Fr. Roger J. Landry
The Anchor
Editorial
November 1, 2024
November is a month that Catholics begin by remembering and celebrating the saints, invoking their intercession, and, conscious of the universal call to holiness, resolving to imitate their virtue.
On the second day and throughout the month, it is also an occasion when we pray for all our beloved dead and recall that we, too, will die and be judged on the basis of the choices we’ve made and the person we’ve become through those choices.
The eleventh month of the year is, finally, the time, on the first Tuesday following a Monday, that American Catholics vote in general elections. And the considerations of the All Saints and All Souls Days are meant to influence the way that Catholics approach the voting booth.
Voting is a moral act in which we make decisions, sometimes very difficult ones, on the basis of the principles and values dearest to us. Voting is not just a right but a moral obligation, as Vatican II and the Catechism underline. Voting is a means by which we live out our Christian vocation as salt of the earth and light of the world and seek to secure the common good. In a democratic society, we essentially get the leaders we deserve, and each person eligible to vote bears some responsibility for the leaders we have and the decisions they make. Like with other moral decisions, we will be judged by how we vote.
With some ballot items and stark candidate contrasts, there is clear right and wrong involved and the application of the principle to do good and avoid evil is rather straightforward. In many others, the choices are not so obvious, and Catholics must pray about what to do, seeking to listen to God whispering through a well-formed conscience, and trying, with the help of the gift of prudence and the counsel of trustworthy authorities, to make the best decision possible under the circumstances.
The more confusing the context, the more prayer is needed. It is also helpful to consider how the saints — imagine St. Thomas More — might vote when faced with similar decisions. It is wise to vote in such a way that we would be able to defend the process, criteria and outcome when we meet Jesus face-to-face in the election that matters most of all.
In the context of many who try to instrumentalize the faith toward political ends, who hype every election as the most consequential of all time, it is important for Catholics to remember that there are far more important things at stake. We are called not just to be good American citizens but “fellow citizens of the holy ones” (Eph 2:19).
While campaigns regularly cross the line on lying and stoking hatred, as they increasingly and unabashedly feature the capital sins of envy, anger, pride, greed and lust, Catholics are reminded of their call to be in but not of the world. We find our fundamental identity not as Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, not as partisans of a candidate or a particular movement, but as disciples and ambassadors of Jesus Christ, full-time and without apology. We give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but far more give to God what belongs to him.
Many Catholics have been turned off by the electoral process, or by the defects of the candidates in specific elections, or by the seeming inconsequentiality of their participation in a de facto one-party system in specific jurisdictions, that they shirk their important duties as citizens. In the United States, 31 percent of adult citizens never even register to vote. Of those who do, one quarter sits out even the most important elections. That means that only half of the eligible voting population votes at all, and one needs only half of that plus one — or basically a quarter of the citizenry — to win elections and determine the direction of the country.
Catholics are almost one-quarter of the electorate, showing how much of an impact Catholics could have if we collectively sought to bring the principles of Catholic social teaching to the public square. As the U.S. Bishops write in their recently republished instruction, Forming Catholics for Faithful Citizenship, “The Church’s obligation to participate in shaping the moral character of society is a requirement of our faith. It is a basic part of the mission we have received from Jesus Christ, who offers a vision of life revealed to us in Sacred Scripture and Tradition.”
The fulfillment of our moral responsibilities with regard to elections is not a question merely of voting, however, but of voting well. How we vote is sign of what we value most. Whether voting at the ballot box or filling it out by mail, we stand before God and confess who we are and what we prioritize. Sometimes the choice is between apples and oranges, two decent candidates who vary simply on the prudential implementation of sound principles; at other times the choice is akin to Christ versus Barabbas; and sometimes, sadly, to Barabbas contra Barabbas. The reality remains, however, that whom we decide to support and why are moral decisions that express and form our character. For that reason, we should vote wisely, only after much prayer, which should mark all of our important decisions.
Many Catholic faithful are asking for guidance about how to vote in this particular presidential election. One major candidate is the most pro-abortion presidential candidate of all time, on record opposing even the most basic conscience protections and with a documented history of anti-Catholic hostility. The other major candidate has backtracked on many previous pro-life commitments, become an ardent supporter of manufacturing children in test tubes, seems soft on dictators who invade neighboring countries, sends out rants in the middle of the night like an unstable teen, and regularly engages in insults and other boorish behavior unbecoming of the office of the presidency.
The guidance the Church has given for such circumstances is helpful.
First, the Church teaches it is never morally licit to vote for a candidate who supports intrinsically evil actions — like, for example, the destruction of innocent human life in the womb — because of the candidate’s support for that evil. That would be “formal cooperation” in the evil that the candidate would do. If one opposes that evil the candidate supports, one could vote for that candidate if and only if one had reasons for doing so proportionate to the evil the candidate elected would do. Those reasons would be tantamount to ones that could persuade an African-American or a Jew to vote for the same candidate in the same election if he were, respectively, also firmly racist or anti-Semitic, since Catholics need to be at least as much against abortion in their practical political decisions as African Americans are against racism and Jews against anti-Semitism.
Proportionate reasons might be that one might think a candidate’s behavior could lead us into World War III, or cause more harm by association to the Church or the fight against that intrinsic evil long-term, or just do irreparable damage to the office of the presidency and the institutions of government. The reasons would have to be sufficient to justify one’s actions before Christ in the next life or, in this example, before a child who would be aborted because of the candidate’s decisions in office.
Faced with a decision between candidates with obvious problems, there are a couple of moral options. The first is to vote for the candidate whom one believes, after prayer, would be the “lesser of two evils” or, more accurately, the one who would likely do the most good despite the evils. The second is to vote for a third-party candidate whose positions one supports or write-in someone who would be the type of candidate you’d be looking for. Such a decision would not be throwing one’s vote away but communicating substantial dissatisfaction to the leaders of both parties as well as giving a signal to potential future candidates that you’re looking for something different than the choices presented.
Different Catholics could respond to the predicament differently. Anyone who claims in this circumstance that there’s a univocal way that a good Catholic must respond just doesn’t know the teaching of the Catholic Church.
As Catholics begin this month of November prayerfully focused on the saints and on the last things, it is helpful to bring the fruits of that contemplation, as well as the saints’ intercession, with us as we fulfill our great privilege and grave duty as citizens.