Sister Lucia, visionary of Fatima, was clear on the main focus of the battle...that while the war between good and evil manifests itself in many ways...she wrote, “the last or defining battle between Our Lord and Satan, is over Marriage and the Family.”
On November 3, The Country will vote for governors, Congress, and, in four states, abortion itself. For the men of Claymore the mid-terms are not primarily about left versus right, or Republican versus Democrat. They are a showdown in a definitive battle between Good and Evil.
In this epic battle it is important to ask; Are the citizens of the United States of America a moral and religious people? Do we still have the faith, courage and fortitude to build a culture of life for our children and grandchildren to thrive in, or will we settle for the inevitable decline of our Nation and what John Paul II called the rival claim, the culture of death, and with it the acceptance of abortion, assisted suicide and the redefinition of marriage to mean anything and everything? John Paul II was clear, “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it” (Evangelium Vitae 73).
A fierce battle is taking place between good and evil and we dare not sit this one out. Even after our ballot is cast, and even if we got the outcome we voted for, don’t expect a grand political savior or political system to be able to rescue our Nation on its own. For one thing God already gave us a Savior, and secondly, we are each called to pick up the Claymore Sword and follow him into battle. That’s right, you are expected to go to war, and remember this!...It’s not only the nation but your own heart that is being contended for! So buckle up, set your standards high, and make a daily decision to be a force for truth and goodness in the world.
Such obedience is not easy in a fallen world. As a result of that mysterious original sin, committed at the prompting of Satan, the one who is “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44), man is constantly tempted to turn his gaze away from the living and true God in order to direct it towards idols (cf. 1 Thes 1:9), exchanging “the truth about God for a lie” (Rom 1:25). Man’s capacity to know the truth is also darkened, and his will to submit to it is weakened. Thus, giving himself over to relativism and scepticism (cf. Jn 18:38), he goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself (Veritatis Splendor 1). They will not find it.
Saint Paul warned us:
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry (2 Timothy 4:3-5).
Scripture’s prohibition on the shedding of innocent blood, and the historic Christian definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, are why Catholics and other Christians can stand in the same place even where they do not share a magisterium. The polling booth is not the whole of discipleship, but it is one place, and an important one, where discipleship becomes public.
As Christians we have an obligation to vote against the culture of death and here are three claims that meet that test with unusual clarity. Two of them, abortion and assisted suicide are the deliberate ending of a human life. The third, the redefinition of natural marriage, the lifelong union of one man and one woman, ordered to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of children.
On 7 October 1979, while visiting the USA and preaching on the Capitol Mall, John Paul II said he did not hesitate to proclaim, “before you and before the world that all human life—from the moment of conception and through all subsequent stages—is sacred, because human life is created in the image and likeness of God.” He continued, “When the sacredness of life before birth is attacked, we will stand up and proclaim that no one ever has the authority to destroy unborn life.”
He returned to that claim with formal authority in Evangelium Vitae. “Direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being” (n. 62). The human being “is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception.” “The direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral” (n. 57). He called the cultural result a “culture of death,” fostered by currents “excessively concerned with efficiency,” in which a life that would require greater acceptance is “considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected.” The conflict, he wrote, is “a war of the powerful against the weak,” striking “especially at the more significant moments of existence: the moment of birth and the moment of death.”
But John Paul II did not stop at judgment. To women who have had abortions he wrote that what happened was gravely wrong, but then told them not to give in to despair: “The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation” (Evangelium Vitae, n. 99). A law can be opposed without abandoning the person who broke it.
The State of Illinois, for one, has written the contrary claim into statute. The Reproductive Health Act of 2019 makes abortion a fundamental right through viability and permits it after viability when a physician judges it necessary for the patient’s life or health, including mental health. There is no waiting period for the abortion, and as of June 1, 2022, the Act of 2019 was updated so that minors of any age do not need parental notification for an abortion. Signing these laws, Governor J.B. Pritzker called Illinois “a beacon of hope in the heart of this nation” for those who believe in “standing up for women’s fundamental rights.” He has since said that “a woman’s right to control her own body should not be a matter of debate,” and that a woman seeking an abortion “should be met with dignity, empathy, and compassion.” I would add the obvious, that while dignity and compassion are invoked for the mother, it is withheld from the child whose body has just been dismembered and their life ended.
On November 3 that record is on the ballot.
The national Democratic platform of 2024 uses the same frame as Illinois law. It says the party believes “unequivocally” that every woman should have access to “safe and legal abortion,” and it commits Democrats to “pass national legislation to make Roe the law of the land again.” The 2024 Republican platform does not propose a national ban. It says the states are free to pass laws protecting life, and that the party will also oppose late-term abortion.
John Paul II’s rule for law is not ambiguous. “Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection.” In the case of an intrinsically unjust law permitting abortion or euthanasia, “it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it” (Evangelium Vitae, n. 73).
Life at its end
Evangelium Vitae applies the identical judgment to the other end of life. Euthanasia, “an action or omission which of itself and by intention causes death, with the purpose of eliminating all suffering,” is “a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person” (n. 65). He distinguished this from forgoing disproportionate or futile treatment. Refusing a machine that only prolongs dying is not the same act as choosing a drug in order to die. He warned that a utilitarian motive would propose “to eliminate malformed babies, the severely handicapped, the disabled, the elderly, especially when they are not self-sufficient, and the terminally ill” (n. 15). On the Mall in 1979 he had already said that when the sick, the aged, or the dying are abandoned, the Christian response is to proclaim that they are “worthy of love, care and respect.”
Illinois crossed that line in statute on 12 December 2025, when Pritzker signed the End-of-Life Options for Terminally ill Patients Act, effective 12 September 2026. Competent adult residents expected to die within six months may request and self-administer a lethal prescription. The governor said he had been moved by those “standing up for freedom and choice at the end of life,” and that the law helps patients “avoid unnecessary pain and suffering” through decisions made with “authority, autonomy, and empathy.” The Church’s name for that act remains euthanasia or assisted suicide. Changing the statutory label does not change the intention to cause death. A governor’s race is where that law is kept or challenged.
Marriage
The third claim is not a killing, and the Church does not treat it as identical in gravity to abortion. It does treat it as a truth civil law may not rewrite. In Familiaris Consortio (1981) and the Letter to Families (1994), John Paul II taught that marriage is the covenant of a man and a woman, indissoluble, and the ordinary setting in which human life is welcomed. In 2003 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, with his approval, published Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons. “No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman.” There are “absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.” The document condemns unjust discrimination against homosexual persons and, in the same breath, says that approval of homosexual acts contradicts the moral truth.
It then addresses politicians directly. “If it is true that all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way.” When such legislation is proposed, the Catholic lawmaker “has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it.” If repeal is impossible, he may support proposals aimed only at limiting the harm. The 2002 Doctrinal Note on the Participation of Catholics in Political Life had already said that the family “based on marriage between a man and a woman” must be defended, and that a well-formed conscience “does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals.”
The polling booth
The Catechism n. 2240 calls the exercise of the vote a moral obligation in service of the common good: “Submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to exercise the right to vote, and to defend one's country.”
Catholics may not promote laws that attack human life, and they may not vote for a political program that contradicts fundamental contents of faith and morals. The U.S. bishops’ Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship states the voter’s rule in one sentence: “A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who favors a policy promoting an intrinsically evil act, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, deliberately subjecting workers or the poor to subhuman living conditions, redefining marriage in ways that violate its essential meaning.” The bishops add that the obligation to oppose policies promoting intrinsically evil acts has a special claim on conscience, and that a voter may legitimately disqualify a candidate on any one of those acts.
November 3 does not ask for a perfect ticket. It asks whether the voter will refuse to intend the evil, prefer the candidate or the measure that limits it when limitation is the real choice, and decline to call compassion the killing of the innocent.
In conclusion, remember that the voting booth is not the last word. The same duty that refuses an unjust law also loves and feeds the pregnant woman, sits with the old, and supports the pregnancy-help centers and the hospices that will not kill. A vote that limits the evil, and a parish that loves and supports the mother, the child and the dying, are one witness. One without the other is not fully living out our Christian duty.