I mentioned to you for the past two Sunday’s that I’m going to be speaking today on the November 3rd election and want to give you a little heads-up as I begin.

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I will be going a little bit long this morning because I have a lot of ground to cover.

This will be for me personally the 14th presidential election I will have voted in since reaching the age of majority, and this one is unlike anything I have ever seen.

I actually said the same thing about the last election in 2016, but the events of the last four years and, in fact, of the past six or seven months, have cast this upcoming election in a whole new and ever more dire light.

I believe that at this moment in time in history you and I find ourselves as part of a society that is staring into the abyss, and that how our nation votes on November 3rd will determine whether we collectively step off the cliff into that abyss, or step back from it, if only temporarily. . . .

We do, after all, still live in a free country with free elections at least for the time being, but it is my place as your priest and pastor to help you see how your vote may or may not line up with the teachings of the church.

So I will tell you emphatically that what I’m about to say to you should not be taken as an implicit endorsement of any candidate by Christ the King Church or by the personal ordinariate of the chair of Saint Peter.

I’m taking this opportunity to speak to you personally, to share with you my own personal opinion, but it is an opinion based formed and informed by the word of God and by the crystal clear teaching of the Church for the purpose of helping you think through the choices because, again, there are certain realities about the candidates and their parties that directly impact our Catholic faith, and so we must be aware of these realities before we cast our vote and my first allegiance is not to any political candidate or party, but to the truth.

So, what I’m going to say is not politically motivated, because the stakes involved for transcend politics. But what I’m going to say, I believe, has to be said. Now let me begin by telling you that I have struggled mightily with this message, not because I’m afraid of thetruth. I think you know me better than that. To the contrary the truth is what motivates me every day of my life. I resonate completely with Saint Paul who said, “woe is me if I do not preach the truth of the Gospel.” Frankly, if I were not sold out to the truth I wouldn’t even be standing in front of you today, because I would not be a Catholic priest. No, the reason for my struggle has to do with the vitriol and with the vicious animosity that are evident in our society today. Animosity that is played out tens of millions of times daily on social media and in the violence that has overtaken so many of America’s cities and was even on full display in the recent presidential debate.

Brothers and sisters, we live in a nation that is sadly, tragically divided. A nation at odds with itself. Jesus words in the Gospel of this past Friday were never more true, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I grieve for what has become of America. And so the last thing I want to do is to have this message contribute to that division in our country, and least of all to have it cause division in our parish. You and I are children of the same heavenly Father. You and I are servants of the same Lord and Master. We are first Christians, Catholics, we are second Americans, and then somewhere down the line from there we are Republicans or Democrats or Independents or whatever. Never forget that order. And so it has almost become a cliché to declare that we have reached a tipping point in our nation, but it is also true, and it is time for faithful Catholics and other Christians to stand up courageously and forthrightly to confront the evil that has overtaken our culture and say enough is enough. Because, whether you are aware of it or not, there are powerful forces in government at every level, as well as in the mainstream media, and in the Silicon Valley technocracy, that are working aggressively to silence the church, through legislation, lies, intimidation and censorship.

So for us faithful Catholics, the starting point of our choice of whom to vote for needs to be that we intentionally think with the church. Think with the church, something that too many Catholics have failed to do for far too long. A fact that is largely contributed to the dire condition of our culture today. The church has clearly and consistently based her teachingon the Sacred Scriptures and on the living tradition and embodied in two thousand years ofher magisterium. That teaching has led to an array of foundational principles when it comes to us as Catholics and our moral and Civic responsibilities. It’s not always easy to sift through the myriad of issues at play in presidential politics, so it becomes crucial then that we properly prioritize those issues. Because some are, more, clearly more important than others. We can respectfully disagree. And we can have differences of prudential judgment and opinion around issues like the economy, taxation, immigration, National Defense, trade, healthcare, climate change, and so on. But don’t get sidetracked by the spurious seamless garment theory espoused by many in the church that asserts issues like immigration and the environment are of equal weight with abortion, because there is a set of issues upon which Catholics must not disagree. Pope Benedict XVI specified those issues in his 2012 Apostolic Constitution entitled Sacramentum Caritatis, in which Benedict defined what he called are non-negotiable values, a concept which he repeated countless times during his pontificate. Among the list of non-negotiable values which he identified, chief among them are the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, the sanctity of marriage, as a lifelong sacramental union of a man and a woman, and the preservation of religious liberty. They are non-negotiable because they are of paramount importance in Catholic moral theology. They are the moral principles were the church draws a clear line in the sand. And all of the fog and the confusion and spin that surrounds every political season, we must, as faithful Catholics, conscientiously vote in such a way that best upholds and protects these non-negotiable values.

Again the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage, and religious liberty. Not that other issues are unimportant, but these three are foundational to who we are as human beingsand to what kind of society we are constructing. As Pope Benedict wrote regarding these values, “In the face of fundamental and inalienable ethical demands Christians must recognize that what is at stake is the essence of the moral law which concerns the integral, integral good of the human person.” On these and other critical issues, there is one presidential candidate who stands in very public, very obstinate, opposition to church teaching, namely, former Vice President Joe Biden, along with the Democratic Party.

And so I’d like to share with you the five things which every Catholic needs to know about Catholic Joe Biden, and how these line up with the non-negotiables. . .

Number One: Joe Biden is unabashedly pro-abortion. . . .

This fact is clear from his long voting record, his public pronouncements, his allegiance to and support of groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL, and for his party’s platform, not only in this election year, but in their platformgoing back decades. . . .

He, and they, opposed the effort in Congress to pass legislation requiring doctors who perform abortions to provide medical care to babies who survive the abortion opting rather to let such babies, simply die outside the womb with no care. . . .

Number Two: Joe Biden opposes the Church’s teaching on the sanctityof marriage

Joe Biden opposes the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of marriage. While he was vice-president and he publicly endorsed same-sex marriage in 2012, three years before The Supreme Court ruling. And in 2016, while still the vice president, he officiated over the wedding ceremony of two men, posting a photo of the ceremony on Twitter with the caption, “Proud to marry Brian and Joe at my house. Couldn’t be happier. Two long-timeWhite House staffers. Two great guys”.

Number Three: A Biden presidency would be a danger to our religious liberty

A Biden presidency would be a danger to our already dwindling religious liberty. He and his party advocate for the repeal of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which protects the religious conscience rights of healthcare workers who declined to participate in abortions and of Church based adoption agencies that choose to place children only with married heterosexual couples, among other things.  . . .

Number Four: A Joe Biden presidency opens the door for America tobecome a socialist country

Evidence for this assertion is in his signing on to the self-avowed socialist Bernie Sanders agenda. His selection as a running mate of Senator Kamala Harris, identified by bipartisan groups, by non-partisan groups, as the most leftist member of the U.S. Senate. His several months long silence on the murder and mayhem being inflicted on America’s cities by Marxist socialist organizations, as well as the all too obvious and serious influence being exercised within the Democratic Party by a leftist extremist. . . .

Number 5: Joe Biden’s positions on these four moral issues as a very high-prole Catholic subvert and undermine the faith

Joe Biden’s positions on these four moral issues as a very high-profile Catholic, a man who served in the U.S. Senate for more than three decades, then as Vice President for eight years, and now as a candidate for President, of very high-profile Catholic, his positions then serve to subvert and undermine the faith of nominal and poorly catechized Catholics, as for example, it gives rise to the effort, the misinformed effort, known as Catholics for Biden. . . .

(Excerpt from The Thinking Conservative. )

What do you think about Father Ed Meeks’ thoughts on voting in this election?