When Is Voting a Sin?

Puerto Rico's Roman Catholic bishops last week moved even more deeply into their continuing church v. state battle, at the same time found themselves at odds with the conscience and conviction of many a good Catholic. Just before the recent elections, Puerto Rico's three bishops denounced Governor Luis Munoz Marin's Popular Democratic Party for its "anti-Catholic and antiChristian" toleration of birth control, sterilization and common-law marriage (TIME. Oct. 31), warned that Catholics who voted for the P.D.P. would "inevitably" be guilty of sin. Nevertheless, Munoz won an overwhelming victory at the polls. At all Sunday Masses last week, the pastor of San Juan Cathedral, Father Thomas Maisonet, told parishioners who voted for P.D.P. that they must confess this "sin" before they can receive Communion again. Speaking on his own authority, but evidently with the bishops' backing, Maisonet also said that, to gain absolution, penitents must promise not to support the P.D.P. in the future unless it changes its philosophy.

Legal Right. Reaction to Maisonet's statement and to similar edicts laid down by priests throughout Puerto Rico was violent. Dona Felisa Rincon de Gautier, the P.D.P. mayoress of San Juan, said: "At that moment, I felt that Father Maisonet was more a sinner than myself, for he was denying Communion to many good people who did not in their hearts believe that they had committed a sin." Dona Felisa defiantly announced that she intended to receive Communion without confessing or repenting her vote.

Catholic authorities in the U.S. maintained a discreet silence about the controversy, but privately many felt that the Puerto Rican bishops had gone too far. Legally there was no doubt that the bishops were within their rights. The Vatican generally seemed to support the bishops, recalling that Pope Pius XII had declared it a sin to vote for the Communists in Italy's 1948 election (an edict that the Italian clergy was never able to enforce). Nevertheless there was room for argument and interpretation.

Mortal Bishops. Within the confessional each priest is the ultimate human judge of sins not legally reserved to the bishop or Holy See (e.g., abortion, physical attack on the clergy, etc.). If a penitent is denied absolution by one priest, he may seek out another whose viewpoint is congenial to his. Furthermore, a Puerto Rican Catholic might believe that voting for the P.D.P. was a political matter outside the realm of faith and morals, and considered the bishops' letters merely advisory exhortations. In that case, if the voter has considered carefully and acted in good faith, he can be held sinless in respect to the vote. A top Vatican official explained the fine distinction: "Bishops are mortals and can be mistaken. And if the bishops are wrong in this case, then the voter in good faith has not sinned by voting, but he has sinned in disobeying his bishop."

For the Puerto Rican clergy, the most serious handicap in enforcing their dictum was the secrecy of the confessional: How would any priest know which Catholics who appeared at the Communion rail had or had not confessed their vote?

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