I decided that this article was very sorely needed, as I have encountered some Traditional and Conservative Catholics who are making it a badge of honor to either not vote in the coming presidential election, or else proudly advocating throwing our votes away on third party candidates with no chance of winning.
In past years you may have heard from well meaning Traditionalist or Conservative Catholics that although we are morally prohibited from voting for a candidate who is diametrically opposed to Catholic teaching on moral issues (Kamala) we have no positive moral obligation to vote for the only man who can keep this evil out of office (Trump), because we have no moral obligation to vote for the lesser of two evils.
This advice, however well intentioned it may be, is wrong. I will explain why in detail. I also believe this election to be the most important election of our lifetimes as it may determine whether our country continues to exist as a Constitutional Republic with freedom of speech and religion as well as whether our democracy can even continue to function. It is the most important American Presidential election in history as far as rights of the Church and of Catholics are concerned.
I believe the words of Maureen Mullarkey, spoken in 2016 in response to my support of Catholics voting for Donald Trump at that time, apply equally if not moreso, today:
Jackson’s initiative is addressed specifically to Catholics because so many of us are invested in the theater of ourselves as high moral theologians. Catholics twist themselves into hangman’s knots with deliberations on the lesser of two evils. Which is the lesser, Trump or Clinton? Catholics are enjoined from choosing any evil. If Trump is as horrid as Clinton, the principle of double effect does not apply. Should not commitment to right behavior keep us home and away from the shabby compromises of the voting booth? Do we not put ourselves in moral jeopardy voting for Trump?
Oh, please! There comes a time to grant a bit of credit to Mae West: “Between two evils, I always choose the one I haven’t tried before.”
The Catholic blogosphere is sodden with Prufrockery: Do I dare to eat a peach? Do I dare descend the stair? Dare disturb the universe of my own fine preferences? It is a masturbatory game destined to finish with the election of a vile, traitorous woman greedy for power and money. A woman with a squalid history of shady dealings, evidence gone missing, and lies with calamitous consequences.
Jackson is making the point that refusing to choose is, in fact, a choice. It is a self-admiring one that permits the chooser to gaze on his own clean hands instead of on the outcome of his decision-by-default. Abstention from this election is the vain choice of moral cowards.
I hope by the end of this article that sincere and open-minded Catholics will vote on Tuesday to help save our nation from the existential evil represented by anti-Christian forces, and not end up like the poor souls the Prophet Obadiah described, when he said:
On that day you stood aloof,
the day strangers captured his wealth,
And foreigners entered his gates
and cast lots for Jerusalem,
you too were like one of them.
