The reading today from the Second Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, we read that Paul sees that there is a permanent opposition between the followers of Christ and the world. The followers of Christ can never be reconciled to the world, because the world is opposed to Christ, because it is ruled by Satan until Christ comes to judge the world and its ruler. Thus, we hear from the Apostle the categorical statement that the temple of God can have nothing to do with the temples of idols, the false gods, formal and informal, to which the world pays adoration.
Because of this permanent opposition between the world and the Kingdom of Heaven (the Church, in other words), the Church takes a very sober and realistic view of the states and governments that are proposed by human beings. In the Church's view there will never be a perfect system that gives us the best candidates for public authority, whether the holders of that public authority be termed kings or emperors or presidents, etc. A perfect system cannot exist in the world, because government systems are made up of human beings and by human beings, individual representatives of a human nature damaged by sin, and, according to the Lord's dictum, "whoever commits sin is a slave of sin."
The Church's view of human systems of government is sober and realistic. Because of the innate imperfection in those systems, it is always the responsibility of Christians, the members of the Body of Christ, to support those candidates for public authority, who will do the least harm. This cannot be stated forcefully enough. The Church, actually, does not bet on civil governments doing any good at all. The support of the Christian people is predicated in every case on the objective calculation that the civil authorities will do the least harm to society over which they preside.
The calculation of the relative harm done to society by the policies of any given candidate for public authority is objective. In other words, there are kinds of harm that are greater than other kinds. Just recently, I noticed that someone had posted what they thought was a real Catholic brainteaser in a comment board on a certain website. The comment posed a hypothetical situation concerning politics in Mexico rather than in the United States. Catholics have a choice between Candidate A, who believes that abortion should remain illegal, but he also wants to enforce the Civil Constitution of the Church (a Mexican law that forbids any and all religious expression, even special clothing worn by priests, nuns, etc., outside of a church building). The Civil Constitution has existed since the 1920s, but has often been largely ignored. The other candidate, Candidate B wants to legalize abortion in all circumstances, but he would leave the Church alone. By this hypothetical situation, the poster believed that he had legitimately stumped Catholics, concerning what option to choose. Nevertheless, even though the poster thought that the question was difficult, it was, in fact, simple, because the Church's traditional ethics require her members to vote for the candidate who will do the least harm. Now, the full enforcement of the Civil Constitution would be harmful to the Church and to society, but the law has been around for a hundred years. The Church has survived despite it. On the other hand, the harm of the Civil Constitution cannot be compared to the harm posed by murder and death. There is no greater harm to society than the murder of its most innocent members. The hypothetical conundrum is not a conundrum at all. The only choice for faithful Catholics is Candidate A. Catholics will pray for his conversion everyday and abortion will remain illegal.
In the same way that this Mexican situation is not really a conundrum, our obligations in the American context are not difficult to ascertain either when the objective harms posed to society are duly weighed. Not all harms are equal, as we can clearly see in the voter guide prepared by Priests for Life and circulated by our bishop.
Let us go forward in this election year with faith in God above everything else, and with prayer for the nation and the world.
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