What does the Catholic Church teach about voting? A CNA explainer

Credit: vesperstock/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Sep 20, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Catholics in the U.S. don’t vote as a bloc, and this election cycle there has been considerable debate about whom Catholics should vote for. Even Pope Francis has weighed in, quipping that Americans in November must choose “the lesser evil” when deciding between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. 

The Catholic Church has long supported voting as part of participation in public life — as a contribution to a nation’s common good and to the flourishing of its people.

What the Church does not do is dictate to Catholics whom exactly they should vote for or exactly which policies to support. However, Catholics have been given numerous guiding principles for making decisions about voting. 

Here is an explanation of some of these principles. 

What does the Church teach about voting?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that it is “the duty of citizens to contribute along with the civil authorities to the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom.”

“The love and service of one’s country follows from the duty of gratitude and belongs to the order of charity. Submission to legitimate authorities and service of the common good require citizens to fulfill their roles in the life of the political community.”

It also states that “submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to pay taxes, to exercise the right to vote, and to defend one’s country.”

In 2007, the U.S. bishops’ conference issued “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” a guide to participation in public life, which includes a section on voting. The bishops have periodically updated it since, with the latest edition approved in late 2023.

In the document, the bishops wrote that “responsible citizenship is a virtue, and participation in political life is a moral obligation.” Quoting Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium, the bishops also note that public service, when it seeks the common good, is a “lofty vocation.”

The bishops envision voters who are guided by their moral convictions and not their attachment to any one party or interest group. A Catholic’s engagement in politics ought to be “shaped by the moral convictions of well-formed consciences and focused on the dignity of every human being, the pursuit of the common good, and the protection of the weak and the vulnerable.”

Catholics should vote for candidates to the extent that they will promote the common good, a concept defined in the catechism as “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”

“Catholics have a serious and lifelong obligation to form their consciences in accord with human reason and the teaching of the Church,” the document continues.

“Conscience is 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. Rather, conscience is the voice of God resounding in the human heart, revealing the truth to us and calling us to do what is good while shunning what is evil. Conscience always requires serious attempts to make sound moral judgments based on the truths of our faith.”

Reasons not to vote for a candidate

“Forming Consciences” states in paragraph 34: “A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who favors a policy promoting an intrinsically evil act, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, deliberately subjecting workers or the poor to subhuman living conditions, redefining marriage in ways that violate its essential meaning, or racist behavior, if the voter’s intent is to support that position.”

“As Catholics we are not single-issue voters,” the bishops note, and “a candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support.” At the same time, Catholics should not vote for a candidate if his or her “position on a single issue promotes an intrinsically evil act.”

However, the bishops say it could be possible to vote for someone who supports something intrinsically immoral, but only for “other morally grave reasons.” Before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger described those as “proportionate reasons.”

In a 2004 letter to U.S. bishops, Ratzinger wrote: ”When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor 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.”

The idea of “proportionate reasoning” recognizes that there are no perfect candidates. The job of Catholic voters is to weigh the positions of all candidates and to avoid choosing a candidate who supports something immoral, unless something good outweighs that immorality.

Nonnegotiable issues

In a 2006 address to a European parliamentary group, Pope Benedict XVI laid out several issues related to the public good that are “not negotiable” for Catholics.  

Those issues as laid out by Pope Benedict are as follows:

• Protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death.

• Recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage, and its defense from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union that in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role.

• The protection of the right of parents to educate their children.

The U.S. bishops further say that abortion and euthanasia — in their words, “preeminent threats to human life and dignity” — weigh heavily when deciding whether it is morally acceptable to vote for a candidate.

In 2019, the bishops said: “The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives destroyed.”

In acknowledging the importance of voting against abortion, the Church and Church leaders do not say that abortion is the only issue but that it is “preeminent” — a foundational consideration about the moral acceptability of a candidate.

Pope Francis asks in Laudato Si’: “How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?”

In Christifidelis Laici, St. John Paul II taught that “the right to health, to home, to work, to culture is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.”

In 2008, Bishop (now Cardinal) Kevin Farrell released a joint statement with Bishop Kevin Vann, saying that in their view, “there are no ‘truly grave moral’ or ‘proportionate’ reasons, singularly or combined that could outweigh the millions of innocent human lives that are directly killed by abortion each year.”

In 2008, Archbishop Charles Chaput said that Catholics who support pro-abortion candidates “need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it.”

“What is a ‘proportionate’ reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life — which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed,” Chaput said.

So… whom to vote for?

The bishops say that well-formed Catholic voters could reach different conclusions about whom to support. The bishops also do not rule out the possibility of not voting, or of voting for third party candidates.

“When all candidates hold a position that promotes an intrinsically evil act, the conscientious voter faces a dilemma. The voter may decide to take the extraordinary step of not voting for any candidate or, after careful deliberation, may decide to vote for the candidate deemed less likely to advance such a morally flawed position and more likely to pursue other authentic human goods” (“Forming Consciences,” paragraph 36).

In 2016, Bishop James Conley offered this summary of the “Faithful Citizenship” guide’s voting advice: 

“In good conscience, some Catholics might choose to vote for a candidate who, with some degree of probability, would be most likely to do some good, and the least amount of harm, on the foundational issues: life, family, conscience rights and religious liberty. Or, in good conscience, some might choose the candidate who best represents a Christian vision of society, regardless of the probability of winning. Or, in good conscience, some might choose not to vote for any candidate at all in a particular office.”

This story was first published Sept. 18, 2020, and has been updated. Jonah McKeown contributed to the update.