Conscience, Candidates and Discipleship in 2020 Elections

In a February 6, 2020 speech at the University of San Diego, Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Diego said “the drive to label a single issue preeminent” in the 2020 election “distorts the call to authentic discipleship in voting rather than advancing it.” Bishop McElroy called both abortion and the environment “core life issues in Catholic teaching.”

“Against the backdrop of these two monumental threats to human life, how can one evaluate the competing claims that either abortion or climate change should be uniquely preeminent in Catholic social teaching regarding the formation of Americans as citizens and believers? Four points should be considered. —There is no mandate in universal Catholic social teaching that gives a categorical priority to either of these issues as uniquely determinative of the common good. —The death toll from abortion is more immediate, but the long-term death toll from unchecked climate change is larger and threatens the very future of humanity. —Both abortion and the environment are core life issues in Catholic teaching. —The designation of either of these issues as the preeminent question in Catholic social teaching at this time in the United States will inevitably be hijacked by partisan forces to propose that Catholics have an overriding duty to vote for candidates that espouse that position.”