Editor's note: This is the third of five short articles adapted from the Michigan Catholic Conference's fall newsletter, Focus, "A Catholic Approach to Voting in the 2024 Election." To read the full version or to access more election resources for Catholics, visit the Michigan Catholic Conference's election guide.
For faith to inform one’s participation in civic life, forming a Catholic conscience becomes an important and helpful first step.
Conscience, as explained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is the point of judgment where a person recognizes the moral quality of a particular act. Formed according to God’s revelation and the teachings of the Church, conscience helps a person discern how to act in accordance with the truth.
Rather than a mere feeling, or a green light to justify doing anything a person wants, conscience can be thought of as the voice of God within that invites a person to do good, to act justly, and to treat others with dignity and respect. Doing the right thing—particularly in tough situations—is a process that starts with internal listening, continues in prayer, and ends with rejecting an evil or a harmful outcome.
A Catholic conscience, formed according to God's revelation and the teachings of the Church, helps individuals act according to the truth.
A Catholic conscience is best formed through prayer and regular reception of the sacraments, along with reading Scripture and the spiritual and teaching resources handed down by the Church. It is important to recognize certain acts are incompatible with love of God and neighbor and are always opposed to the authentic good of persons. These acts, called intrinsic evils, should always be rejected.
As for how this concept applies to voting, consider the following teachings of the U.S. bishops from their document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship:
- It is essential for Catholics to be guided by a well-formed conscience that recognizes that all issues do not carry the same moral weight and that the moral obligation to oppose policies promoting intrinsically evil acts has a special claim on our consciences and our actions.
- A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who favors a policy promoting an intrinsically evil act, such as abortion, euthanasia, racist behavior, assisted suicide, deliberately subjecting workers or the poor to subhuman living conditions, or redefining marriage in ways that violate its essential meaning, if the voter’s intent is to support that position.
- There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position even on policies promoting an intrinsically evil act may reasonably decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons.
- A candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support. Yet if a candidate’s position on a single issue promotes an intrinsically evil act, such as legal abortion, redefining marriage in a way that denies its essential meaning, or racist behavior, a voter may legitimately disqualify a candidate from receiving support.
- These decisions should consider a candidate’s commitments, character, integrity, and ability to influence a given issue. In the end, this is a decision to be made by each Catholic guided by a conscience formed by Catholic moral teaching.
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