The majority of Catholics around the country came out in support of president-elect Donald J. Trump in the last election, but this was not the case when it came to supporting Catholic teaching on a variety of ballot initiatives.

Writing for Our Sunday Visitor (OSV), Patti Maguire Armstrong reports on the more than 160 ballot measures that were up for a vote in 35 states during the last election, many of which concerned issues related to Catholic teaching on the value of life. Unfortunately, voters largely ignored the Church’s position on these issues in spite of pleas from their bishops.

For example, two-thirds of the citizens in the state of Colorado voted to legalize assisted suicide, making it the sixth state with a “right to die” law, joining California, Washington, Oregon, Montana and Vermont.

Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila of the Archdiocese of Denver pleaded with Catholics to defeat the bill, saying that it advocated a “throwaway culture.”

Jenny Kraska, executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference, called the decision to legalize assisted suicide in the state a “great travesty of compassion” for the vulnerable.

Catholics believe all life is precious and that God has sovereignty over it. But even people without religious faith should find the logic behind the law troubling.

“Proposition 106 has legalized the ability of a doctor to write prescriptions for the sole purpose of killing another human being and the ability of insurance companies to refuse treatment of patients they consider terminal,” Kraska told OSV. “The only effect Proposition 106 will have on our State will be to deepen the divides along lines of race, ethnicity and income in our society and entrench us deeper into a culture that offers a false compassion by marginalizing the most vulnerable.”

On the issue of the death penalty, three states voted last week to keep it in their states, in spite of Catholic bishops’ appeals against it. Even though 19 states and the District of Columbia have already banned the death penalty, voters in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma bucked that tide and opted to keep it.

As Armstrong reports, before the elections, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City pleaded with citizens to reject capital punishment calling it “morally obsolete” and incapable of honoring or restoring the memory of the lost loved one.

“The death penalty only further erodes our respect for the sanctity of life. It coarsens our culture and diminishes our humanity,” Coakley said.

After the ballot initiative failed, Nebraska’s three bishops, led by Archbishop George J. Lucas of Omaha, expressed disappointment in the outcome. “We will continue to call for the repeal of the death penalty when it is not absolutely necessary to protect the public safety,” they said in a statement.

Even more troubling is that an initiative in California, called Proposition 66, which passed by nearly 51 percent of the vote, will eliminate some of the appeals processes and may actually expedite executions in that state.

“The wording on Proposition 66 was confusing — even lawyers weren’t sure what it meant — but it was put on the ballot to confuse people regarding the death penalty and it accomplished its task,” Steve Pehanich, director of communication and advocacy for the California Catholic Conference told OSV. “Those safeguards in the appeal process are in place to protect people that could be innocent.”

Four out of five states voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana – Maine, California, Nevada and Massachusetts. Arizona rejected it.

Catholic bishops in several of those states spoke against the initiative. In Massachusetts, the bishops joined the governor and many other elected officials, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, in opposition to legalizing pot use in their state.

“The bishops statement prior to the elections cited a report from the National Institute of Drug Abuse about marijuana stating, ‘Its widespread use and abuse, particularly by young people under the age of 18, is steadily increasing while scientific evidence clearly links its long-term damaging effects on brain development’,” Maguire reports.

They also cited a report by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area which found that, since the legalization of marijuana, traffic deaths have increased by 48 percent in that state with 21 percent of those killed testing positive for marijuana. In addition, the report found that in the last three years, marijuana-related hospitalizations in Colorado doubled and high school dropout rates have spiked.

As the bishops explained, the Church teaches that, “the use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense.”

The outcome of ballot initiatives on gun control and minimum wage increases were more favorable to Church teaching. California, Nevada and Washington passed gun control measures while voters in the state of Maine rejected it.

Minimum wage increases passed in four states – Maine, Arizona, Colorado and Washington – lifting the minimum wage anywhere from $12 an hour to $13.50 per hour in Washington by 2020.

Catholic leaders, including Catholic Charities USA, spoke out in favor of these initiatives in order to help reduce poverty.

Overall, American Catholics were not persuaded to vote in favor of Catholic teaching on many of these vital issues – which means we still have a lot of evangelizing to do in this our day and time.

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