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Yes, that’s what Catholics teach and that’s what common sense teaches. If the reason one didn’t know something was wrong was one’s own culpable refusal to learn right from wrong, then one has sinned by refusing to learn right from wrong. But if one has been misled by those one trusted to know right from wrong, then the sin rests with those who misled and lied or deprived people of knowledge they needed to make informed choices.

In the case of abortion, no one can be entirely exonerated because everyone knows that abortion is controversial and even the most doltish of Catholics knows that the Church says it’s wrong. But, and here’s where you have to put your thinking cap on: the act we are talking about here is “voting for Obama.” During this election campaign, Catholic authority figures (wrongly, evilly, sinfully) told Catholics that one could rightly vote for Obama as long as one was voting for him in spite of his wrong position on abortion.

Now, that claim is false but it was being made by people who claimed to be knowledgeable. This clouded the “knowledge aspect” of the issue as far as mortal sin is concerned.

If a Catholic voter knew darn well that his bishop or at least some bishops had clearly stated that one may not vote for Obama under any circumstances without committing mortal sin, then if that voter went ahead and did it, he’d be in deep doodoo. But none of the bishops, not even Chaput, ever said it that plainly. There was always some degree of putting two and two together required to reach the conclusion, based on what the bishops did say, that voting for Obama was absolutely wrong.

And how many “Catholic” voters even heard what Chaput said, much less paid attention and understood it? Some of them weren’t paying attention because they didn’t want to and the sin may lie in their laziness and inattentiveness. Others were paying attention but were hearing rival claims being made.

Now, here’s my original point: no one can, in advance, broadcast, scattershot, say exactly what went into the mindset of each Catholic who voted for Obama. The pastor rightly refused to say that anyone who voted for Obama sinned. He appealed to his parishioners to examine themselves, be honest with themselves and if they knowingly did what they knew to be wrong, to confess it.

And this is not just a Catholic principle. It’s the basis for our distinction in law between accidental manslaughter, negligent manslaughter, premeditated murder and so forth. It’s just plain common sense.

And it’s also EXACTLY what Scripture says: no man knows another man’s heart, only God knows. So not only do Catholics teach exactly what I wrote but so do the Protestants I grew up among. You cannot know exactly what is in another man’s heart and you must leave leeway in assessing another man’s sin.

But you can be exact and certain of your own sins.

So stop it already with the flailing away at Catholics for having a false theology about sin.

I think it’s evil that Obama was elected. However I place most of the blame on leaders (journalists, public intellectuals, bishops, and others) who withheld the information from people that they needed to have in order to make an informed choice.

Look, Obama was elected largely through ignorance, ignorance greater perhaps than in any previous election. This is evil. And some of the blame rests with a populace that prefers to be stupid and uninformed. Many Catholic voters for Obama sinned by being lazy and uneager to inform themselves. Whether that is a mortal sin or a venial sin, depends on each case. But deliberately withholding information, spinning the news, lying and deceiving the populace, creating an increasingly deceivable and manipulable populace in the first place—that’s where the true Evil lies.

The pastor of this parish was simply trying to get his parishioners’ attention, to point out that they might have sinnned mortally. He could not tell them across the board that they did sin mortally and he was careful not to do that. But it is being reported that he told them all they had sinned.