This is the first post in a brief series of reflections in the weeks leading up to the U.S. election on Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the U.S. Catholic bishops’ voting guide. Posts in the series will be published about once per week.
On the return flight from his trip to southeast Asia last month, Pope Francis was asked by a reporter what advice he would give to a Catholic voter in the United States, given that one candidate supports nearly unlimited access to abortion and the other is promising the mass deportation of millions of immigrants. In response, Francis pointed out that both stances are “anti-life” and then explained:
You have to vote, and you have to choose the lesser evil. What is the lesser evil? That woman, or that man? I don’t know. Each one, in his or her conscience, must think and do this.
Francis’s remark garnered a great deal of attention because it is rare for a pope to intervene so explicitly in American elections. Still, his statement was judicious, pointing out that both major-party candidates promote policies that Catholic teaching considers seriously evil, while leaving it to individuals’ consciences to decide which candidate will best promote the common good.
Francis’s approach to voting is more or less in line with that laid out by the U.S. Catholic bishops in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the voting guide produced by the bishops to help the Catholic faithful think through their voting decisions. The document states, for example, that Catholics ought to participate in political life in light of their own conscience, properly formed by the Church’s social teaching, and that it is not the role of the bishops to tell the faithful who to vote for, or who not to vote for (#7). Forming Consciences also proposes that Catholic voters should consider a number of issues impacting the common good, weighing candidates’ positions against each other.
Still, the phrase “lesser evil” does not appear in Forming Consciences, and perhaps for good reason. Describing voting as choosing the lesser evil can reinforce the notion that politics is a sordid affair and that only the corrupt and vainly ambitious would adopt a political vocation. In his response to the pope’s comments, National Catholic Reporter commentator Michael Sean Winters points out that “[W]e are choosing candidates, not issues, when we vote”; to say that we must choose the lesser evil suggests that both candidates are evil persons, and yet it is not our place as Christians to make such a judgment. Thinking of voting in terms of the “lesser evil” also ignores that ultimately political participation, including the act of voting, should be aimed at promoting the common good, not just minimizing evil. Pope Francis himself, in his 2015 address to the U.S. Congress, declared that politics can be a noble vocation:
Politics is . . . an expression of our compelling need to live as one, in order to build as one the greatest common good: that of a community which sacrifices particular interests in order to share, in justice and peace, its goods, its interests, its social life.
That being said, in our current political moment, we are in many ways far from this ideal, and, as Francis noted, both major parties in the U.S. have adopted stances that are “anti-life.” Making a conscientious decision about voting means considering the evils political leaders are likely to perpetrate and how our votes will facilitate those evils, but also how inaction may lead to evil, as well. Therefore, considering the “lesser evil” when we vote may be appropriate after all, even if it should not be our only consideration.
The Principle of the Lesser Evil
But what do we mean by the “lesser evil”? The term is used in multiple ways in Catholic moral theology, two of which are reflected in Forming Consciences, even if the term itself is not used.
In his Handbook of Roman Catholic Moral Terms, James T. Bretzke, S.J. defines the principle of the lesser evil as stating, “If we cannot ‘avoid’ evil entirely, then at least we should reduce the evil caused if this be in our power” (p. 137). This principle particularly applies in cases where someone materially cooperates in another’s sin to in some way make the other person’s action less sinful or less harmful, either to themselves or others. Bretzke cites a commonly mentioned contemporary example: a clean needle-exchange program for drug addicts that diminishes the chances of spreading infectious diseases. Although this may seem to encourage drug use, under certain circumstances (for example, if the participants are also provided opportunities for rehabilitation) such a program could be morally justified.
This principle appears in Forming Consciences, even if not by name. The bishops write:
Sometimes morally flawed laws already exist. In this situation, the process of framing legislation to protect life is subject to prudential judgment and “the art of the possible.” At times this process may restore justice only partially or gradually.
They then go on to cite Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, where the latter argued that it was morally permissible for a politician to support a law or policy that permits abortion while placing some restrictions on the practice if such a law replaces a more permissive law, or prevents a more permissive law from being implemented instead. Although in the abstract it may appear that the politician is supporting a law that considered in itself is unjust, John Paul concludes: “This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects” (#73). This principle is particularly relevant in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which left the abortion issue up to each state to legislate. Catholic voters and politicians must now make informed decisions about a variety of different bills and propositions in light of both the responsibility to protect the dignity of human life and the political realities of the state in which they reside.
The principle of lesser evil is also reflected in a more general way in Forming Conscience‘s insistence that our participation in the political process “should help transform the party to which we belong” (#14), rather than leaving us transformed by our partisanship in ways that dull our consciences and lead us to lend our support to positions that are evil or unjust. In the contemporary political landscape, the platforms of the major political parties include a mixture of good and evil, but our participation in these institutions, or at least lending our support to them by voting, can be justified if we do what is in our power to draw them closer to our ideals as conscientious Catholics.
The Principle of Double Effect
When Pope Francis spoke about voting for the lesser evil, however, he was not referring to the formal principle of the lesser evil just described. Rather, he seems to have been thinking of how the concept of the “lesser evil” is sometimes used in relation to what is known as the principle of double effect. This principle is used in moral theology in cases where a particular action may involve both good and evil, or more specifically where the action leads to both good and bad effects (hence double effect). The principle is usually broken down into four points:
- The action being considered cannot be evil in itself, i.e. intrinsically evil, even if it brings about something good (in other words, you can’t do evil so that good comes from it).
- The intention for performing the action must be to bring about its good effect; one cannot perform an action, even one that is good in itself, with the intent of bringing about an evil outcome.
- The good effect of the action cannot be caused by the evil effect.
- There must be a proportionate reason for permitting the evil effect, or in other words the good to be brought about must outweigh the evil.
This principle is used in perhaps the most well-known passages of Forming Consciences. The document explains that democratic political life involves debate over several actions that are gravely and intrinsically evil, ranging from abortion, human cloning, and euthanasia, to torture, the deliberate targeting of civilians in war, and genocide, to exploiting workers and acts of racism (##22-23). When a political party or candidate supports a policy that either carries out any of these actions or facilitates them, it would be wrong for a Catholic voter to lend their support to that party or candidate precisely because of their stance on that issue (#34).
On the other hand, in a situation where a party or candidate supports a policy lending support to intrinsically evil actions, a Catholic voter can support that party or candidate if it is for what the bishops call “morally grave reasons” (#35). The implication here is that the morally grave reasons for voting for this particular candidate must in some sense outweigh their support for an evil or unjust policy. The bishops, therefore, have presented voters with a clear-cut application of the principle of double effect. This process of weighing issues against each other should not be thought of as a mathematical formula, since the goodness or badness of policies cannot really be quantified (which is not to say that the number of unborn children aborted each year, or the number of civilians killed in Gaza or elsewhere, or the economic disparities between racial groups in the U.S. can’t be quantified…). Conscientious voting is more of an art, and a number of factors need to be considered, including the likelihood a politician will be able to implement particular policies given their position and the institutional obstacles they face, and the way that policies often intersect (for example, better maternal care and anti-poverty measures would likely have a positive impact on reducing the number of abortions).
Voting in the U.S., then, according to Forming Consciences, does involve weighing which candidate will bring about the lesser evil, as Pope Francis said, although one could equally say that it involves weighing which choice will bring about the greater good, as long as this is not understood in a purely utilitarian sense.
Beyond the Lesser Evil
In a recent interview with Paul Fahey on the Third Space podcast, I provided a brief history of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ voting guide, which has taken many forms over the years since it was first published in 1976. We then discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the current version of the document. Among its strengths, I noted that it provides Catholics with a common language for thinking through the voting decision even if leaving voters the freedom to follow their own informed consciences and vote for different candidates.
Perhaps its greatest weakness, however, in my opinion, is its nearly exclusive focus on the conscience of the individual voter at the expense of encouraging Catholics to contribute to promoting the health of our “political ecology” here in the United States. Building a healthier political ecology would involve promoting civic and community engagement and forms of dialogue across partisan divides at the local level, but also would mean defending the institutions of democratic life, including protecting voting rights, diminishing the role of money in politics, and ensuring that the rule of law is applied to those who wield political power. Although certainly recognizing its weaknesses as a form of government, the bishops should encourage Catholics to offer a rousing defense of democracy.
Pope Francis’s framing of the issue of voting in terms of choosing the lesser evil falls into the same individualistic trap. By putting the emphasis on minimizing evil with our vote, the focus turns to maintaining our own purity rather than engaging in the admittedly messy process of working with our neighbors, who undoubtedly hold opinions in support of things we consider evil or unjust, to promote the policies we do hold in common and to strengthen our community’s democratic institutions. To be fair, the question which was posed to Francis was framed in terms of the policies supported by each of the two candidates that run counter to Catholic teaching, and as I already mentioned, the pope has provided a more positive, thoroughgoing vision of political life in his address to the U.S. Congress.
Writing at The Pillar, JD Flynn is less critical of Francis’s appeal to choose the lesser evil than to his insistence that “you have to vote.” If both major candidates are in support of serious evils, shouldn’t a faithful Catholic at least consider the option of withholding their vote in protest? That would not be the same thing as not voting out of indifference or laziness. Flynn points out that the U.S. bishops keep this possibility open, stating that, when faced with a difficult choice like that we face today, a Catholic voter “may decide to take the extraordinary step of not voting for any candidate” (#36). To be fair, Pope Francis’s remark has to be read in the context of the preceding sentence: “In political morality, in general they say that if you don’t vote, it’s not good, it’s bad. You have to vote . . .” By pointing out that in general it is bad not to vote, the door is potentially left open for exceptional circumstances in which a person’s conscience demands that they withhold their vote. The pope’s intent seems to have been to emphasize that voting is a civic obligation, not to lay down an absolute norm.
Similarly, in the interview I mentioned previously, Fahey notes that Francis’s remarks about the U.S. election seem to rule out voting for a third party. But here again, Francis was asked specifically about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. It’s also worth pointing out that both his native Argentina and Italy, the two political systems with which he is most familiar, are multiparty democracies where the concept of a “third party” is not relevant (although for the past few decades there have been several attempts to create a “third pole,” or third electoral bloc, independent of the Left and Right in Italy, but that is somewhat different). I think Pope Francis was simply responding to the candidates with whom an international observer of U.S. politics would be familiar, and therefore he shouldn’t be understood as ruling out a third-party vote.
This side of the eschaton, political life will always be marred by structures of sin, and in the American context, this means we face difficult choices at the ballot box. As Pope Francis explains, voting can be understood as choosing the lesser evil, but as I have argued, it is perhaps even more so a choice about how we can best pursue the common good. The U.S. bishops Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, although imperfect, provides us a shared framework for thinking about these choices and makes clear that Catholics can, in good conscience, exercise a variety of options when it comes to voting (or not) as they strive to engage in faithful political participation.
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