I have this exchange a lot with people. And I get a ton of mail from perplexed prolife Catholics who feel tormented about thinking the Faith somehow obliges them to vote for a criminally negligent Mob Boss, traitor, and swine like Trump whom they know in their hearts to be unfit for office. So I’ve decided to write a series on the moral act of voting from the perspective of a prolife Catholic who believes all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims is revealed by God. My purpose is not to tell you who you must vote for. But it is, emphatically, to argue that there is no moral room whatsoever for voting for Trump. In a future post, I will allow that I think there is moral room for abstaining or voting third party. But I will also argue why I will be voting for Biden with the serene approval of my conscience before Almighty God and, I hope, you will agree with me and do likewise.
This post will stand as a sort of prologue and precis for the whole argument, which I will give in detail in future posts.
When somebody tells me I can’t vote for Biden I always think of that moment where somebody came up to Australian comic Jim Jeffries in a spittle-flecked rage declaring “YOU CANNOT CHANGE THE SECOND AMENDMENT!”
To which Jeffries replied, “Yes you can. It’s called an amendment.”
Similarly, my reply to the claim that I cannot vote for Biden as a faithful Catholic is “Yes you can. He’s the Democratic candidate for President.”
What the critics mean, of course, is that you cannot morally vote for him as a Catholic and that to do so is to, as the saying goes, “support babykilling.”
Except that’s not true.
The issue is pretty simple. There is no prolife party. There never has been. There is the party that gave us both the Roe and Casey decisions, has never overturned them, and has refunded Planned Parenthood every year for decades (including raising that funding every year of the Trump administration to its highest levels in history). That party, led by the Most Prolife President in History, has been rewarded for its record Planned Parenthood funding with the highest Planned Parenthood abortion rate in 15 years.
Then there are the Democrats, who just let all that happen because they don’t have to do anything but uphold what the GOP created. Under Dems, abortion rates have seen their most precipitous drops. Biden’s administration brought it to its lowest rate since Roe. Under the GOP Mexico City policy, abortions in sub-Saharan Africa rise by 40%.
Given that, we are obliged to judge prudently, not who is Catholic, but who will be the more competent president and the one who is not a moral monster and Mob Boss who has killed 180K Americans with his criminal negligence, driven the economy straight into the ground as a result, gone to war with the American ability to vote, and betrayed US troops to Russia-paid bounty hunters, to name just a few of his crimes.
That better candidate is clearly Biden. And so it is perfectly obvious to me that this faithful Catholic not only may but must vote for Biden precisely because it will help lessen abortion along with preventing or healing a host of other evils and corruptions Trump has committed.
Along the way, it will also help prevent the passive euthanasia of COVID patients that the criminal fool in the White House has inflicted on blue state victims and is about to inflict on the children he insists must return to school in the teeth of all public health professional warnings.
This line of reasoning is perfectly Catholic and is precisely what is mentioned here:
“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.” – Benedict XVI
So don’t be shy about telling the bully who tries to intimidate you that you “can’t” vote for Biden and still be a faithful Catholic. Boldly reply, “My reasons are plenty proportional. Don’t tell me a faithful Catholic cannot vote for Biden over Trump. Trump is the gravest domestic threat to the United States since the Civil War. And no small part of that threat is that he has massively corrupted the ‘prolife’ movement into apologists for mass murder and treason while not doing a thing to prevent abortion. Obama/Biden created a pandemic response plan as well as taking steps to reduce demand for abortion that brought it to its lowest level in history since the Roe decision. Trump has not only not done a damn thing to save a single unborn child, he has, with the willing participation of nearly the entire ‘prolife’ movement been the attending physician to its vast and enormous act of assisted suicide.”
Keep reading over the next few days and we will learn to push back hard against this religious voter intimidation scheme that has gripped the Church for far too long.
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36 Responses
Thank you. It seems so obvious. Single-issue Catholic voters are like the proverbial dog that stares at the finger pointing toward the moon. Their scope is so limited that it becomes self defeating. I still hold the hope that, like the dog, they simply lack the the moral capacity to seek the good, rather than think that they actively support evil.
Another strategy. After all, it’s only one more lie…
https://mobile.twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1300191230328856576
I hope Pence and Raymond Arroyo read this.
That’d be a book club gathering worthy of Stephen King.
If I was a US citizen, I’d vote Bidem without flinching. The teachings of the church are clear enough of voters and their conscience.
As far as I’m concerned, the case as to whether one can vote Biden, third pary or abstain doesn’t need to be made, since it’s self evident.
I’m quite curious though as to how you will demonstrate that it is not morally permissible to vote for Trump.
“I’d vote Bidem”.
I think “Biden” would take the dative case, here.
Would ”lol libtard” adequately convey my disdain or would I just send the message that it’s late here and I have no better reply?
Well, there are 2 kinds of evil. The first is the kind that is negotiable. The second is the kind that is non-negotiable. The Republicans only do the first kind. Except when they do an evil of the second kind. In that case, that specific evil (eg:torture) then automatically becomes reclassified from non-negotiable to negotiable… or Romans 13:1-7.. or prudential…something like that .. wait .. too complicated.
Republicans do good. Democrats do evil.
There, it’s that simple. Vote Republican
/S
No! The letters T, R, U, M and P are the five non-negotiables.
It’s worth noting that in the 2016 election a third-party candidate got over 20% of the vote in Utah.
From this I conclude that Mormons are 20% less politically corrupt than Catholics or Evangelicals.
http://www.eyeofthetiber.com/2020/08/31/local-conservative-questioning-his-pro-life-stance-after-fr-james-martin-prays-for-the-unborn-at-dnc/
EOTT: the better homilies of the era.
I know it’s supposed to be a joke, but it rings far too true. I’ve often joked that when Republicans come up with a good idea, Democrats eventually embrace it, and then Republicans repudiate it (eg., government transparency in the 90s and early 2000s).
I often said that Democrats really ought to make room for and embrace pro-life Democrats, not because I’m anti-abortion, but because that’s the fastest way to get Republicans to drop the “pro-life” guise.
jj
Of topic, I thought this interview of Beth Fukumoto, a former GOP congresswoman that served 3 terms in Hawaii, might interest you:
https://youtu.be/YlZ_emMn_cs
@3vil5triker:
Thanks for this. Really an eye-opener. I did my post-grad at UH – astonishing some of the things that she says happened to her – not the Hawai’i I remember.
Joe Biden supports the “right” of a mother to murder her child during any phase of pregnancy even after the child is born.
Say what you want about Trump, I will never support Biden.
Up to the age of twenty-five, but only if they’re black, and then preferably executed during a LARP event.
It must be hard to hold your laptop and type with that jerking knee.
For one who states in your article you will not tell us who to vot4e for you are very opinionated and quite rude. done.
“My friends, we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life,” the pope said on Wednesday.
@ mike
And this is why we have Poe’s law. This is why no one takes you seriously.
Hi Mark:
I’m looking forward to reading more of your commentary on voting with the mind of Christ.
Your argument that there is no pro-life party in America has already led to some fruitful thought experiments between my wife and I.
But one question I have, which I hope you might address in a later post, is: is hypocrisy preferable to malevolence? That is, would a party that fails to curb abortion but at least calls it an evil be preferable to one that says it is a sacrosanct right that cannot be infringed?
My guess is that you would say that one has to consider the whole platform for each party, and that as long as you’re not voting for the one party specifically to promote the evil but because you find the rest (or many of the rest) of their positions morally sound, then your conscience is clear.
Interested to hear your thoughts.
I will address it. Meantime…. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2020/05/my-dear-friend-clear-your-mind-of-cant-samuel-johnson.html
“would a party that fails to curb abortion but at least calls it an evil be preferable to one that says it is a sacrosanct right that cannot be infringed [but whose policies actually help curb abortion]?”
“What do you think? A man had two sons; and he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’
And he answered, ‘I will not’; but afterward he repented and went.
And he went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go.
Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.”
—Matthew 21:28-31
@john
Regarding ammosexuals and the slaughter of children, adults, and anything that moves:
That is, would a party that fails to curb gins but at least calls it an evil be preferable to one that says it is a sacrosanct right that cannot be infringed?
May I pose a hypothetical question?
Which of these two worlds would you rather live in?
(1) A world where NO woman EVER had an abortion (because they were opposed to it for ethical/philosophical/theological reasons), BUT abortion remained legal and readily available to any woman who wanted it, or
(2) A world where abortion was entirely and absolutely banned, even in those cases where a pregnancy would lead to the pregnant woman’s death, BUT women still had about 1 million illegal abortions a year.
Yes, purely hypothetical, but telling as to whether one’s concern is for “unborn lives” or … something else.
You are anticipating my argument.
Hi Mark. I’m likely voting American Solidarity Party, but also am looking for sources to discuss with Trump-supporting friends and family.
Do you have any sources that Trump has increased funding to Planned Parenthood?
Thanks!
https://www.heritage.org/life/report/planned-parenthood-the-numbers See charts 2 an 6. He has raised it to record heights and been rewarded with the biggest spike in abortion in 15 years. We will discuss this in detail tomorrow.
Sweet! Thanks!
n 2016 during President Barack Obama’s final year in office, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) changed the approved regimen for the chemical abortion drug mifepristone (also known under the brand name Mifeprex). The drug originally came on the market in the United States after much controversy in 2000, and in 2016 the Obama Administration FDA loosened the standards for the use of the drug by changing its Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy.6
Christopher H. Smith, et al., Letter to Robert M. Califf, April 25, 2016, https://www.cruz.senate.gov/files/documents/Letters/20160426_SmithLankfordLettertoFDAonAbortionDrug.pdf (accessed February 3, 2020).
Notably, the spike in Planned Parenthood’s reported abortion numbers occurs after this change.
The spike is due to Obama not Trump. This is from the article you gave us the link for.
@ pamela
“ Notably, the spike in Planned Parenthood’s reported abortion numbers occurs after this change.”
What an interesting comment! It seems to be saying something, but what? I doubt that anybody is counting abortions that were due to the “abortion pill“ as part of the number of abortions that Planned Parenthood was performing. So perhaps you could explain exactly what the connection between your two comments is. Because right now, it appears your remark is simply tendentiously Making a direct connection when there doesn’t appear to be one
Mark where do you get your news? I used to be much more vitriolic before I started reading both sides regularly. And not one side’s analysis of the other- actually reading the arguments of good thinkers on both sides. It made me more sympathetic to the thought processes of other people; they became more like People and less like The Opposition.
I agree with Midwestern Guy – where do you get your news?? Was hoping to find factual info.