WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - Father James Martin is urging Catholics to stop claiming it's a mortal sin to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The homosexualist activist and Vatican consultant is warning Catholics against mixing secular politics with religious faith. Late last week, Martin tweeted an increasing number of Catholic leaders are claiming a vote for Biden amounts to a grave offense against God:
I'm seeing more priests saying that voting for @JoeBiden is a mortal sin. It is not. It is not a sin to vote for either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump. Nor is it a sin to be Democrat or Republican. Listen to what the @USCCB says in "Faithful Citizenship" about the role of conscience...
The document Martin speaks of contains guidelines from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on forming consciences in the modern, secular political world. The platform of the Democrat Party of Death includes the support and promotion of America's ongoing prenatal genocide, as well as so-called same-sex marriage and gender ideology.
Combating the orthodox Catholic view that, as a rule, a vote for the so-called Party of Death is cooperating with evil and a matter of serious sin, Martin quotes "Faithful Citizenship":
[We] bishops do not intend to tell Catholics for whom or against whom to vote. Our purpose is to help Catholics form their consciences in accordance with God's truth. We recognize that the responsibility to make choices in political life rests with each individual in light of a properly formed conscience, and that participation goes well beyond casting a vote in a particular election.
Martin invoked the Marxist-inspired "seamless garment theory" when he added that he and other Catholics feel compelled to help on "any issues where life is endangered," which he said should include caring for the poor, the homeless and the so-called LGBTQ community — not just abortion.
This lumping together of intrinsic evils such as abortion with social justice issues was popularized by the late cardinal Joseph Bernardin, an alleged satanist and homosexual sympathizer who helped set up a pipeline from South America to ordain practicing homosexuals. Talks that Bernardin gave on the "seamless garment" preceded the U.S. bishops drafting voting guidelines that equate intrinsic evils like abortion, euthanasia and redefining marriage with poverty and racism.
Although Martin didn't mention him by name, a video by Fr. James Altman of the diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, which communicates what Martin is condemning, has been going viral. As Church Militant reported last week, Altman claims in the video that "you cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat."
Unlike Martin's reticence to mention Altman by name, Altman does indeed mention Martin:
Guess who was just a premier speaker at the Democratic National Convention? None other than the hyper-confusion spreading heretic James Martin, S.J. I guess it's okay for James Martin to spout off for the Democrats on their national stage — but God forbid a priest speak out against their godless platform.
Altman speaks unambiguously in the video about what Joe Biden and the Democratic Party publicly and passionately support.
"There will be 60 million and counting aborted babies standing at the gates of Heaven barring your Democrat entrance," says Altman, "and nothing you can say will ever excuse you for your direct or indirect support of that diabolical agenda — period, the end," he declared.
Further, this counts for only the surgical abortions performed in the United States. As medical science has uncovered, pharmaceutical abortions count for at least 10 times that amount of prenatal killings.
Martin never mentions actual Catholic teaching from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2319, which says "Every human life, from the moment of conception until death, is sacred because the human person has been willed for its own sake in the image and likeness of the living and holy God." This is why paragraph 2399 cites contraception as "morally unacceptable."
Martin also tweeted a quote from Cdl. Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI: "When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons."
Faithful theologians agree with this in principle but also recognize a properly formed conscience today cannot weigh all the pertinent issues and choose to vote for the Democratic candidate — the one who supports the ongoing slaughter of over 4,000 innocents per day, the destruction of natural marriage and gender ideology.
In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Pope St. John Paul II spoke of abortion, saying "the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral" and that, "in the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion ... it is therefore never licit to ... take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law or vote for it."
While Altman is helping to properly form Catholic consciences, Martin appears to be blurring moral lines.
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