The following political opinions are mine alone.

They are not necessarily those of

the parish or diocese I belong to, nor of the universal Church.
Several people have asked me to put my thoughts on voting down in a single place so that people
who only see snippets of discussions on social media or hear rumors about what I say, don't get
confused about what I am saying.
First, let's realize that popular voting is a relatively recent thing in the history of the world and
even of the Church. Therefore, the ethics of voting isn't something that has an amazingly robust
tradition, compared to, say, the ethics of self-defense. The great moral theologians, St.
Augustine and St. Thomas, died centuries before democratic republics were imagined, and in
the lifetime of St. Alphonsus, only Great Britain, with its parliamentary "mixed monarchy" had
anything like national-level voting. So while we will look back to those saints' thoughts for our
core moral principles, we will have to look more recently for what the Church says about
elections.
I. The Moral Principles Behind Voting
Much has been written by members of the hierarchy about voting, but the most important thing
we have about individual voting is the footnote of Cardinal Ratzinger's 2004 memorandum to
Cardinal McCarrick:
A Catholic would be guilty of formal 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 candidates permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a
Catholic does not share a candidates stand in favour 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.
Perhaps even more important than the argument he is making is his word choice. "Formal
cooperation", "deliberately vote", "remote material cooperation", and "proportionate reasons"
tell us that he (and we can imagine John Paul II) saw the ethics of voting as being clearly a part
of the traditional moral system of object/motive/circumstance, the principle of double effect,
and levels of moral cooperation.
Catholic moral teaching, as taught by St. Thomas and reaffirmed in Veritatis Splendor, holds
that a moral act consists of an object (what I choose), a motive (why I choose it), and
circumstance (the surrounding conditions that pertain the morality of the act). Some people
prefer to call the second element "intention" instead of "motive", but I think "motive" better
expresses in English what is meant here and we need a separate word to describe the fact that
every moral object has a built-in intention. This distinction is absolutely necessary to
understand the principle of double effect (PDE).
Let's use the example of a student tripping me as I pace the aisles. The student's object is
tripping the teacher. But his object is made up of two things: a physical actionextending his leg
into the walkway, and a built-in intentionme falling over. Notice this is different from his
motive. Motives are various, subjective, immaterial, and sometimes mixed. His motive may be
for humor, for revenge for a bad grade, or just to delay taking notes. But his intention, which is
an essential part of the object, is concrete and objective: that I fall. (We have a word for physical
actions without intentions; we call them accidents.) And the circumstances which can affect the

culpability or merit of an act would be things like: I am carrying many test tubes, or carrying a
baby, or we're in a bounce house.
This "Morality 101" stuff may seem tedious but it is indispensable for understanding what voting
is morally because all voting is an exercise in the principle of double effect. Most Christians who
have heard of double effect have been lead to believe it just applies to very rare scenarios like
ectopic pregnancies. No. All medicine, all self defense, and all voting is double effect. If I slice
your trachea in the parking lot with a pocketknife, I'm going to jail for battery and attempted
murder. But if you crush your windpipe chasing an errant pass at a tailgate party and the offduty EMT cuts your trachea with his pocketknife and inserts Big Gulp straw, he's a hero. Why?
Because of his training? No. Because of his motive? Not entirely, because we know that, alone, a
good motive (the end) doesn't justify a bad object (the means). The EMT did good because he
had a good object as well. But wait, didn't we both do the same objectcut your trachea? No. In
double effect scenarios, a circumstance splits apart the usually united physical action and
intention and creates a new, morally good, object. Here the circumstance of a crushed windpipe
splits apart the elements of "trachea cutting" from "loss of oxygen and/or blood" creating a new
object: opening an airway below the blockage. And the motive is to save a life, so all pieces
fit together to make this action good. It still is going to hurt massively, but you're not dead now.
That trade-off is what we call proportionality, the last element of PDE, and proportionality is
everything in this conversation.
Normally, ingesting a poison is a bad thing, but if the new circumstance is a tumor and the
doctor shows up with a new object called "chemotherapy" composed of taking the right kind of
poison with the intention of killing the bad cells faster than the good cells, and you think the
trade-off of puking and losing hair is worth it, you end up opting for this chemotherapy thing
because of the principle of double effect. The principle takes its name from St. Thomas
describing how in self-defense, my physical action of striking an assailant has an intended good
effect (stop the assailant) and an unintended, but foreseen, bad effect (damage or kill him). But
even then I have to think through if it's proportional. If an adult male comes at me with a knife
and I kick him hard in the chest, I say that's proportional. But if a very angry seven-year-old
does the same, I'm not sure it's proportional. In fact, I think I need to do another PDE action: I
will tackle him (physical action) to isolate the knife (intended good effect) to protect us both
(motive) even though either of us might get a superficial cut (unintended bad effect). To learn
more about PDE, see this blog post on this topic from four years ago, which includes cool
diagrams.
The reason we have to go over this is that people keep saying stuff like, "Isn't it obvious who
to vote for? You're making it too complex and nuanced. God wants us to vote for the more prolife candidate from the more pro-life party." Or even "Why do the bishops come out on the death
penalty referendum which isn't even intrinsically wrong all the time but they won't say to vote
for Trump to stop Hillary and save SCOTUS?!" The answer is: because it is nuanced and
complex. The first class in moral theology is always "Principles are crystal clear; application
is tricky." In a democratic republic, we vote for people, not for laws directly (except in the exact
case of ballot referendum which is why bishops can speak differently there). All elected officials
are flawed humans. This immediately puts us at loggerheads with the common voting trope
about choosing the lesser of two evils. People aren't evils. Nope, not even the horrible politicians
of 2016. You are never choosing the lesser of two evils: not with Trump vs. Clinton, not even if
you had Hitler vs. Stalin. You are choosing the greater of two (or more) imperfect goods. This
may seem like mere semantics, but it's actually the only thing that allows you to vote at all. If
you really had to choose between evils, in good conscience you couldn't choose either.

So what are you doing in the voter's booth? You are picking candidates (a physical action) for the
good you think they will do (intended good effect) in spite of the bad you think they will do
(unintended but foreseen bad effect) in order to achieve the most good for the polity (motive).
Every candidate brings with them a mix of the good and the bad and you as the voter have to sift
through that and try to think of the big picture too. So it is a constant exercise in proportionality:
given what I know, which people in which offices bring about the best scenario for good?
II. Voting in a "Two-Party" System
In legislative bodies this can sometimes make for surprising voting. In 2004, I switched my
registration to Pennsylvania so I could vote for pro-abortion Senator Arlen Specter. Now Specter
was running against Joe Hoeffel who was also pro-abortion, but I would have voted Specter even
if Hoeffel was anti-abortion. How? How could I? Because of what Cardinal Ratzinger said:
"When a Catholic does not share a candidates stand in favour 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." I could never vote for a proabortion politician because of his abortion stance (motive) but I could for him in spite of it
(unintended bad effect) in the presence of proportionate reasons. In 2004 the proportionate
reasons were that Specter was a Republican and his first vote in January would be to put the
GOP in charge of the Senate which would help President Bush with judges; so I deemed it
proportionate. Political prudence is tricky. That spring an famous orthodox moral theologian
had even floated that it could be better to vote against Pat Toomey, Specters 100% anti-abortion
challenger in the Republican primary strictly because Specter as incumbent would be more
certain to beat Hoeffel. Maybe so. But I didn't judge that to be proportionate enough to vote
other than pro-life in the primary. But it was a hard call.
In 2000 and 2006, many religious Nebraskans voted against the undeniably anti-abortion Ben
Nelson for the same reason: Nelson's Democratic party in the Senate would be more supportive
of pro-abortion policies and judges. That choice wasn't unbearably hard to stomach because
Republicans Stenberg (2000) and Ricketts (2006) were anti-abortion too. But we can imagine
the struggle if someone like Nelson was squaring off against someone like Specter. I think we
know how many would vote, because we instinctively understand the proportionate reasons
argument even without Ratzinger saying it.
But that's all in the legislatures, where numbers and party control reduces everything to simple
math. What about the executive branch? The same principles of double effect and
proportionality apply, but the offices differ quite a bit. The chief executive nominates everybody,
controls most foreign policy, and handles nuclear weapons. Their only check is from outside
their branch. The holder of this office is singular, ever-visible, and is the de facto head of their
party. I had my high school students try to imagine "the presence of proportionate reasons"
necessary to vote for a pro-abortion President. What would it take? Better economy and
education? Better environment and healthcare? Avoidance of wars and less executions? Many
felt that in America nothing short of two equally pro-abortion candidates would make them ever
choose one of them, if even then. So I switched them to newly-democratic Iraq. Let's say Hasan
and Yusuf are running for chief executive. Hasan was educated in London and is much more
liberal; he supports freedom of religion and women's education but also believes in abortion and
euthanasia. Yusuf is much more traditional; he's intensely opposed to abortion and euthanasia
but he's also backs terrorism, jihad, and the supremacy of Sharia law. Hard call, right?
It's at this point that the discussion of "the presence of proportionate reasons" must go in two
different directions. Most of my audience is Catholic and many are social conservatives so I'm

going to keep using "limiting and/or eliminating abortion" as my example of a determinant

issue. Liberals and libertarians would have their own determinant issues, but you'll see they all
face the same two quandaries of proportionality.
The first is: What if there are policies or qualities you like that are found in the candidate who
has the wrong stance on one of your determinant issues? Many Catholics found things they
greatly liked about John Kerry and Barack Obama. Notice the date of Ratzinger's instruction is
2004. Kerry was an Irish Catholic, opposed to the war, and vocal about many social justice
issues, but he also was undoubtedly pro-abortion. People constantly ask priests "Is it morally
acceptable to vote for X? I know he is pro-abortion, but I really like him for A, B, and C."
According to Cardinal Ratzinger, the answer every priest should be giving back is, "You can
never vote for him because of his abortion stance, but the question you have to ask yourself is:
'Are the things I like in him really proportionate to his approval of abortion?'" Many of us would
say that in Hasan's case they probably are, but in Kerry's case not so much.
The second quandary is the "third party trap", which afflicts stalwarts of both the right and left.
Do you vote in 2000 for the more conservative Buchanan (or more liberal Nader) or settle for
the more centrist Bush (or Gore) because the center candidate can actually win? An unabashed
conservative like me has to ask himself every two and four years if the much greater viability of a
candidate who is anti-abortion-but-with-some-exceptions is proportionate reason enough to not
vote a no-exceptions third party candidate. With Bush, McCain, and Romney, despite many
other things I found wrong, I always found proportionate reasons to choose them over a more
pure, but ultra-longshot, third party pick.
III. Voting in 2016
Thus we come to 2016. Let me make clear that I'm not here to tell anyone how to vote or to tell
anyone their choice is immoraleven those choices I would least imitate. You must inform your
conscience about the relative benefits of the multiple imperfect goods before you, and as you
choose a candidate along with all their liabilities you must ask yourself, "Are there
proportionate reasons for this choice?" If you choose Clinton, you better be able to justify her
mendacity and her open embrace of abortion at all stages. If you choose Trump, you better be
able to justify his rejection of the dignity of women and his disregard for basic civil liberties and
the rule of law. If you choose Johnson, you better be able to justify his party's controversial
"proportional goods" argument for not outlawing abortion. And if you choose Maturen,
McMullin, or any other third party candidate, you better be able to justify choosing somebody
with only a snowball's chance of winning. (For a great discussion of all the considerations a voter
might have this year, see this homily by the Bishop Conley of the Diocese of Lincoln.)
On election night 2012 I heard several pundits say that due to mere demographics,
the Republican Party was effectively finished as a national party and that the imbalance would
only intensify each election cycle. But the Democratic primary of 2016 produced two candidates
almost equally unappealing to the nation as a whole, a man who was openly a socialist and a
woman who seemed wrapped in shady deals and truth twisting. But the Democrats were spared
serious opposition when the Republicans chose Donald Trump, a candidate who has rejected the
best tenets of conservatism while imbibing the worst ideas of modern liberalism. In the months
following his rise, the GOP embraced not just Trump but Trumpism: an ugly nativism that
threatens Latinos and Muslims, a subtle and not-so-subtle misogyny that labels any woman who
speaks up against injustice or violence as a pawn of political correctness and man-hating, and a
disregard for civil liberties for anyone other than the small circle of "real Americans". All this
while turning a blind eye to Trump's lifelong embrace of big government, abortion, liberal social

mores, government interference, and, most recently, his bragging about sexually assaulting
women.
For many social conservatives, the chief excuse for allowing a non-conservative to head up the
Republican ticketbesides sheer dislike for Clinton and Obama, fed by years of echo-chamber
Fox News and talk radiohas been stopping Hillary's appointees to the Supreme Court. I hear
daily from faith-filled people about how they are truly repulsed by Trump, but on the other hand
"What about SCOTUS?" This week though, Mr. Trump has allowed us all to dispense with the
notion than he gives two hoots about the Supreme Court. No matter who wins the presidency,
conservative judges only get on SCOTUS if the GOP holds the Senate. A Republican Congress
was a lock in January, but not only has toxic Trumpism endangered the down-ballot in
battleground states, this week Trump's team took to encouraging his followers to
abandon Republicans who aren't in lockstep with himpeople who haven't even unendorsed
himincluding his own Speaker of the House. Meanwhile the frothing speeches at Trump's
rallies have become even more vitriolic, more bizarre. He now openly mocks the rule of law,
whether it be changing libel laws to prosecute newspapers, signaling vendettas against Clinton
and liberal media outlets, making claims of voter rigging, and even insinuating a need for
revolution.
To me then, there is more that proportionate reasons to vote for another candidateor maybe
even any other adult American with a high school educationover this man who spent forty
years as a country club liberal, turned into a fringy "birther" conservative, and ends his career
attacking supportive conservatives and talking like a revolutionary demagogue. I believe such
voting is proportionate because of both his manifest unfitness as a candidate and the damage his
movement is doing to social conservatism as a whole.
What are social and fiscal conservatives to think of Donald Trump in 2016? For decades he
financially backed liberal politicians and specifically gave huge sums to Senator Hillary Clinton
and to the Clinton Foundation. I think there are only two scenarios to explain his changes, both
of which demand of my conscience that I do not vote for him. The best case scenario is that
nothing changed in Trump: he is the Clintons' wealthy liberal friend who is helping Hillary out
by sounding nationalist dogwhistles to gather xenophobes to himself and drive moderates
toward her, and with a little luck he will tar the rest of the GOP with the fringe stuff he says to
hurt both the down-ballot and the conservative brand for years to come. This might explain why
every time his poll numbers close in on Clinton's he said something newly inflammatory and
why he is now attacking even Congressmen who endorsed him. If this is the case, then
Republicans lost the White House the moment Trump secured the nomination, and maybe lost
Congress and their good name long before that.
What on earth could be a worse scenario than that? This: that something horrible changed in
Trump, and he actively believes the things he says about Latinos, Muslims, Blacks and women.
That he really thinks we should do "things worse than waterboarding" to prisoners of war, kill
the families of terrorists, and punish officers who refuse to do these literal war crimes. And this
all while holding to his previous love of big government and casual disdain for civil liberties. If
this is the case, then I believe we must repudiate him all the more as being a angry demagogue
with zero respect for human dignity, who would equate conservatism with reactionary nativism,
misogyny, and extrajudicial violence in the minds of Americans for years to come.
In either scenario, I believe it is not enough for Donald Trump to lose. For the health of the
nation, for conservatism, or even just for a sane second party to keep existing, he can't even lose
in an electoral landslide. No, to make it clear to voters two years (and two hundred years) from

now that The Party of Lincoln didn't end in this state, it must be seen that Republicans en
masse walked away from Trumpism, whether Trump is a plant or he really means it. Support
the senators, reps, and state officials you deem best, but let him lose the popular vote like
nobody has since George McGovern. To quote Ben Shapiro:
But its not just about losing the presidency and losing the Senate and House. Trump has
done something else, too: by forcing Republicans to lash themselves to the Trumpian
Titanic as it takes on water, hes forced them to destroy their own arguments and their
own cause. Republicans have spent decades fighting the leftist false narrative of a broad
American war on women and now [Republicans are] spending all their time writing off
talk of sexual assault as locker room talk. Republicans have spent decades telling voters
that character matters and then when their candidate brags about attempting to f***
married women, they shrug it off by citing King David in Biblically illiterate fashion.
Republicans have said that theyre not racist and neither is America and then brushed
off a guy who went easy on the KKK and used "textbook racism" against a judge of
Mexican descent.
Some have suggested that #NeverTrump is the result of some sort of idealogical puritanism that
doesn't want to sully itself with boorish Trump. But I hope you can see here that this has nothing
to do with purity, but is in fact 100% strategy. Run now in order to live another day. Lose the
battle in order to keep fighting the war. The purists are the ones who complained that Romney
wasn't pure enough and instead sought candidates from the furthest edge of the Overton
window. The problem in the GOP the last eight years hasn't been too much compromise and too
little purity, but the opposite. Ted Cruz embodies pure, uncompromising Tea Party doctrine;
Donald Trump is pure, uncompromising America First ideology. Mrs. Clinton was too tainted
to hold the center herself, so her greatest hope was that the GOP would pick a candidate of
immoderate policy and temperament. Voil!
Look, I know who Hillary Clinton is. I know what her thoughts are on abortion and the Supreme
Court. We've all known what she thinks of organized religion and, thanks to WikiLeaks,
specifically what she thinks of orthodox Catholics. We all know her penchant for stretching the
truth. But, personally, I think a clear enemy is easier to live with than a false friend. Please read
about how much liberals wanted Trump to be nominee back in February. They saw him then;
why couldnt conservatives? Yes, I know what I am advocating will ensure (barring a miracle via
Utah or New Mexico) a Clinton victory. However, if Republicans lose with some self-respect
intact, they can live another day; but whether you win or lose with Trump as your flag-bearer,
liberals can pin every Trumpism on you for decades.
This then brings us back to the Supreme Court, which is where most Clinton/Trump debates
return to these days because many social conservatives feel that despite all the other points that
I and #NeverTrumpers make, it is still better "to take a chance on even possibly getting
conservative justices from Trump rather than to get liberals from Hillary for sure." (See the
problem with the "Dumb and Dumber" argument here.) Below are five points to answer the
SCOTUS question.
1) Presidents alone don't determine the Supreme Court. The Senate is almost more important
because it can block extreme justices and approve others. Therefore, not only should people
focus on the Senate, but any Senator in danger should be encouraged to distance herself from
Trump. That Trump abandons and attacks fellow Republicans shows that, either because of his
pride or actual collusion, he wants to remove this firewall and is not really pro-life.

2) I don't believe for a second what Trump says about choosing anti-abortion justices. This is a
man whose signature policythe one that made him famous and probably got him the
nominationwas extreme immigration control, but in late August he reversed that and took a
position basically identical to Barack Obama's, and then reversed it again after a week.
Regarding abortion itself, as late as March he was praising Planned Parenthood, and later that
month he changed his abortion position five times in three days.
3) Some people have claimed that Trump will have to stick to his promised list of SCOTUS
nominees or "we will vote him out in four years." Really? You're really going to vote him out if
he's the sitting president and there's another Hillary or the next Obama waiting in 2020? Bull.
He owns you if you make him the incumbentand for the exact same reasons he has you pinned
down now.
4) I think it would be better to have a Senate with a clear opponent in Mrs. Clinton than to have
to deal with barely-conservative picks from Trump. What is worse: Clinton putting up four
radical pro-aborts you can fight, or Trump giving you two soft conservatives and two nonconservatives that you can't reasonably oppose? Hence the popularity this year of the Alexander
Hamilton quote: "If we must have an enemy at the head of the Government, let it be one whom
we can oppose and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the
disgrace of his foolish and bad measures."
5) If Solon the Greek were alive today he'd say, "Call no president happy until he and his
SCOTUS picks are deceased", meaning every president is just waiting for his Supreme Court
picks to fail him. Republicans have had a disproportionately high number of Court nominations,
and yet those gave us Roe vs. Wade and Planned Parenthood vs. Casey. These fallen justices
have ranged from full traitors (Souter) to "not total surprises" (Day-O'Conner and Kennedy) to
"good but still faulty" (Roberts). The point is: even really good Presidents, making really good
picks have, at worst, been horribly betrayed and, at best, still been disappointed that things
couldn't change under them. If Reagan got Kennedy and H.W. Bush got Souter, what will even
Trump's very best pick turn into?
Summary: President Hillary Clinton may not be as capable of the evil you fear (if Trump hasn't
already fragged the Senate) and President Donald Trump is almost certainly not going to deliver
the good you hope forthough he may cost you it in the long run.
IV. Concluding Thoughts
There is no joy in this for me. It feels like an intervention to talk a loved one into going to rehab.
Realize that in no scenario do I get to be the "good guy". If Clinton wins and is unkind to the
people and policies that matter to me, we who opposed Trump will be told for four years that
this was our fault. If Trump gets elected and is a train wreck, I get the small satisfaction of being
right, but then have to watch as conservatism gets one black eye after another and slides toward
a long political winter. And if Trump wins and suddenly becomes sane, charitable, and
conservative, I will be at my happiest, but proven very wrong. So literally I have to pray that I'll
be made a fool, while assuming I'll just be called a fool when Hillary wins.
But all is not dark, largely because many of the issues that matter most to us aren't even political
issues. They are cultural issues that only become political issues every two or four years. I have
words planned for both parties come November 9th, but for now I leave you with a conversation
I had with a friend who is a young mom. She messaged me: "Ok... so, say a Catholic lady votes
third party or doesn't vote at all. What is recommended she do when Hillary is elected? How

does she go about 'saving the conservative movement' on a practical level in her everyday life,
since it seems as though she has no influence in what goes on in the White House or the
Supreme Courts, other than the rare occasion to vote for a new president every four years?"
I typed back: "We were only ever really going to save the conservative movement by what we do
at home, in families, and in neighborhoods. In 1992, when Planned Parenthood vs. Casey
reached SCOTUS, 7 of the 9 justices were appointed by GOP presidents. 3 of those 7 sided with
PP and that was our best chance in the last 43 years to undo Roe. Two lessons from that: 1) put
not your trust in princes, let alone presidents who can't control justices after their nomination,
and 2) what has worked over the last 40+ years is talking, teaching, educating, providing local
crisis pregnancy help, and removing the incentives to abortion. I don't think Roe is going away
in my lifetime. There are too many lawyers>judges>justices who are inured to it. The Hyde
Amendment exists, but the feds give PP money anyway. Politics is downstream of culture. Raise
a good family, help those you can locally to make good life choices, vote in ways that don't
jeopardize the good we can do by hitching it to the wagon of a liberal con man who is neither
fiscally or socially conservative but who will sprinkle in some racism, xenophobia, and misogyny
(under the guise of being "Not PC") in order to fire up the people already reacting to the last 30
years of liberalism."
In other words, part of the proportionate means for voting for someone other than Mr. Trump,
is the reality that we live for goods proportionally much greater than a single offices seat.

Addendum: In the days since I wrote this, the third debate took place. Many pro-life
conservatives were greatly heartened by Mr. Trump's denunciation of Mrs. Clinton on late term
abortion, and they contend that it proves his bona fides on the topic. I'm not convinced. What I
heard and saw was not exactly someone who had knowledge or conviction about the topic. It
looked to me like an adviser said "You need to pin the gruesomeness of late-term abortion on
her to secure a wavering conservative Christian base," and then proceeded to give him a one
minute description of partial birth abortion to which he half paid attention, blending it with
memories of standard atrocity propaganda from history books that talk about "babies ripped
from their mother's wombs", and then when it came up in a debate he leveled the charge against
with lots of strength and next to no accuracy. And it worked. My social media feeds were full the
next day with posts about Trump the hero of the unborn. Trump's words, and the response he
got, fulfilled these words written the Friday before the debate.