Christian Ethics and the Right to Vote

A Church article with View Comments posted 12 November 2007.
Tags: Church, ethics, voting

The issues of abortion, euthanasia, the war, and political and economic justice place myself and many other people in a trap between the two major political parties in the United States. Often times people like me have been derided as “single issue voters,” though that has never been true for me. The choices involved, presented from a Roman Catholic perspective but holding universal application, are well presented in this article from the First Things blog.

Certainly, a Catholic elected to public office must make prudential judgments on how to best advance the rights and the dignity of the human person. There are many issues, in fact most issues, where Catholic politicians may disagree and adopt different policy positions—a just immigration policy, for example, or public-assistance programs for the poor, or health-care policy, or military engagement, or taxation policies.

At the same time, there are circumstances where to support a particular policy involves approval of an intrinsic evil.