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“Ask a Priest: Are We Obliged to Vote for the GOP?”
Q: I am a Catholic college student who is wondering about politics. I have heard people talk about how as a Catholic you must vote for Republicans due in part because of abortion. I agree that abortion is wrong. However, in my opinion I believe that candidates on the Democratic side follow and represent more of the Catholic teaching, other than abortion and gay marriage. This is just my opinion and do not want to start an argument. But, if I vote Democratic, does that make me an immoral Catholic? – B.
Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC
A: I’m not sure where you heard that Catholics have to vote Republican because of abortion.
The Church doesn’t officially endorse any party. And not all Republicans are pro-life. Indeed, rare is the candidate who perfectly adheres to Church teaching.
So what is a faithful Catholic to do?
A proper answer could fill a book. Suffice it to focus on two points here.
First, a Catholic couldn’t licitly vote for a candidate because of the politician’s pro-abortion views. That would be a kind of formal cooperation in evil.
It would be licit, however, to vote for someone who supports limited access to abortion if the alternative candidate is strongly abortion. But again, we couldn’t vote for the first candidate because of his support of even limited abortion. Here we could vote for an imperfect candidate in order to avoid a greater evil.
The principle underlying this is incrementalism, which can be defined as belief in or advocacy of change by degrees.
Defenders of incrementalism point to a passage in Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).
“A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. […] In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects” (No. 73).
Second, we need to recall that not all public issues have the same weight.
Abortion is not on the same level as, say, the minimum wage. There is room for legitimate debate regarding what the minimum wage should be. On the other hand, no one has the right to decide that unborn children can be killed. Human life doesn’t belong to us. Protecting innocent human life is a basic moral obligation of everyone. It’s not just a Catholic issue.
What all this means is that a Catholic has to weigh a number of factors when voting. It is something to take to prayer. It helps, too, to find out what Church leaders actually say in this area.
One resource is a document, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” from the U.S. bishops’ conference.
Also worth a look are two books by Archbishop Charles Chaput: Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World and Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life.
If you like accessing materials online, you might want to sign up for our online course Spirituality and Society, which delves into some of the basic principles of Catholic social teaching. I hope some of this helps.
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Seems like the what is the lesser evil … should be a deciding factor …
that decision requires the truth and a knowledge of history
July 7, 2020: I don’t know if killing human babies by the millions, the majority of them black, can be ‘lesser’ than anything. I used to be a Democrat until they became so extreme regarding abortion – the extermination of human babies in the womb which also eliminates millions of babies who would have been generated by the slaughtered babies. The head of the Democratic party declared that no pro life person is welcome in his party…this is the party of death. There should be no compromise. Perhaps the Democratic party is better on some social issues but the babies who are not permitted to be born will never enjoy those benefits so what’s the point? Pope John Paul said that we have lost the sense of the sacredness of human life…I believe we are losing the sense of the ‘sacred’ in many areas.
Absolutely wrong answer. The question was also wrong. The question should be is it a grave (mortal) sin to vote for a pro-abortion politician? Until recently, the answer was “yes”, it is a grave sin. But the modernist church has very recently liberalized the issue with the so called “seamless garment” statement that a voter can vote for a pro-abortion politician if he believes that the politician is good in other ways. This means that murder is OK if the murderer is nice to his parents, or he believes in open border immigration, or if he supports gay rights or any other contrived ideas. We must never vote for a pro-abort politician, regardless of his other “policies” or stated beliefs. If he has signed or voted for abortion rights for women, he is assisting murder. The Democrat party is universally pro-abortion. Any candidate that is pro-life is kicked out of the Democrat party.
No one asked or responded to a very simple question related to this topic, and that is, “Why are fundamental Christian virtues upheld by one party, and threatened by the other?” I believe that one party has promoted order, support for the 10 Commandments, free religious discourse, less governmental interference, retention of private property, propagation of multiple school systems, traditional family values (yes, there are such constructs), and strong support for defending these virtues. The other party has publicly supported disorder and looting, defunding police forces, removing 10 Commandment references, removal of prayer and religious discourse, more governmental oversight, forced removal of private property and ownership, no education other than public schools, non-traditional family structures, and removal of any effort to defend or protect any traditional values and virtues.
The questioner rightly asks about the range of issues that could be considered when voting as a Catholic and recognises that this is a broad range not a matter of just one or two issues. I’d suggest as well as the answers given we might be alert to the wider range of Catholic Social Teaching.
Some years have elapsed since the question was asked, and now in 2022 We could ask with a view over the last two administrations:
Who is reacting to the intense dangers and present reality of the ecological emergencies lincluding climate change? That entails actions to transition from reliance on fossil fuels, the burning of which is changing the climate. Causing climate change causes lives to be lost. As we look around the world the climate crises are real, countless lives are lost already, caused by the intense storms, droughts and heatwaves and fires – some of all these being in the USA. In other places millions are displaced, It is getting worse. Mitigating these crises is vital for sustaining human life around the Earth.
Over these last two administrations, who responded better to protect health and save lives during the COVID crisis? Who is speaking truth? Who is open to new facts not prejudiced? Who is seeking to respond to the needs of those in poverty? Who is building rather than fragmenting society? Who responds to refugees with compassion? Whose language when they speak is divisive or provokes violence?
Two recent short documents that might help in this discernment are ‘Laudato Si’ and ‘Fratelli Tutti’, both from Pope Francis and found on the Vatican website and both critical for our times. Don’t be put off by the titles, they are brilliant and easy to read. The first about what it is to be human and how this links to the environmental crises we have caused; the second a call to live as brothers and sisters with all humanity.