For years, Catholic Answers has produced a helpful voters’ guide on the five non-negotiable moral issues for Catholics. It is good but in the years since it was first produced, four more issues have come up that I think are worth adding to the list of non-negotiable moral issues. I will explain both what these issues are and why we need to add them. I will also mention a few issues that are important but negotiable.
First, the established five non-negotiable issues:
- Abortion
- Euthanasia
- Embryonic Stem-Cell Research.
- Human Cloning.
- Homosexual marriage.
Now, these four need to be added from my perspective.
Torture
The Catechism teaches in 2297, “Torture… is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.” It is intrinsically evil and can never be done or condoned. It doesn’t matter if the person is the most horrid criminal, a mass-murderer or a child-molester, they still have inviolable human dignity. If we dehumanize criminals, we dehumanize all people.
I have already shown why waterboarding is torture and some are proposing even more severe forms of torture….
