The news in my hometown Scranton, Pennsylvania, the land of the swing voter is that Joseph Martino, the bishop of Scranton, has issued a pastoral letter about the duties of the Catholic voter with regard to life issues. (I dont want to ruin the surprise, but the gist is that abortion trumps everything else that could be considered to fall into that category.) Issuing a pastoral letter is not itself extreme, and the occasion Respect Life Sunday seems as appropriate as any. But this pastoral gesture is unusually muscular, and it comes with instructions for the pastors who receive it: At the direction of the Most Reverend Bishop, an introductory note states, this letter is to be read by the celebrant at all Masses of Obligation on Respect Life Weekend, Saturday, October 4, and Sunday, October 5, at the time of and instead of the homily. [Emphasis mine.] Moreover, a copy of the letter should be circulated with all parish bulletins on this same weekend.Priests of Scranton, take heed: you arent allowed to read this letter as a preamble to the mass, or include excerpts in the post-Communion announcements. It goes after the Gospel (when, presumably, the latecomers and the early-leavers will all be in their seats). No pawning it off on some poor lector, either; you must read it yourself, symbolically if not literally from the presiders chair. And most important, dont try to write your own homily, interpreting that weeks readings with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or addressing the subject of Respecting Life based on your sense of what would be an appropriate message for your parish. The bishop has taken that responsibility out of your hands. This week, you speak in his voice.You may well ask, is the situation so urgent, in Scranton or in the U.S., that individual pastors cant even be trusted to take guidance from their bishop in addressing their parishioners? Bishop Martino seems to think so: Never have we seen such abusive criticism directed toward those who believe that life begins at conception and ends at natural death, he declares. Have you observed this same, unprecedented onslaught of abusive criticism? Im not aware of any such attacks occurring within the diocese, or of any insubordination among the priests of the diocese. Even on the national stage, Im not sure what Ive seen that would fit that description. Martino is not specific; he later alludes to objections to the Churchs teaching on life that we hear every day in the media, but surely he does not believe that raising an objection is itself abusive. Right?Perhaps Bishop Martino is objecting to the widespread falsehood that he has barred Scranton native Joe Biden from receiving Communion in the place of his birth during his frequent campaign stops there. This rumor stems, as far as I can make out, from a rather irresponsible article in the Scranton Times-Tribune, which speculated that Martino might issue such a ban, based on a pastoral letter he had issued in 2005. Asked to comment, the bishop refused to say anything about Biden specifically. That, at least, is to his credit; to do otherwise would be thuggish, in my opinion. Martino is still, just barely, refraining from threatening Biden by name, but he has taken the opportunity of Respect Life Sunday to reiterate his stance: Public officials who are Catholic and who persist in public support for abortion and other intrinsic evils should not partake in or be admitted to the sacrament of Holy Communion. As I have said before, I will be vigilant on this subject.As you may know, Scranton is also the hometown of the Casey family (as in Governor Bob and Senator Bob Jr.), and the natural habitat of the fabled prolife Democrat. The Greater Scranton Areathe diocese, you might saywill have a significant role in deciding whether Pennsylvania will go red or blue. And so, in light of Commonweals recent editorial about bishops correcting politicians, I read Bishop Martinos statement with an eye for whether it might be intentionally or unintentionally exploitable for partisan purposes. According to the Times-Tribune, William Genello, the diocesan spokesman, said he would not characterize the letter as directly political. That might depend on how you define directly. It does not mention any candidate or party by name. But it systematically refutes, or attempts to refute, the reasons a Catholic might propose to vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights. The war cant come close to trumping Roe vs. Wade: A person may, in good faith, misapply just war criteria leading him to mistakenly believe that an unjust war is just, but he or she still knows that innocent human life may not be harmed on purpose. As for those candidates who have failed to deliver on their prolife convictions, I suppose the question must be: What did you "know," and when did you know it? And are you now or were you ever acting in good faith? Social concerns -- presumably even those that address the reasons a woman might seek an abortion are dismissed with a flourish of blinding logic: Consider this: the finest health and education systems, the fairest immigration laws, and the soundest economy do nothing for the child who never sees the light of day. Only when the letter mentions destruction of embryos for research purposes which it does, in passing, once does it suggest that a firm prolife commitment does not necessarily translate into an obvious choice for voters this year.No, there is no explicit endorsement of the Republican ticket in this letter. But the intent seems clear unless I am quite mistaken, the Catholics of Scranton are not being instructed to write in their own candidate to protest the lack of a candidate they can in good conscience support. My dear friends, I beg you not to be misled by confusion and lies, Martino concludes. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, does not ask us to follow him to Calvary only for us to be afraid of contradicting a few bystanders along the way. He does not ask us to take up his Cross only to have us leave it at the voting booth door. What do you make of this imagining of the way of the cross? How do you respond to the suggestion that voting for a prolife candidate, regardless of circumstances, and in spite of any other concerns, is shouldering the burden of faithfulnessand voting otherwise is tantamount to throwing off that burden? Dedicated Catholics who wrestle with their consciences and find themselves compelled to vote for a prochoice candidate may be surprised to learn that this is the easier course.I dont know what this says about the fortunes of the diocese, but it isnt necessarily bad news for Obama. Toward the beginning of his letter, Martino invokes the prophecies of Paul VI in Humanae vitae -- his oft-noted prediction of societys moral downfall and the slightly dubious notion that all such immorality can be traced directly to the acceptance of contraceptives. Curiously, the bishop does not remind his flock of their duties to adhere to the teachings of this encyclicalin fact, he doesnt even mention it by name. And if local Catholics pay as much attention to this letter as they pay to Humanae vitae, I predict the Democrats will have no trouble with the Catholic vote in Scranton.