Why are These "Non-Negotiable"?

"A correct conscience recongizes that there are some choices that always involve doing evil and which can never be done even as a means to a good end. These choices include elective abortion, euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, the destruction of embryonic human beings in stem cell research, human cloning, and same-sex "marriage." Such acts are judged to be intrinsically evil, that is, evil in and of themselves, regardless of our motives or the circumstances. They constitute an attack against innocent human life, as well as marriage and family. Pope John Paul II warned that concern for the "right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not denfended with maximum determination."
Christifideles Laici, 38.

Concerning choices that are intrinsically evil, Catholics may not promote or even remain indifferent to them.
CO, KS Bishop's Statement, 2008.

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"The intervention of the public authority must be inspired by the rational principles which regulate the relationships between civil law and moral law. The task of the civil law is to ensure the common good of people through the recognition of and the defense of fundamental rights and through the promotion of peace and of public morality.1 In no sphere of life can the civil law take the place of conscience or dictate norms concerning things which are outside its competence...The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state: they pertain to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his or her origin.

"Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard: a) every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death; b) the rights of the family and of marriage as an institution and, in this area, the child's right to be conceived, brought into the world and brought up by his parents."

-Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Donum Vitae
1Cf. Declaration Dignitatis Humanae, no. 7.





Please click any one of the five non-negotiables for more information and specific Church teaching.


*Emphasis ours.