Co-authored with John Jalsevac

SPRINGFIELD, IL, September 25, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The bishop of Springfield, Illinois has issued a hard-hitting letter in his diocesan paper, slamming the Democratic Party platform’s support for abortion and gay ‘marriage’ and urging Catholics to bring their consciences to the ballot box.

Citing the events that transpired at the Democratic National Convention when the last remaining reference to God was removed, and then reintroduced into the party platform, Bishop John Paprocki insisted that this debacle was not the worst of the DNC platform problems, and that the platform’s pro-homosexual agenda and pro-abortion planks “explicitly endorse intrinsic evils.”

This year the Democratic party platform took the most extreme position on abortion of any of the party’s platforms, expressing support for abortion on demand with taxpayer funding. Bishop Paprocki also noted that while previous platforms had said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” the new platform removed “rare,” leaving only “safe and legal.”

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To those who might criticize him for speaking on a political matter, the bishop wrote: “My job is not to tell you for whom you should vote. But I do have a duty to speak out on moral issues. I would be abdicating this duty if I remained silent out of fear of sounding ‘political’ and didn’t say anything about the morality of these issues.”

Remarking on the Republican Party Platform as a contrast, Paprocki said, “there is nothing in it that supports or promotes an intrinsic evil or a serious sin.”

Preempting a frequent criticism of the Republican party’s position permitting the use of capital punishment, the bishop cited Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 2267) which outlines the circumstances under which capital punishment is permissible. That paragraph states: “Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”

Bishop Paprocki also corrected those who argue for prioritizing the preferential option for the poor over human rights for the preborn and defense of marriage in determining one’s vote: “One might argue for different methods in the platform to address the needs of the poor, to feed the hungry and to solve the challenges of immigration, but these are prudential judgments about the most effective means of achieving morally desirable ends, not intrinsic evils.”

“Again,” the bishop concluded, “I am not telling you which party or which candidates to vote for or against, but I am saying that you need to think and pray very carefully about your vote, because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.”