How Should a Catholic Vote?

(Two quick notes before this post: First, I wrote this last week before the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but I think the panic and outcry about what to do for her replacement highlights one of the points that I make in the article about the undue importance and influence of the Supreme Court right now; and second, I spoke with Jennie Punswick about this same topic in this week’s episode of The Catholic Podcast. And now, on to the post…)

There’s a lot of contradictory misinformation out there right now about how Catholics ought to vote. Fr. James Altman, a priest of the Diocese of La Cross, Wisconsin, released a video called “You cannot be Catholic & a Democrat. Period” about three weeks ago. Since then, it’s generated more than 850,000 views on YouTube. On the other side, Cardinal Tobin seemed to say the exact opposite: “I think that a person in good conscience could vote for Mr. Biden. I, frankly, in my own way of thinking have a more difficult time with the other option.” And Fr. James Martin, S.J., (who Fr. Altman denounced by name in his video) said on his Facebook page:

Dear friends: I’m seeing more priests saying that voting for Joe Biden is a mortal sin. It is not. It is not a sin to vote for either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump. Nor is it a sin to be Democrat or Republican.

All three of these clerics are distorting Catholic teaching. So rather than tell you for whom to vote, I thought it might be helpful to explain how a Catholic should vote in situations like the ones that we face right now.

I. Voting and Double Effect

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the first principle of practical reason, and of natural law, is that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.” That’s as basic as it gets. If I say “that’s an evil thing to do,” you don’t have to ask, “so, should I do it?” Some evil actions have good consequences: Adam and Eve disobeying God helped bring about the Incarnation; from Judas’ betrayal of Christ, we get Good Friday, etc. But the fact that God can draw good even from evil doesn’t make those things any less evil. St. Paul harshly condemns those who propose, “why not do evil that good may come?” (Rom. 3:8). So we can never intend something evil.

But there are other times where we intend something good, but we foresee some bad consequence. You prescribe a patient some drug, but know that it has painful side effects. You bomb an enemy base in war, but know that there’s a school full of innocent kids nearby who will die in the blast. If you did this intentionally – if you just wanted to hurt your patient, or you wanted to dishearten the enemy by killing innocent kids – then you would be doing something monstrously evil. But these awful side effects might be justified, as long as (a) you’re not bringing them about intentionally, and (b) the good that you’re actually intending to do is sufficiently important that it warrants your action. When we talk about the “principle of double effect,” this is what we mean: there are two effects (the good effect you intend, and a bad side effect).

The first thing to get clear when we talk about voting is that we’re talking about a blunt instrument. Every vote you’ve ever cast, and ever will cast, was probably for a person you agreed with only imperfectly. These candidates said and did things you disagreed with, and maybe even things that were morally wrong. So on some level, you were probably already using something like the principle of double effect: (a) you liked the candidate in spite of, not because of, the thing you disagreed with them about; and (b) you found the good bits sufficiently large to justify voting for them in spite of the bad bits.

But notice that there’s a second consequence to this, too. The principle of double effect applies to voters in a way that it doesn’t apply (or at least, doesn’t apply as much) to politicians. If you’re choosing between Candidate A and Candidate B, there’s no much that you can do about the evil things that they might both support. But there’s a lot that they can do. And of course, that makes sense: you’re more removed from the action. You don’t get to vote on every policy. They do. I mention this because a mistake that I keep seeing is people applying what the Church has said about Catholic politicians, and assuming that it applies equally to Catholic voters. It doesn’t, for the reason I just mentioned.

II. The Moral Duties of Catholic Voters

A politician can never directly vote for a pro-abortion law, since it’s an attack on human life (although St. JPII points out that there may be some cases in which a politician could support an imperfectly pro-life law, when the alternative is even worse).. Does it follow, then, that Catholic voters have an obligation to never vote for a pro-abortion politician? No. Cardinal Ratzinger explained:

A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favour of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.

What Cardinal Ratzinger is describing is simply double effect. If you intend the evil (you like the politician’s advocacy for abortion and euthanasia), then you’re doing something wicked, and are cutting yourself off from right relationship with God. But you might be able to vote for a pro-choice or pro-euthanasia politician if your vote was (a) in spite of these positions, and (b) there are proportionate reasons.

Nevertheless, Ratzinger’s words here have confused a lot of people. What could possibly be “proportionate” to abortion or euthanasia? After all, in the very same letter, Ratzinger points that “not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia,” and that “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.” And so most of the articles I’ve seen trying to make sense of this have created hypotheticals where both candidates were pro-choice, but one also supported some other evil, and suggested that this was the only type of situation in which you could justify voting for a pro-choice candidate. For instance, Archbishop Myers said,

Thus, in order for a Catholic citizen to vote for a candidate who supports abortion and embryo-destructive research, one of the following circumstances would have to obtain: either (a) both candidates were in favor of embryo killing on roughly an equal scale, or (b) the candidate with the superior position on abortion and embryo-destructive research was a supporter of objective evils of a gravity and magnitude going beyond that of 1.3 million yearly abortions plus the killing that would take place if public funds were made available for embryo-destructive research.

But I think that this is a misreading of Ratzinger’s letter, and a misapplication of Catholic moral principles in a subtle-but-important way. When Ratzinger speaks of a “proportionate reason,” that isn’t proportionate to abortion, but proportionate to the candidate’s advocacy of abortion. That’s a huge difference. If you’re voting for town dogcatcher, and one candidate is a pro-lifer who doesn’t believe in catching dogs, and the other is a pro-choicer who is great at catching dogs, you could licitly vote for the pro-choice dogcatcher. Why? Neither the pro-life nor the pro-choice candidate is going to be able to do anything about abortion. The one candidate’s pro-choice views are of little (or no) importance for the position for which he’s running. In this case, the “proportionate reason” is the dog-catching that the job actually entails. It doesn’t follow from this that catching dogs is more important than saving unborn babies. Abortion is the bigger issue overall, but the bigger issue in this election is dog-catching.

So Catholics on one side, who speak and act as if a vote for a pro-choice candidate can never be justified, are distorting Catholic teaching in one direction. But I think Catholics on the other side are too quick to act as if the President of the United States has no more control over the number of abortions in this country than does the county dog-catcher. It’s true that the legal framework of abortion (being a Supreme Court decision, rather than an actual enacted law) makes it more tricky. Even the president’s role is a little bit attenuated: basically, he can choose judges and Supreme Court justices, and hope for the best, since the people with the most control over legal abortion are basically immune from anything like direct democracy. But it remains true that, of all of the elected offices, the presidency is the one with the most potential influence on legal abortion.

So (contrary to what you may be hearing these days) the Church’s position is not that it’s always a sin to vote for a pro-choice candidate, but it’s also not that it’s never a sin. It’s rather that it might be sinful, or that it might be justified, depending on the reason (which is why all three of the clerics that I mentioned in the introduction are misstating Church teaching). The decision is a weighty one, just like the decision to try an experimental drug, or to bomb a military base near a school would be. We can’t say that these things are always evil, but we shouldn’t pretend like they’re no big deal, either.

That means that you actually need a proportionate reason, not just a rationalization. But having said that, we need to avoid the opposite extreme, of acting as if we can create some sort of mathematical formula to tally up life and death and make an objective, irrebuttable case for our preferred candidate. Rather, the act of voting (or clinical medical trials, or bombing raids) is a sort of educated guess about the future, and it’s often not until all has been said and done that you can determine whether your best assessment turned out to be correct.

III. What Should Get Weighed?

In the prior two sections, I’ve just looked at how good deliberation works in casting a vote, particularly when faced with candidates who are a mixed-bag, morally-speaking. But other than abortion (and, I guess, dog-catching), I haven’t really talked about what issues should be weighed. On that, I’ll defer to the CDF, under Cardinal Ratzinger (normally, with a quotation this long, I would summarize, but I don’t want to put my own “spin” on things):

In this context [abortion], it must be noted also that a well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals. The Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine. A political commitment to a single isolated aspect of the Church’s social doctrine does not exhaust one’s responsibility towards the common good. Nor can a Catholic think of delegating his Christian responsibility to others; rather, the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives him this task, so that the truth about man and the world might be proclaimed and put into action.

When political activity comes up against moral principles that do not admit of exception, compromise or derogation, the Catholic commitment becomes more evident and laden with responsibility. In the face of fundamental and inalienable ethical demands, Christians must recognize that what is at stake is the essence of the moral law, which concerns the integral good of the human person. This is the case with laws concerning abortion and euthanasia (not to be confused with the decision to forgo extraordinary treatments, which is morally legitimate). Such laws must defend the basic right to life from conception to natural death. In the same way, it is necessary to recall the duty to respect and protect the rights of the human embryo. Analogously, the family needs to be safeguarded and promoted, based on monogamous marriage between a man and a woman, and protected in its unity and stability in the face of modern laws on divorce: in no way can other forms of cohabitation be placed on the same level as marriage, nor can they receive legal recognition as such. The same is true for the freedom of parents regarding the education of their children; it is an inalienable right recognized also by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. In the same way, one must consider society’s protection of minors and freedom from modern forms of slavery (drug abuse and prostitution, for example).

In addition, there is the right to religious freedom and the development of an economy that is at the service of the human person and of the common good, with respect for social justice, the principles of human solidarity and subsidiarity, according to which «the rights of all individuals, families, and organizations and their practical implementation must be acknowledged». Finally, the question of peace must be mentioned. Certain pacifistic and ideological visions tend at times to secularize the value of peace, while, in other cases, there is the problem of summary ethical judgments which forget the complexity of the issues involved. Peace is always «the work of justice and the effect of charity». It demands the absolute and radical rejection of violence and terrorism and requires a constant and vigilant commitment on the part of all political leaders.

Here’s the thing: that was written in 2002, and it’s just as true today. The particular issues at hand in any given election might change from year to year, but the things that we as Catholic care most about don’t (even if they’re not always directly on the ballot). If I’ve done my job well here, you can reuse this post the next time you go to vote, and the next, and the next, because it’s not based on who happens to be on the ballot in the U.S., or wherever you’re reading it.

IV. Three Finals Dangers, and the Proper Role of Clergy

There are three final things to watch out for, which Ratzinger warns about in the CDF letter that I just quoted: (1) we can’t pretend that there is only one way that a Catholic can approach politics; (2) on the other hand, we can’t use pluralism to justify moral relativism; and (3) we can’t take a “personally opposed, but” approach to politics, where we where we live a double life between “on the one hand, the so-called ‘spiritual life’, with its values and demands; and on the other, the so-called ‘secular’ life, that is, life in a family, at work, in social responsibilities, in the responsibilities of public life and in culture.” The way you vote (and the way you act in the public square more broadly) should be consistent with what you say you believe as a Catholic.

All of this can be summed up positively: the Church can tell us which things we should care about, and which things are worth fighting for, but she can’t tell us the best political solutions to every problem. She can’t tell us whether a particular politician will keep his promises, or whether a candidate will be better or worse than we hope. She can say that “a well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals,” but even here, you might support a candidate in spite of their support for an awful political program or law! To that end, Cardinal Ratzinger points out the proper (and improper) role of the Church’s authority:

By its interventions in this area, the Church’s Magisterium does not wish to exercise political power or eliminate the freedom of opinion of Catholics regarding contingent questions. Instead, it intends – as is its proper function – to instruct and illuminate the consciences of the faithful, particularly those involved in political life, so that their actions may always serve the integral promotion of the human person and the common good. The social doctrine of the Church is not an intrusion into the government of individual countries. It is a question of the lay Catholic’s duty to be morally coherent, found within one’s conscience, which is one and indivisible.

If the teaching authority of the Church is doing its job well, then Catholic voters and lawmakers will have well-formed consciences and will vote and legislate well. But the clergy can’t substitute their own consciences for the consciences of the laity. That’s an impermissible overstep, a violation of the primacy of conscience, and contrary to the role of the priest. Canon Law is actually quite clear:

Can. 287 §1. Most especially, clerics are always to foster the peace and harmony based on justice which are to be observed among people.

§2. They are not to have an active part in political parties and in governing labor unions unless, in the judgment of competent ecclesiastical authority, the protection of the rights of the Church or the promotion of the common good requires it.

Priests and deacons reading this, if I may close by pleading with you directly: preach more on the principles that constitute a well-formed conscience, and less (or better, not at all) on your own personal political views. We don’t need to know who you voted for, or why. I’d say the same thing if we were talking about what Catholicism has to say about the economy, wealth, and greed: give us the Church’s teaching, spare us your personal stock tips. And the reasoning is the same in either case: you (hopefully) received sound formation in the principles of Catholic moral theology. But you’re also (hopefully) less enmeshed in the affairs of the secular world than your congregations. (At least you should be: “The secular character is properly and particularly that of the lay faithful”). We don’t need yet one more “talking head” to make a political argument. We do need more priests showing us the love, mercy, and truth of Jesus Christ. So give your people true principles, form them well, and then leave them in the care of the aboriginal Vicar of Christ for how to apply those principles to the political questions of the day.