Our Grave Moral Responsibility to Vote

Details: 02 November 2012

Next Tuesday, Nov. 6, is general Election Day. In our great nation, we have the privilege and right to vote, thereby freely electing our leaders. Our Catholic faith goes beyond recognizing a right to vote and teaches that we have a "grave moral obligation" to vote.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2240) says "Submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to pay taxes, to exercise the right to vote, and to defend one’s country…" More than 60 years ago, on March 16, 1946, Pope Pius XII said in his "Discourse to Parish Priests" that the "exercise of the right to vote is an act of grave moral responsibility…"

The teachings of our Church make clear our obligation to vote, but what do the teachings tell us about how we are to vote? The Catechism says, "In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law…"

So our faith teaches that our conscience must guide our voting decisions. However, our conscience is not some whimsical voice of our own design. The Catechism says [c]onscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful…The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings." (#2240)

The Catechism also identifies several legitimate sources for the formation of our conscience: The Word of God (Scripture); Examination of our conscience before the Lord’s Cross; The gifts of the Holy Spirit; The witness and advice of others (Saints and holy men and women); and the authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church (#1785).

In addition to helping us form our consciences, the Church also provides us with some overarching principles of social teaching that should provide the lens through which we analyze public policy and our public officials (i.e. for whom to vote). The first principle is human dignity.

"God has imprinted his own image and likeness on man (cf. Gen 1:26), conferring upon him an incomparable dignity," Blessed Pope John Paul II says in Centisimus Annus. "In effect, beyond the rights which man acquires by his own work, there exist rights which do not correspond to any work he performs, but which flow from his essential dignity as a person."

The second principle is solidarity. In Caritas in Veritate Pope Benedict tells us that "[t]he development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side."

Solidarity also encompasses our Lord’s call to love our neighbor, which Pope Benedict says "consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God" (Deus Caritas Est). And solidarity recognizes that "the more that individuals are defenseless…the more they require the care and concern of others, and in particular the intervention of government authority" (John Paul II, Centisimus Annus).

The third principle is subsidiarity. In Quadragesimo Anno (1931), Pope Pius XI said, "It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and industry. So, too, it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and a disturbance of right order to transfer to the larger and higher collectivity functions which can be performed and provided for by the lesser and subordinate bodies."

In analyzing specific issues related to human dignity and rights, Blessed John Paul II made it clear in Christifideles Laici (1988) that not all issues carry the same moral weight: "Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights—for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture—is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination."

So be sure to vote. And be sure to vote with a "well-formed" conscience that is "upright and truthful" and that recognizes our moral obligation to defend the right to life with "maximum determination."

You can contact Greg at The Nebraska Catholic Conference, 215 Centennial Mall South Suite 310, Lincoln, NE 68508; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.