St. Callistus Catholic Church issued the following announcement on Oct. 10.

Pro-life third-party candidate Brian Carroll squared-off with other third-party presidential candidates in a debate Thursday evening in Denver, with much of the discourse focusing around the difficulties that third-parties often face in gaining traction in U.S. presidential races, as well as issues surrounding education, surveillance, and drug policy.

Carroll is the presidential nominee of the American Solidarity Party, a third-party founded in 2011 and based largely on Catholic social teaching.

Carroll, an evangelical Christian and a retired history teacher from California, told CNA ahead of the debate that in his view, many Christians prioritize politics over faith, looking for a political messiah in the major parties instead of looking to Christ as savior.

“We also have to keep in mind that the political outlet is not the ultimate outlet. The goal is not to elect a president, the goal is not even to eliminate specific ills in our society. The goal is to give testimony to the part that Jesus plays in our life on a daily basis," he told CNA.

The American Solidarity Party has attracted attention among some Catholics since a 2016 essay in First Things by philosopher David McPherson. During the 2020 election season, moral theologian Charlie Camosy, who was once a board member of Democrats for Life but quit the Democratic Party because of its abortion extremism, has been a proponent of the party.

The Free and Equal Elections Foundation, which hosted the Oct. 8 debate, is a non-profit non-partisan organization founded in 2008. Thursday’s debate is the second that the group has hosted for third-party candidates this year.

In the debate, Carroll advocated protection for investigative journalists against large corporations, mentioning the case of David Daleiden, a pro-life investigative journalist who last year was ordered to pay Planned Parenthood $870,000 in punitive damages for secretly recording meetings with abortion doctors and staff to expose their business practices.

Several of the candidates, including Carroll, decried the death penalty and called for its repeal. One candidate mentioned the recent case of Lezmond Mitchell, a Navajo man who was federally executed in August despite the objections of his tribe.

In responding to a question about mandatory vaccinations, Carroll said he supports vaccines, but not vaccine mandates. He also noted that some vaccine research does involve aborted fetal tissue, sometimes curated and sold by abortion providers, which is an issue that pro-life people ought to speak about.

"Once you're killing one human being for the health and safety of another human being, you've got enormous ethical problems," he said during the debate.

The American Solidarity Party began in 2011 as the Christian Democracy Party USA. Mike Maturen, a Catholic, ran for president on the party ticket in the 2016 election.

Original source can be found here.

Source: St. Callistus Catholic Church