Pope Benedict XVI Blog

It Can Happen Here

Inside Catholic

by John Zmirak
11/04/08

Our choices matter. They hurtle before us into eternity, dragging us in their wake. And in this election, more than any in the United States since 1860, they matter desperately. I wish they didn't.

The single most damning objection raised by atheists is this: Why would a loving, omnipotent God permit sin, suffering, and the eternal damnation of souls? And our answer is stark and comfortless: For the sake of freedom. To give our choices consequence and meaning. To make our existence real.

Our reason accepts this. One's frontal lobe can process the logical steps entailed and determine the absence of fallacies. But our hearts aren't always moved. Personally, I don't think it's worth the risk. If God were to offer me Limbo, or certain annihilation after death, in return for the guarantee that I would never spend five minutes in Hell, I would jump on that offer faster than my beagle pounces on a squirrel. Susie has no free will, no sin, and no eternity. Lucky dog.

But that's not the way things work. As I've explained more than once to Catholics who dissent over birth control: "I don't make the Natural Law, I just enforce it."

Likewise in the economy of salvation: We may think what we wish about God's decision to give man a lethal freedom. But wishing won't make it so.

And so we must decide. Readers of this site have heard extensively about the extremes to which Sen. Barack Obama pushes his support of legal abortion. They know that he is likely to appoint enough justices to the Supreme Court to keep abortion out of the hands of democratic lawmaking for 20 or 30 years -- in other words, indefinitely.

Failing a campaign promise on the part of Sen. John McCain to start a nuclear war that would kill more people than the four million children who face legal execution during an Obama administration, the abortion issue alone should convince every orthodox Christian that voting for Obama is a grave sin -- the kind to damn one's soul. Yes, even if you're black and voting for him out of racial solidarity, or white and voting for him out of racial guilt. Apart from simple ignorance, there's simply no excuse.
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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 10:28 PM