When I mention to fellow Catholics that I will not be voting Nov. 5 for either the Republican or the Democratic candidate for president of the United States, the most common response that I receive is shock.
After all, as the head of one of the largest Catholic publishing houses in the United States, I should know (they say) that the Catholic Church teaches that we must vote for one of the two major-party candidates. Otherwise (the argument goes), we’re neglecting our duty to participate in the political life of our country.
That last part of their response is true: The church does teach that Christians have a duty to participate in the political life of their country — or, more precisely, their society, because our duty extends well beyond the national level, and beyond elections, to state and local political structures as well.
But that duty does not require us to vote in every single race in every single election, much less to vote for the “lesser of two evils” in those races where both major-party candidates espouse policies that depart from the moral and social teaching of the Catholic Church. There’s nothing divinely ordained about the American electoral process or its dominance by two political parties.
“Man is a political animal,” as Aristotle writes, but Aristotle’s understanding of politics — and the church’s — is much broader than the quadrennial casting of votes. We are all called to participate in society in ways that promote the common good, and for Catholics that includes both promoting the truth of the church’s moral and social teaching and not quietly acquiescing when an elected official — or our preferred candidate or political party — chooses to ignore or reject what the church teaches.
The practical effect of casting a vote in a presidential election is vastly overstated. In essentially every state in every presidential election over the course of the last 236 years, the odds that your particular vote would have made a difference in the outcome of the race were infinitesimally small.
But what can make a difference — not necessarily to the outcome of a presidential election, but to the shape of society in the long run — is to talk to people about where each candidate stands on issues that touch on the church’s moral and social teaching. Not everyone has an outlet like this column through which to reach people, but all of us have spouses or children or other relatives, friends, coworkers and acquaintances who spend a not insignificant amount of time every four years discussing the presidential race.
When the topic comes up, be honest and open — and calm. You don’t need to attack a candidate to explain why this policy that he has proposed, or that action that her administration has taken, doesn’t align with Catholic teaching. Explain why you find it hard to vote for one or both of the candidates because of the ways in which they stray from the truths that the church upholds. Talk about how much better our society would be if our political leaders brought those truths to bear on the common good.
Ask the person you’re talking to what he or she thinks we might do to move beyond our society’s obsession with partisanship and national politics. Brainstorm together about how we might focus on the things we actually can change closer at hand — in our state capital or, better yet, in our hometown — to start building a more virtuous and more just society the only way one can possibly be built: from the ground up.
Most importantly of all, approach discussions of politics and participation in political life at all levels without cynicism or anger or despair. Don’t cry “Doom, doom!”; be of good hope. No matter how bleak this world may seem at times, we know how its story ends. Christ has already conquered evil; because he did so, we can proclaim the good news that the fate of mankind does not depend on yet another moderately important election.
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