Chicago Studies Spring/Summer 2020

Catholic Voting: How Ecclesial Authority, Moral Principles, and Prudential Judgment Intersect

By Melanie Susan Barrett, Ph.D., S.T.D. Note: This article is based on a presentation given to the Catholic-Jewish Scholars Dialogue of Chicago on October 20, 2020.

The formal title of my talk is, “Catholic Voting: How Ecclesial Authority, Moral Principles, and Prudential Judgment Intersect.” But the informal title of my talk is, “Don’t Kill the Messenger.” I say that as a joke, but only half-joking, because I realize that this is a heated time in our country, and Americans from all walks of life hold very strong and passionate views about the upcoming election and the respective candidates. Consequently, I’m bound to say something that someone here disagrees with, perhaps even passionately. So I look forward to lively conversation afterward, but let’s bear in mind God’s commandment—which all of us share in common— “thou shalt not murder.”

Also, my main purpose for discussing Catholic voting is not to advise anyone—either Jew or Catholic—how they ought to vote in the upcoming election. Rather, my plan is to use voting as a case study to illustrate how church authority, moral principles, and prudential judgment intersect for Catholics. It is my hope that this will generate fruitful dialogue, as we compare how the process (and the content) is both similar and different across our two traditions.

Catholic Moral Theology Catholics maintain that human reason can arrive naturally at the conclusion that God exists, but that it needs the further assistance of divine revelation to know who God is: for example, that God is not a being within the universe but is the very ground of being itself (Exodus 3:14: “I am Who am”); or that the essence of God is love: that God in fact is a Trinity of three persons, equal in dignity, who love one another eternally. Moreover, along with our Jewish brothers and sisters, Catholics acknowledge that God has revealed himself in the world in a variety of ways: including through creation, the law, and the prophets. Accordingly, we Catholics consider ourselves morally obliged to follow the Ten Commandments. Among them, the most important one—and the foundation of all the rest—is the first: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5).

As Christians, we further believe that God has revealed himself most definitively in a person: the person of Jesus, whom we understand as God’s eternal Word, a Word who became incarnate within a human nature for the sake of human salvation. Because the most definitive revelation of God in the world is not a text but a person, we Catholics look first to the person—his words and his actions, what he said and what he did—to interpret the rest of divine revelation.

Thus, we read both the law and the prophets through the lens of Jesus.

Of particular importance is Jesus’ teaching (found in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke) that the two most important laws are these: to love God (Deuteronomy 6:5), and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18).1 But what does love of neighbor entail? How do we love our neighbor? Jesus gives us many examples. I will mention just three.

First, Jesus reaffirms the commandment against adultery (Exodus 20:14, and Deuteronomy 5:18) but then extends it— “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed