Once again on Matters of Conscience and One-issue Voting

 In 2012 I posted the following as part of another piece occasioned by situations involving partisan political positions being taken on parish grounds of distant US local Catholic Churches. In that post I reminded folks that this kind of activity was contrary to Church teaching, contrary to the separation of Church and State, and something which actually endangered freedom of religion and the Church's tax-free status. At the same time I had been asked something about how I was voting, especially when neither party seemed particularly acceptable to Catholics and may differ from Church teaching and praxis --- for instance on the issues of abortion and contraception. In light of Tuesday's Election probably a good time to restate some of this, especially the Church's teaching on the primacy of conscience.

So, since a couple of people have asked me about voting (they actually asked about how I am voting but I am not going there) let me restate 1) the pertinent part of the Church's teaching on the nature and primacy of conscience, and 2) Benedict XVI's analysis of elections which involve, for instance, the issues of abortion and contraception when neither candidate or party platform is really completely acceptable to Catholics.

First, we are to inform and form our consciences to the best of our ability. This means we are not only to learn as much as we can about  the issue at hand including church teaching, medical and scientific information, sociological data, theological data, and so forth (this is part of the way to an informed conscience), but we are to do all we can to be sure we have the capacity to make a conscience judgment and act on it. This means we must develop the capacity to discern all the values and disvalues present in a given situation, preference them appropriately, and then determine or make a conscience judgment regarding how we must act. Finally we must act on the conscience or prudential judgment that we have come to. (This latter capacity which reasons morally about all the information is what is called a well-formed conscience. A badly formed conscience is one which is incapable of reasoning morally, discerning the values and disvalues present, preferencing these, and making a judgment on how one must act in such a situation. Note well, that those who merely "do as authority tells them" may not have a well-formed conscience informed though they may be regarding what the Church teaches in a general way!)

There are No Shortcuts, No Ways to Free ourselves from the Complexity or the Risk of this Process and Responsibility:

There is no short cut to this process of informing and forming our consciences. No one can discern or decide for us, not even Bishops and Popes. They can provide information, but we must look at ALL the values and disvalues in the SPECIFIC situation and come to a conscientious judgment ourselves. The human conscience is inviolable, the inner sanctum where God speaks to each of us alone. It ALWAYS has primacy. Of course we may err in our conscience judgment, but if we 1) fail to act to adequately inform and form our consciences, or 2) act in a way which is contrary to our own conscience judgment we are more likely guilty of sin (this is  actually certain in the latter case). If we act in good faith, we are NEVER guilty of sin --- though we may act wrongly and have to bear the consequences of that action. If we err, the matter is neutral at worst and could even still involve great virtue. If we act in bad faith, we ALWAYS sin, and often quite seriously, for to act against a conscience judgment is to act against the very voice of God as heard in our heart of hearts.

And what about conscience judgments which are not in accord with Church teaching (or in this case, with what some Bishops are saying)? I have written about this before but it bears repeating. Remember that at Vatican II the minority group approached the theological commission with a proposal to edit a text on conscience. The text spoke about the nature of a well-formed conscience. The redaction the minority proposed was that the text should read, "A well-formed conscience is one formed in accord (or to accord) with Church teaching." The theological commission rejected this redaction as too rigid and reminded the Fathers that they had already clearly taught what the church had always held on conscience. And yet today we hear all the time from various places, including some Bishops, that if one's conscience judgment is not in accord with Church teaching the conscience is necessarily not well-formed. But this is not Church teaching --- not the teaching articulated by Thomas Aquinas or Innocent III, for instance, who counseled people that they MUST follow their consciences even if that meant bearing with excommunication.

Benedict XVI's Analysis:

Now then, what about Benedict XVI's analysis of voting in situations of ambiguity where, for instance, one party supports abortion but is deemed more consistently pro-life otherwise? What happens when this situation is sharpened by an opposing party who claims to be anti-abortion but has done nothing concrete to stop it? MUST a Catholic vote for the anti-abortion party or be guilty of endangering their immortal souls? Will they necessarily become complicit in intrinsic evil if they vote for the candidate or party which supports abortion? The answer is no. Here is what Benedict XVI said: If a person is trying to decide for or against a particular candidate and determines that one candidate's party is more consistently pro-life than the other party, even though that first party supports abortion or contraception, the voter may vote in good conscience for that first candidate and party SO LONG AS they do not do so BECAUSE of the candidate's position on abortion or contraception.

In other words, in such a situation abortion is not the single overarching issue which ALWAYS decides the case. One CAN act in good faith and vote for a candidate or party which seems to support life as a seamless garment better than another party, even if that candidate or party does not oppose abortion. One cannot vote FOR intrinsic evil, of course, but one can vote for all sorts of goods which are clearly Gospel imperatives and still not be considered complicit in intrinsic evil. By the way, this is NOT the same thing as doing evil in order that good may result!! Benedict XVI's analysis is less simplistic than some characterizations I have heard recently; theologically it seems to me to be far more cogent and nuanced than these, and it is [an analysis] Bishops who are supposed to be in union with him when they teach as the ordinary Magisterium should certainly strongly reconsider and learn from.

In Thanksgiving for my own Faith Community:

Meanwhile, I want to take this opportunity to say how very grateful I am for my faith community. We stand together around one Table; we share one Word; we drink from one Cup. We are very different from one another politically, theologically, economically, and so forth --- and we are all aware of it. Yet we trust one another to vote their consciences and pray that the will of God will be done. We do NOT allow differences in politics to divide us in a literally diabolical way. We may not agree on a specific issue or candidate, but we recognize the Church's theology of conscience allows that and respect one another in our disagreements. Thus, we continue to worship together and grow together in Christ. As the USCCB's  1999 document, "Faithful Citizenship" reminds us, "Our moral framework does not easily fit the categories of right or left, Democrat or Republican. Sometimes it seems few candidates and no party fully reflect our values. We must challenge all parties and every candidate to defend human life and dignity, to pursue greater justice and peace, to uphold family life, and to advance the common good." I find that in my parish at least, we are generally Christians first and trust one another to be that to the best of their ability. In this time especially, that is a very great gift and precisely what the Universal Church should be as a sign to the world!

On Conscience and One-Issue Voting

[[Dear Sister, I think you wrote a piece about elections and one-issue voting in 2012 or 2016. Could you summarize that article here now? I have family who are arguing that anyone who votes for a candidate who is not anti-abortion  who votes for a party that supports a woman's right to choose is necessarily damned to hell. I don't believe the current President is really anti-abortion but even if he is everything else he is about does not exactly scream "pro-life". . . . At the same time I don't think VP Biden is necessarily anti-life because of his support for abortion. . .]]

Thanks for asking about this; I posted this piece in August but decided that might have been missed by many. So here it is again. I also noted then that I had seen a post around then which criticized a bishop for restating Benedict XVI's analysis, so yes, there is significant misunderstanding on what the Catholic Church teaches about conscience judgments/decisions and the difficulty with one-issue voting. Abortion tends to be the single issue around which such misunderstandings and their attendant arguments are marshalled. Here is the article you were asking about. I have cut some of it to limit it to the key points: 1) what it means to have an informed and a well-formed conscience, and 2) how one determines one is to vote in a situation which is ambiguous or (misleadingly) marked as a "one-issue" situation.

Hermitage Chapel and Cave of the Heart

. . .Let me restate 1) the pertinent part of the Church's teaching on the nature and primacy of conscience, and 2) Benedict XVI's analysis of elections which involve, for instance, the issues of abortion and contraception when neither candidate or party platform is really completely acceptable to Catholics.

First, we are to inform and form our consciences to the best of our ability. These are two separate but related processes.  This means we are not only to learn as much as we can about  the issue at hand including church teaching, medical and scientific information, sociological data, theological data, and so forth (this is part of the way to an informed conscience), but we are to do all we can to be sure we have the capacity to make a conscience judgment and act on it. This means we must develop the capacity to discern all the values and disvalues present in a given situation, preference them appropriately, and then determine or make a conscience judgment regarding how we must act. Finally we must act on the conscientious or prudential judgment that we have come to. (This latter capacity which allows us to reason morally about all the information is what is called a well-formed conscience. A badly formed conscience is one which is incapable of reasoning morally; such a conscience is incapable of discerning the values and disvalues present, preferencing these, and/or making a judgment on how one must act in such a situation. Note well: those who merely "do as authority tells them" may not have a well-formed conscience informed though they may be regarding what the Church teaches in a general way!)

There are No Shortcuts, No Ways to Free ourselves from the Complexity or the Risk of this Process and Responsibility:

There is no short cut to this process of informing and forming our consciences. No one can discern or decide for us, not even Bishops and Popes. They can provide information, but we must look at ALL the values and disvalues in the SPECIFIC situation and come to a conscientious judgment ourselves. No one can do this for us, nor can we abdicate our own responsibility to embody Christ in this given situatiuon. The human conscience is inviolable, the inner sanctum where God speaks to each of us alone. It ALWAYS has primacy. Of course we may err in our conscience judgment, but if we 1) fail to act to adequately inform and form our consciences, or 2) act in a way which is contrary to our own conscience judgment we are more likely guilty of sin (this is  actually certain in the latter case). If we act in good faith, we are NEVER guilty of sin --- though we may act wrongly and will always have to bear the consequences of that action. If we err, the matter is morally neutral at worst and could even involve great virtue. If we act in bad faith, if we act against our conscience judgment, we ALWAYS sin, and often quite seriously, for to act against a conscience judgment is to act against the very voice of God as heard in our heart of hearts.  Please note: in moral theology we speak of "certain conscience judgments"; this does not mean we are certain we are absolutely free from error but rather, this is the judgment our own (always imperfectly) informed and formed consciences have come to in this place and at this time. This we know certainly and for this reason, because we are acting in good faith, we do not fear we are in error. We must act on such a judgment.

And what about conscience judgments which are not in accord with Church teaching (or in this case, with what some Bishops are saying)? I have written about this before but it bears repeating. Remember that at Vatican II the minority group approached the theological commission with a proposal to edit a text on conscience. The text spoke about the nature of a well-formed conscience. The redaction the minority proposed was that the text should read, "A well-formed conscience is one formed to accord with Church teaching." The theological commission rejected this redaction as too rigid and reminded the Fathers that they had already clearly taught what the church had always held on conscience. And yet today we hear all the time from various places, including some Bishops, that if one's conscience judgment is not in accord with Church teaching the conscience is necessarily not well-formed --- never mind that church teaching can never acount for all of the values and disvalues present in a given situation; this is what the individual believer can and is called to do. But this minority position is not Church teaching --- not the teaching articulated by Thomas Aquinas or Innocent III, for instance, who counseled people that they MUST follow their consciences even if that meant bearing humbly with excommunication! Again, the certain conscience judgment MUST always be followed or one sins and can be sinning gravely.

Benedict XVI's Analysis on one issue voting:

Now then, what about Benedict XVI's analysis of voting in situations of ambiguity where, for instance, one party supports abortion but is deemed more consistently pro-life otherwise? What happens when this situation is sharpened by an opposing party who claims to be anti-abortion but has done nothing concrete to stop it? MUST a Catholic vote for the anti-abortion party or be guilty of endangering their immortal souls? Will they necessarily become complicit in intrinsic evil if they vote for the candidate or party which supports abortion? The answer to both questions is no. Here is what Benedict XVI said: If a person is trying to decide for or against a particular candidate and determines that one candidate's party is more consistently pro-life than the other party, even though that first party supports abortion or contraception, the voter may vote in good conscience for that first candidate and party SO LONG AS they do not do so BECAUSE of the candidate's (or party's) position on abortion or contraception.

In other words, in such a situation abortion is not  and cannot be the single overarching issue which ALWAYS decides the case. One CAN act in good faith and vote for a candidate or party which seems to support life as a seamless garment better than another even if that candidate or party does not specifically oppose abortion. (Please note that in this analysis a candidate may support a platform which includes the right to abortion or the "right to choose" and not be a supporter of abortion itself.) One cannot vote FOR intrinsic evil, of course, but one can vote for all sorts of goods which are clearly Gospel imperatives and still not be considered complicit in intrinsic evil. By the way, this is NOT the same thing as doing evil in order that good may result; it is about maximizing the good one chooses while avoiding choosing evil!! Benedict XVI's analysis is less simplistic than some characterizations I have heard recently; theologically it seems to me to be far more cogent and nuanced than these. For more on Benedict XVI's own position, please look for original articles on Benedict's analysis.