Voting: A Matter of Conscience

Serious people feel overwhelmed going into the 2012 election. Seeing many choices or none, some seek a rationale to stay home on Election Day, but to give in to such discouragement is political despair.

Fortunately, conscience can guide us, even when we don’t know it. The voice of conscience can include a feeling of disconnect – a this-doesn’t-feel-right sensation, and a sense of puzzlement – and the sense that this-doesn’t-gel-with-what-I’ve-been-taught. People of conscience weigh key moral issues. They study and struggle with the questions at hand. They engage in a lifetime effort to develop the fine-tuned moral sensitivity needed to understand deeply Church teaching on critical issues.

Issues that directly affect innocent human lives, such as abortion and euthanasia, are primary and demand serious consideration. Since 1973, there have been an estimated 53 million abortions in the U.S. Two states, Washington and Oregon, have legalized physician-assisted suicide for persons with terminal illnesses, called “death with dignity.” Concern for other life issues, such as the death penalty, is vital. Today the Church questions if execution can even be used in modern society since we now have secure ways to keep people from harming others. Since 1973, there have been 138 documented cases of innocent people eventually freed from death row. After a ten-year hiatus the death penalty was reinstituted in our country in 1976. Has this contributed to the responsibility, restoration and rehabilitation needed in our criminal justice system?

Millions of undocumented persons demand our compassion. An estimated 11.1 million have made the U.S. their home, raising families and contributing to the economy. Some came here as children; this is the only land they know. There is an immigration problem and justice demands a humane solution to it, one that respects the responsibilities and rights of all.

There is a move to redefine marriage. The marriage of a man and a woman is the foundation of the family and the basic cell of society, yet various proposals seek to erode and ultimately redefine the perennial meaning of marriage in the law. The contribution marriage makes to the common good is essential, and protection of marriage is another matter of justice.

The growing disparity between rich and poor means most of the world’s resources are in the hands of a small percentage of its people. More than 50 percent of the world’s assets are owned by the richest two percent of adults … the bottom half of the world population own only one percent of the wealth. In our nation 46 million people live below the poverty line, established at $23,113 for a family of four. Approximately 25 million people are unemployed or underemployed – a real unemployment rate of 15.6 percent.

The Constitution heralds religious liberty in the First Amendment, yet in recent years religious groups have had to fight for this right. Some opponents dismiss religious freedom as inconsequential. We’ve seen legal efforts to deny the church the right to participate in government programs unless it cedes its religious principles. We’ve seen government officials dismiss those who defend marriage as between one man and one woman as “bigots.” We’ve seen the state try to define who can be a minister in a church. We see that people are persecuted for their faith around the world, losing their homes, even their lives, for lack of religious freedom.

State-sponsored violence through war and other aggression results in thousands of deaths and millions of disrupted lives. The Church’s long-held just war teaching suggests war is permissible only if the damage inflicted by the aggressor is lasting, grave, and certain; all other means of putting an end to the aggression have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; there are serious prospects of the war’s success; and the use of arms does not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

Other issues are at stake in the coming election but the above issues deserve particular concern. Can they be discussed civilly? Can individuals look at them from several sides and consider what resonates with their conscience? These are matters for study and prayer before anyone enters the voting booth.

Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Temptations and Voting

Nowhere do the issues of Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the U.S. bishops' call to political responsibility, get more delicate than when the document tackles questions of voting.

In the document, the bishops describe at length a Catholic moral framework that encompasses their priority issues for 2012 -- abortion and threats to human life and dignity, religious freedom concerns, efforts to redefine marriage, immigration reform, international peace, and domestic poverty, unemployment and the economic crisis. They describe the nature of these issues and why each is a concern for the Church, essentially why Catholics should care about them.

But then comes the inevitable question: how should Catholics put the pieces together when they go to vote? On this question, it's best to let the document speak for itself: "The consistent ethic of life provides a moral framework for principled Catholic engagement in political life and, rightly understood, neither treats all issues as morally equivalent nor reduces Catholic teaching to one or two issues."

This prompts the question, "Wait, so Catholics aren't supposed to be single-issue voters?"

The bishops answer this squarely, asserting, "As Catholics we are not single-issue voters. A candidate's position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter's support." But then it gets even more interesting: "Yet a candidate's position on a single issue that involves an intrinsic evil, such as support for legal abortion or the promotion of racism, may legitimately lead a voter to disqualify a candidate from receiving support."

Per the possibility of bringing a candidate back from a disqualified state, the bishops say, "There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate's unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons." They state that this is not a flippant matter: "Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preference or to ignore a fundamental moral evil."

Of course a voting Catholic's responsibilities don't end at avoiding evil; they must also do good. As the bishops note, "a voter should not use a candidate's opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues of human life and dignity."

So a candidate who passes the test on big issues doesn't get a free pass on every other moral question. The bishops list "unjust discrimination, the use of the death penalty, resorting to unjust war, the use of torture, war crimes, the failure to respond to those who are suffering from hunger or a lack of health care, or an unjust immigration policy" as "serious moral issues that challenge our conscience and require us to act."

The delicate balance of all of these issues is best summarized as what could be called the "Two Temptations" of Faithful Citizenship:

1. To say that all issues are morally equivalent with no ethical distinctions. This simply isn't so, say the bishops. For instance, "The direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life...is always wrong and is not just one issue among many. It must always be opposed."

2. To say that only certain issues matter or, as the bishops phrase it, "the misuse of these necessary moral distinctions as a way of dismissing or ignoring other serious threats to human life and dignity."

Suddenly the challenge of the Catholic voter becomes comparable to navigating a speeding car down a slippery road at night without falling into the ditches on both sides of the road, or like the children's board game "Operation," where players use tweezers to remove ailments from a patient without touching the metal sides, setting off a buzzer. This may sound like a daunting task, but it's a responsibility the bishops have entrusted to every U.S. Catholic. Voting may be only one way Catholics can answer the call to live out their faith in the public square, but accepting its challenge is a powerful way to show that they care.

Catholics Care. Catholic Vote: Series Index

Catholics Care. Catholic Vote: an Introduction (Spanish here)
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Political Engagement is Every Catholic's Duty (Spanish here)
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: The Question of Conscience (Spanish here)
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Human Life and Dignity (Spanish here)
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Conscience Formation by the Numbers (Spanish here)
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Religious Freedom and Ugly Assumptions (Spanish here)
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Strengthening and Defending Marriage is a Matter of Justice (Spanish here)
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Poverty and Helping People to Flourish (Spanish here)
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Untangling the International Knot (Spanish here)
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Immigration Reform and a Reasonable Church (Spanish here)
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Temptations and Voting (Spanish here)
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Keeping Love in the Debate (Spanish here)

Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Human Life and Dignity

A funny thing happened on the way to Mexico.

As John Allen reports, while speaking to the media aboard the papal plane at the start of his visit to Mexico, Pope Benedict XVI had some strong words for certain Catholics:

"Personally, in the individual square, they're Catholics, believers," the pope said. "But in public life they follow other paths that don't correspond to the great values of the Gospel which are necessary for the foundation of a just society. It's essential to educate people in order to overcome this schizophrenia, educating not only about individual morality but also public morality."

Allen points out that U.S. Catholics are probably used to this kind of rhetoric, mostly aimed at Catholic politicians who don't uphold the Church's teaching on abortion in public policy. He then notes that Pope Benedict was actually fielding a question about social justice and the gap between rich and poor and, in effect, had taken a principle associated with the Pro-Life movement and applied it consistently across a broader spectrum of issues.

The U.S. bishops do essentially the same thing in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, stating that every Catholic has a duty to bring the truth of the dignity of every human person into the public square and to guide their civic actions by assimilating what the Church teaches.

When it comes to what those teachings are, the bishops offer a complete, interconnected moral framework with the right to life and the dignity of the human person at its center. When the bishops apply this principle to the political issues of the day, they, like Pope Benedict, cast a broad net:

Human dignity opposes direct attacks on human life, whether that's the unborn baby or a civilian in a combat zone.

It opposes unjust discrimination, whether it's denying jobs, housing and other opportunities based on skin color or deciding that, due to age or illness, someone should be deliberately killed.

Human dignity says that people aren't to be used as a means to an end, whether that's cloning or destroying human embryos in the name of science, going to war without sufficient cause and subsequently torturing people in the name of national security, or deliberately snuffing out a life in the name of justice or compassion.

Finally, a belief in human dignity means no one can remain oblivious to widespread human suffering, whether it's genocide abroad or poverty at home. All of these are covered when the bishops call on Catholics to speak out consistently for human life and dignity.

Doing so, of course, isn't without its share of complications and grief, especially when it collides head-on with the traditional ideological divides of U.S. politics.

Addressing a Washington gathering in 2008, Archbishop Charles Chaput, then archbishop of Denver, mused that it seemed, "The people who attack me when I speak out against abortion are the same ones who praise me when I speak out in defense of immigrants." And vice versa. The archbishop wasn't demonizing immigrant supporters as pro-abortion or suggesting that pro-lifers are anti-immigrant, but rather illustrating the widespread need for greater consistency on human life and dignity issues.

John Carr, USCCB's executive director of Justice, Peace and Human Development, has noted that any Catholic who tries to live out Catholic teaching consistently in the public square is bound to feel "politically homeless" pretty quickly. The difficulty Catholics have dealing with this quandary is reflected in the fragmented, disparate political allegiances they settle for, often giving voice to a few concerns of the Church, but diluting or dulling its moral voice on others.

While it might be tempting to throw in the towel on this mess, that approach is too simplistic and turns its back on the duty of every Catholic to get involved. Just because Catholics are often as divided as the rest of the country doesn't mean they can't be a force for good. Just as Catholics are called to form their individual consciences, they can also serve as a voice of conscience to the entire political process. The key is not to speak from mere partisan or ideological agendas, but from the conviction that sees, in the words of the bishops, "all human beings as children of God."

Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: The Question of Conscience

"We don't tell them who to vote for. We don't want to tell them who to vote for!"

That's what one Midwestern bishop said following the USCCB's November 2007 meeting in Baltimore, where the bishops had overwhelmingly approved the document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship on political responsibility. His comment reflected the fact that the document, at its heart, is a call for Catholics to get involved in the political process, not a voting guide. It also reflected the Church's practice of not endorsing political parties or candidates.

Of course, this doesn't remove the Church from the political arena entirely. A person would have to live in a concrete bunker to miss the fact that the bishops have plenty of positions on political issues and public policy -- from battles over religious freedom and the definition of marriage to the perennial advocacy against abortion and for immigration reform and peace in the Middle East. Surely the bishops must have some inkling of what issues should be important to Catholics when they vote.

They do. But they also recognize that voting is a moral choice. And the responsibility for that choice ultimately falls with the individual. To help Catholic voters in this task, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship emphasizes two principles: a well-formed conscience and the virtue of prudence.

The bishops are quick to point out that conscience is not the freebie it might initially seem to be. It's not "something that allows us to justify doing whatever we want, nor is it a mere 'feeling' about what we should or should not do." They call conscience "the voice of God resounding in the human heart" (nothing intimidating about that), something that "always requires serious attempts to make sound moral judgments."

Being a faithful citizen requires a well-formed conscience. This concept is so central to Church teaching that the bishops made it the title of their document. Forming one's conscience is an ongoing process aided by reading Scripture, reflecting on Church teaching, studying the issues and, of course, praying.

Prudence is the virtue that enables people to discern the right thing to do in specific, everyday circumstances and then act. Like a well-formed conscience, this comes with some caveats. For instance, Catholics must recognize that there are morally unacceptable ways of pursuing moral goals (i.e. the ends don't justify the means). The bishops readily acknowledge that there are different ways to respond to various social concerns, but they also say no one is excused from helping to build a more just, peaceful world.

The bishops also strongly note that certain intrinsically evil acts -- such as abortion and racism -- must always be opposed.

And then there's the fact that voting is essentially the most morally imperfect act one can ever engage in within the political process. The moral certainty of principle gets boiled down into these messy, unreliable things called candidates, who are prone to contradictions and swayed by public opinion. Nor does the voter have the luxury of saying, "I'll take Candidate A's positions regarding human life, but Candidate B's positions on human dignity."

In the face of this, it would be difficult to blame the bishops for throwing up their hands and saying to lay Catholics, "You figure it out!" However, the truth is not a surrender of responsibility, but rather a recognition of it.

Holding up conscience and prudence in the political process sends the message that the bishops take the U.S. Catholic faithful seriously by giving them this challenge. It recognizes that they play a unique role in the ongoing interplay between Church and society and that no one, not even the bishops, can do it for them.

Catholics Care. Catholic Vote: an Introduction

With Super Tuesday now behind us, more and more Americans are turning their attention to politics, specifically, to the local, state and federal elections on November 6, and as they do so, one in four of those Americans is Catholic.

In the 2008 election, Catholics comprised a quarter of the electorate, by far the largest single religious denomination. They achieved this statistical feat in spite of making up less than a quarter of the total population. So not only are they a formidable demographic, but an over-represented one at the polls. We'd like to think this is a sign that U.S. Catholics tend to be civic minded and informed when it comes to the issues that affect them, their country and the rest of the world. In short, hopefully it's because they care.

To feed this demand, this blog is entering the election year fray with a weekly series, "Catholics care. Catholics vote," which will run from now through May. As the politicians and pundits ramp up their rhetoric, this series will unpack and explore the themes addressed by the U.S. bishops in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, their document on political responsibility. This will include everything from issues affecting human life and dignity, to hot-button social concerns in our country today, to the principles that shape the conscience formation and civic involvement of Catholics.

This series will be freely available to diocesan and parish leadership for use circulation/re-posting in newspapers, bulletins, websites, workshops, etc.

Stay tuned!