Voting Catholic

The American Catholic has a poignant piece about the whole voting post from a couple days ago.  Again, the Bishops make it clear: You must allow your conscience and your voting to be informed by Catholic teaching.  You cannot vote for a candidate in order to advance an intrinsic evil (duh).  You cannot support a candidate who is about advancing intrinsic evils simply because you don’t like the other guy, or you only support women, or you’re a party faithful, or whatever.  If you are faced with two options, both of which advocate for evils, you can make the extraordinary choice of not voting, or you can choose the one who will do the greater good, or the less evil.  That’s it.

Despite the clarity of this, Catholics on the Internet have struggled for years to suggest that what the Bishops really intended to mean was that the way I vote or don’t vote is exactly the way Jesus would do it, and otherwise you don’t like God.  The fact is, the Bishops appear to assume good will in their teachings. Those who wish to twist them and turn them so that their preferred way is the only way, can end up doing damage to the teaching, as well as to the soul.