Dear Vincent:

The Church teaches that we all are required to follow our "informed" conscience. If your conscience is telling you to, using the election example, to not vote for McCain or Obama, then do not do so.

But, you must realize that is your personal conscience and decision. It would be improper to impose your conscience on to others (I am not saying you are, but I say this to put things into perspective).

Those who voted for Obama, most likely did sin. Those who voted for McCain did not.

Pope Benedict has talked about this sort of thing.  As Cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI wrote:

“A Catholic would be guilty of formal [intentional] cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

The pope did not define "proportionate" reasons, but this state makes it clear as in other teachings about the nature of sin, that there are levels of sins (evils) and that we sometimes must choose the lessor of two evils.

Father Roger J. Landry, in his article, How Catholics Should Vote, explains:

He [Pope Benedict] does not describe what proportionate reasons for participating in the politician’s evil would be, but whatever they were, it would have to be to prevent an evil proportionality greater than that of the destruction of innocent children in the womb.

Voting for McCain was not about what benefits you personally might receive, it was about protecting the unborn, in which Obama represent a million more times a proportionately greater threat. In addition, to vote for McCain is an additional altruistic act because it would slow down the Progressive Movement that seeks to destroy our Constitution and the American Democracy. This is not about anything selfish, this about supporting what is right for our country.

While Bush was a progressive in some things, Obama was the poster-boy of Progressivism and he admits it. Obama models Woodrow Wilson, who was one of the most anti-American presidents in history and who routinely violated the Constitution and set the stage for our current economy crisis.

There is little question in my mind that McCain was the far, far less proportional evil in that election.

You may be guided by your conscience to not vote for anyone if there is no one that fully meets Catholic moral standards (which I know of no politician that does that) and Church teaching will support you.  Others, however, may decide their conscience on this with as much conviction that voting for the lessor of the two evils is the appropriate thing to do. Depending on the specifics, Church teaching will support them too.

Pope Benedict also said:

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. Among these the following emerge clearly today: the protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family — as a union between one man and one woman based on marriage…; and the protection of the rights of parents to educate their children.

St. Paul chose the lessor of two evils. He did not lobby to stop slavery, but tried to re-define the master-slave relationship. This set the stage for the eliminate slavery a couple thousand years later.

To choose McCain over Obama, the lessor of two evils, would deprive Obama and his radical bunch of power and perhaps saved millions of more lives and brought more prosperity to our Nation to further set the stage for greater return to the vision of our founding Fathers. But, under Obama we have the stage set for the very real possibility of the fall of the United States and the Western World.

Between those two choices, Obama is certainly more proportionally evil than McCain could ever hope to be.

But, as I mentioned, each of us must follow our conscience and allow each other to have the choice of that conscience as long as it is consistent with the Church's teaching. And on this issue both your position and mine have support in Church teaching, thus we are free to choose according to our consciences.

I also recommend the pamphlet, Voters Guide for Serious Catholics published by Catholic Answers, and the Vatican's The Participation of Catholics in Political Life.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary

P.S. A reminder to everyone in terms of private responses. Our policy is that we never make personal responses. There is not time enough in the day to do that. If we answered privately we could get 100s of questions that are all the same question. Thus, we either answer publicly so everyone can benefit or do not answer at all.

We do have a Discussion Group where people can discuss things in detail and in an on-going basis. It is called the Spiritual Warfare Discussion Group. Even though the primary focus is on spiritual warfare we have forums on it whereby people can discuss anything. But, this question we are discussing here actually does have a spiritual warfare element, as most things in our society today.

All are invited to join the Discussion Group.