’ approach.”

“All issues of human dignity are important, but not of equal weight,” and it would be unjust to treat them all equally, Novokowsky wrote.

“The seamless garment people” are “unfazed” by the fact that in the wake of the sexual revolution, “Catholics in America contracept, abort, fornicate, and divorce at the same rate as non-Catholics,” the priest continued. “But traditional Catholic morality proclaims our whole house is on fire.”

Novokowsky explained that the Catholic Church teaches “some issues of morality are intrinsic goods and evils, others extrinsic goods or evils, while others are physical goods or evils.” An extrinsic evil is a human act that can be good or bad based on the circumstances, Novokowsky wrote. Because the Church teaches war and capital punishment are not intrinsic evils, they should not be falsely equated with actions like abortion or contraception, which are intrinsically evil. Intrinsically evil actions are “always and everywhere morally wrong in such a way that no circumstance can make them good,” he wrote.

Novokowsky provided examples of ways that moral confusion among Catholics manifests itself:

“1) Abortion is described as a ‘tough decision,’ implying that it can be justified by a tough circumstance. Wrong, it's intrinsically evil. 2) People call for the abolition of all capital punishment, implying that it can never be justified. Wrong, the state has a right and duty to defend itself. (CCC no. 2266). 3) People suggest we have a duty to ‘solve’ the problem of poverty or hunger, as if these are moral evils. Wrong, Christ told us to feed the hungry, which is much different. We were commanded to love our neighbors, not ‘humanity.’”

“Our resistance” to abortion “must be persistent,” Novokowsky concluded. “The murder of defenseless innocents is the weightiest of intrinsic evils. … No compromise is possible. It is a sin to vote for a pro-abortion politician.”

Novokowsky’s column is consistent with what then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, wrote in 2004: “Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”

Other priests rebuke Kaine

Kaine recently predicted at a dinner for a homosexual lobby group the Catholic Church will “change” its teaching on marriage, just as he changed his mind to support same-sex “marriage.”

Monsignor Charles Pope of the Archdiocese of Washington responded on EWTN that even if the Catholic Church wanted to change its teaching on marriage, it couldn’t. It simply doesn’t have the power to do so because that teaching comes from God, Monsignor Pope said.

Earlier this year, Dominican Father Thomas Petri warned Kaine to not “show up in my Communion line” because he takes seriously the Church’s law denying Holy Communion to those who manifest in grave public sin.