Then Nathan said to David: “You are the man!” (2 Samuel 12:7)
While it’s easy to forget it with all the other turmoil going around, the United States will have an election in November. Many Catholics have already decided how they will vote. Both sides† justify that decision by pointing out the evils on the other side. They inevitably will say that the stakes are “too high” to do anything but vote the way they were going to vote anyway.
Catholics on both sides will use identical arguments, merely choosing a different “non-negotiable” issue that disqualifies the other side, and condemning the other side for refusing to think like them… even though they think identically in terms of arguments used in justifying themselves. In other words, for many Catholics, the elections involve who they plan to vote against, and whoever votes in a way opposed to how they plan to vote is condemned as willfully standing on the side of evil.
And God help the bishops when they speak out on an evil that one of the parties embrace. Catholics of that party invariably attack their bishops as being partisans for the other party. If the bishops speak out on abortion and the defense of marriage, they’re called “The Republican Party at Prayer” (an attack used in the 2008 and 2016 elections) or accused of being “played” by Trump. If they speak out against the treatment of migrants and the support for torture, or for military action that violate the teaching on Just War, they are accused of being Democrats. In 2016, the bishops were accused by Catholics on both sides of belonging to the other side.
While I have been aware of this behavior for as long as I have taken my Catholic faith seriously (I’m sure it’s been going on far longer than that), what I seldom see is Catholics taking a serious look at the state of their preferred political party in light of the teachings of the Catholic Faith. While Catholics might ask the other side how they can possibly justify a vote based on their violation of teaching X, they usually deny or downplay the importance of the teaching that their party rejects.
But, if we are called to be the Salt of the Earth, and the Light of the World (cf. Matthew 5:13-16), then we must work to make the Christian message known to the world, not only by our words, but by our actions. If we want the world to see the Christian message as truth and not as another political position, we need to judge the political parties by our Catholic Faith, and not the Catholic Faith by our political parties. That means that, even if we decide that Issue X is more immediately dangerous than Issue Y, this does not absolve us from holding our party accountable for supporting Issue Y and fighting to change the policy.
If we will not do this. We should keep in mind, Our Lord’s words in Matthew 7:3-5.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.
If we want to avoid judgment from The Lord, we must remember that whatever standard we hold Catholics in the other party to, we must hold ourselves to the same standard. If we want Catholics in the other party to stop tolerating evil, we must stop tolerating it in our own. Otherwise, we will be opening the Church to charges of hypocrisy by those outside the Church who see our individual double standards and assume the whole Church is guilty. In fact, we risk causing scandal by letting others think that what we do justifies their own actions. Since God warned us about scandals and millstones (Matthew 18:6-7), we can be certain that if we cause others to justify their own inaction, we will certainly be called to answer for it.
None of this should be seen as justifying a relativistic “vote for whoever you want.” I do believe that certain positions should be a disqualification. What I am calling for is that we practice what we preach. If we are so outraged that Catholics of the “other party” are tolerating a great evil, then let us look at what our own party supports and stop making excuses for our inaction. If we want the “other side” to start challenging wrong in their party, then let’s do the same.
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(†) Readers from outside the United States, who often have a large number of political parties, need to keep in mind that the majority of Americans are divided into two major parties and a number of inconsequential parties that only get noticed when the electorate views both with disgust. But then most of them vote for one or the other anyway.
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