It is a leap year. What makes a leap year special? It is the
year in which Americans choose who will be their leader for the next four
years. That’s right; it is election time once again. We will hear over and over
that voting is a civic duty and that we must vote to be responsible citizens. That
begs the question; how is a faithful Catholic to vote?
I will not tell anyone whom they should vote for. That is a
decision each person has to make for them self. What determines who gets your
vote varies greatly from one person to another. Some vote a straight party
ticket. Some will never vote for anyone in a particular party no matter how much
they agree with the person just because of the party affiliation. Some are
single issue people who vote for candidates based upon their support or
opposition of a particular issue.
Far too many Catholics compartmentalize their faith in order
to vote for the candidate of their choice. There are certain issues that
are central to our faith that should be non-negotiable to every Catholic. The big
three that I will discuss are abortion/euthanasia, religious freedom, and
defense of traditional marriage.
Catholics cannot support any candidate who has publically
supported the murder of another, whether that is a baby in the womb, someone at
the end of their life, or someone who wishes to end their life because they are
suffering with a terminal illness. Many candidates try to sidestep this issue by
claiming to be personally opposed to abortion and euthanasia while publically
supporting it because it is the will of their constituency. This is not an
acceptable compromise. We cannot judge a person’s heart. We can only judge
their actions.
Catholics also cannot support any candidate who has publically
supported restrictions on religious freedoms. Every politician supports an individual’s
right to worship in their homes or houses of worship. Many do not want us to
live our faith openly in the public square. There have been several laws enacted
in recent years that attempt to force Catholics to do things against their
conscience and the teachings of their faith, such as forcing Catholic employers
to provide contraceptives and sterilization procedures to their employees.
The latest battlefield in this arena is the defense of
traditional marriage. Every society has the right to define for itself what it
considers marriage. What society does not have the right to do is to force that
definition upon faith communities. For a Catholic, marriage was created and
defined by God and reaffirmed by Jesus. We cannot choose to believe it to be
something different and still call ourselves Catholic. If we do not stand in
opposition of the State dictating to the Church how she must view marriages we
will see the Church persecuted as never before. It will start with us being labeled
as discriminatory because we will not marry same sex couples. We will lose our
tax exempt status and associated faith organizations, like hospitals and schools,
will be forced to close their doors.
Finally they will come for the Church proper and we will see our clergy
jailed for refusal to comply.
We have already seen these activities begin. Catholic Relief
Services in Illinois was forced to get out of the adoption business because
they refused to allow same sex couples to adopt. LGBT groups saw this as a huge
win for their civil rights movement while Catholics viewed it as an intrusion
into their right to live their faith in the public square. Ultimately, it was
the children who would have been adopted into a traditional family who have
been harmed the most. We can only expect these types of infringements to grow
if candidates who support traditional family values aren’t representing us. No
Catholic, in good conscience, can support a candidate who is against traditional
marriage and traditional family values.
So what is a Catholic voter to do? The first thing is to get
informed. This is more important for the Catholic voter than any other. We need to be true to our faith and our entire way of life hangs in the balance. We
need to know not only what the candidates say they believe but how they have voted
on these issues in the public forum. Judge actions, not words. The ones who are
pro-Catholic should get our full support. The ones who violate even one of the non-negotiables
cannot get any of our support. I may like you as a person but if you openly
support murdering children you will never get my vote.
What happens if both choices violate the non-negotiables? I have
heard many solutions to this question –
1: Vote for the least evil. You are still supporting evil by
your vote.
2: Vote for the person who will do the least amount of harm.
They will still be doing harm.
3: Vote for the person who will do the most good. A thousand
good acts do not justify a single evil act.
4: Don’t vote. You won’t be supporting any evil but you have
no right to complain with what you get.
5: Write in a vote. Virtually the same thing as not voting
at all.
I actually do not accept premise number 4. You don’t lose
your right to complain just because you didn’t vote. Again, voting for an evil
is still supporting an evil. If we only have two candidates and both publically
support abortion, a Catholic nonnegotiable, you cannot vote for either.
This is where I think our Amish friends are on to something.
They almost never vote in the big elections because they cannot support any of
the candidates at that level and be true to their faith. Instead, they
concentrate their efforts by only voting locally for those candidates who most
closely reflect their values. In this way they are the more likely to have a
reasonable government close to them. Sensible government percolates up, not
trickles down.
So dear voter, educate yourself and decide wisely who will
represent you. You way of life depends on it.
Here is a Presidential voter’s guide put together by the Illinois Family
Institute for the Illinois Primary. It offers valuable information for voters
in any state.
