In this episode, Trent shares a portion of his talk “Faith in the Voting Booth” and discusses the nature of prudential judgments. He also answers questions on voting submitted by supporters of Catholic Answers.
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent:
We’re just a few weeks away from the election, and four years away from the election after that, and eight years away from the election after that, because it never ends. Oh goodness. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologists and speaker Trent Horn. Tonight I’m going to be doing a special webinar for Catholic Answers called Faith in the Voting Booth, but I actually gave this presentation, I’m going to give it tonight. Faith in the Voting Booth, and then I’m going to do a live Q and A session with Mr. Cy Kellett. It’s open to the general public, but I actually gave the presentation Faith in the Voting Booth, I gave that about a month ago to a select group of supporters at Catholic Answers. So I wanted to share some of that with you today. It was a section on prudential judgements.
So last week we talked about faith in the voting booth, so to speak. We talked about voting when it comes to the issue of abortion, is abortion the most preeminent issue? Could you ever vote for a pro-choice politician, and if so, what are the circumstances you could vote for them for. If you want to check out that episode, if you missed it, it’s last week, it’s called Faith, Abortion and Voting. Highly recommend that, but today what I want to focus on are prudential judgments. So I have a section of my talk dealing with Catholics and voting. What is a prudential judgment? What are issues that we can reasonably disagree on, and how do we make prudential judgements? Is that the same thing as a subjective judgment? You will find out about all that and more in today’s episode, along with the Q and A that I did with the supporters at that previous talk. Though I do want to give two announcements though, related to our patrons at trenthornpodcast.com.
First, you can now give annually to us at trentornpodcast.com. Your support is what makes the podcast possible, allows us to grow in different areas on YouTube to do dialogue, to do debates. I’m very grateful. Now we have another way that you can support the podcast. So if you would prefer to give a one time gift every year as opposed to a monthly gift to the podcast, you can do that. Just go to Patreon, and if you are a currently existing patron, you can go, and you can change your gift from monthly to annual. Or if you’d like to consider supporting the podcast, you can give an annual gift, and you can join our tiered membership at a 15% discount. So starting at just $5 a month, you get exclusive access to being able to comment on the episodes, to message me, to submit questions for our future open mailbag episodes.
In fact, next month, I’m going to do an open mailbag on morality and politics. So if you have a question about Catholic moral teaching, even if it bleeds into political issues, I will happily answer that. We’re not going to turn this into some kind of political talk show or something like that, but I think it’s important. These other issues do come up where we make prudential judgements, and I’m happy to talk about them. So if you want to submit a question for that open mailbag or any future open mailbag, we’ll be doing here on the podcast, consider becoming a patron, and if you sign up to be an annual subscriber, so if you make an annual gift that covers your 12 months of your subscription, you get a 15% discount on your tier membership.
So for example, if you choose to give $5 a month to join us at the bronze tier, that’s about $60 a year, but if you give annually, I think that drops down to about $50 a year. Once again, I’m grateful for your support, your financial support, your prayers. I think this podcast is reaching lots of people. We’ve had cumulatively close to 4 million downloads of the episodes of this podcast over the past two years. It’s reaching a lot of people, and I think it’s really equipping them to joyfully and articulately share their Catholic faith. I’m also really excited the podcast has grown so much.
We have many non-Catholic listeners to the podcast, and I’m grateful that you are listening, that you just enjoy truth. You enjoy much of the common ground we share, whether you’re one of our Protestant brothers and sisters, or maybe you’re even a non-religious person, who’s just enjoys good discussions about important issues. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m grateful for everybody’s support, and if you want to keep the podcast growing, consider becoming a patron at trenthornpodcast.com. You get access to bonus content. You make the podcast possible, and I am so grateful for that. Now without further ado, here’s my discussion of prudential judgements, and my talk Faith in the Voting Booth, and then answering Q and A from our wonderful supporters here at Catholic Answers.
So some people mandate that Catholics must support certain social or economic policies, when in reality, a Catholic could refrain from doing that, because questions involving those issues, like precise tax rates, or certain kinds of wage laws, involve prudential judgements. This can lead Christians to reasonably disagreeing with one another. Here’s what the catechism says about prudence. It says, “Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it. With the help of this virtue, we apply moral principles to particular cases without error and overcome doubts about the good to achieve, and the evil to avoid.” All right, now, pointing out that sometimes political questions involve prudential judgements, it doesn’t mean that all judgment is reserved to the individual so Catholics can just do whatever they want, and their choices or their votes don’t matter. Because prudence is concerned with choosing the good, a prudential judgment does not reflect a merely subjective preference. So we can be held morally accountable for the judgments we make in these matters.
Neither are questions involving prudential judgment, like the question, well, which ice cream flavor should I eat, questions about a matter of taste that have no right answer, but unlike principles of doctrine and morality, the church has not definitively taught which specific answers the faithful should embrace when it comes to implementing moral principles like justice or care for the poor in the public sphere. In some cases, differing geographical, cultural, social or economic circumstances could change which answer is most appropriate for a given community. That’s why individual Catholics can propose their own answers to these questions, provided that those answers are faithful to the explicit teachings of the church. For example, consider the question, should we raise the minimum wage? Everyone can agree that it’s a revealed and non-negotiable truth that Jesus wants us to help the poor. A solution like social Darwinism, that proposes we ought to let the poor die out, is simply off the table, but the church has not described in every detail how we should help the poor.
It’s a prudential matter, a matter of what is practically most effective. So believers can disagree on, and better still, constructively debate with solid evidence, whether something like a minimum wage increase accomplishes that particular goal of helping the poor. Catholics are free to disagree with one another on these matters without being guilty of endorsing sin, even if their disagreement is with the Bishop or the Pope. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith taught, “When it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question.” Now, this does not mean that the prudential judgements of the magisterium carry no weight when we make our own judgments, and so they can just be ignored.
The CDF also said, “it would be contrary to the truth if proceeding from some particular cases, one were to conclude that the Church’s magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgements, or that it does not enjoy divine assistance in the integral exercise of its mission.” What the church teaches on matters involving prudential judgment, either through the teachings of the Pope in an encyclical, or the recommendations of the College of Bishops, should be given proper consideration.
For example, the USCCB, or the United States Conference of Catholic bishops says in its Faithful Citizenship Voting Guide, “Prudential judgment is also needed and applying moral principles to specific policy choices in areas such as armed conflict, housing, healthcare, immigration, and others. This does not mean that all choices are equally valid, or that our guidance, and that of other church leaders, is just another political opinion or policy preference among many others. Rather, we urge Catholics to listen carefully to the Church’s teachers when we apply Catholic social teaching to specific proposals and situations. The judgements and recommendations that we make as bishops on such specific issues do not carry the same moral authority as statements of universal moral teachings. Nevertheless, the church’s guidance on these matters is an essential resource for Catholics, as they determine whether their own moral judgments are consistent with the gospel and with Catholic teaching.”
Now, when someone declares that Jesus would support a particular prudential judgment with the same certainty we have on revealed matters of doctrine and morals, and so good Christians must support this judgment or else they’re guilty of disobeying the teaching of the church, that’s when we have a problem. For example, back in 2012, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan proposed a federal budget that some critics claim stood in contradiction to Ryan’s own Catholic values. Headlines included accusations like, “Jesus would oppose the Paul Ryan budget,” and, “Paul Ryan’s Budget. Not what Jesus would do.”
The National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen, Jr. asked Archbishop Chaput, “What about the wing of the church that says a party that supports the Ryan budget also ought to cause concern?” The Archbishop may have had the more radical charges against the Ryan budget in his mind when he replied with the following. So Archbishop Chaput told Allen, Jr., “Jesus tells us very clearly that if we don’t help the poor, we’re going to hell, period. There’s just no doubt about it.” This has to be a foundational concern of Catholics and of all Christians, but Jesus didn’t say the government has to take care of them, or that we have to pay taxes to care for them. Those are prudential judgements. Anybody who would condemn someone because of their position on taxes is making a leap that I can’t make as a Catholic. You can’t say that somebody’s not Christian because they want to limit taxation.
Again, I’m speaking only for myself, but I think that’s a legitimate position. It may not be the correct one, but it’s certainly a legitimate Catholic position. Notice also what Archbishop Chaput said here before I continue. He says, speaking for himself, he thinks it’s legitimate, Paul Ryan’s position. He says “It may not be the correct one.” That underscores that we have to use prudence when we’re making prudential judgements, and it’s not radically subjective. We could be wrong about them. So we have to pursue the good, and then listen to the Church’s advice, and consider it soundly. He goes on to say, “It’s certainly a legitimate Catholic position, and to say that it’s somehow intrinsically evil, like abortion, doesn’t make any sense at all.”
So we should do that when we bring our faith into the voting booth, and we’re called to bring our faith into the voting booth. We don’t stop being Catholics when we enter the ballot box. We’re charged there to exercise our vote, to promote the common good, but also to understand that not every issue is created equally. Some issues are more preeminent than others, and the right to life, especially the cause of abortion in the unborn, is the most preeminent issue of all.
That should guide us, ultimately, in our decisions of who we choose to hold to elected office. The Psalms say, “Don’t put your trust in princes, for they return to the dust of the earth.” So politicians cannot solve every problem we have, and they can’t even solve the issue of abortion in its entirety, but the right politicians can certainly help us advance the cause of life, and the wrong ones can cause great harm to the cause of life, and that has to be taken into account when we bring our faith into the voting booth. So I hope that was a helpful introduction to the issue, and then we’ll open it up for questions. I’ll turn it back.
Cy Kellett:
Thank you, Trent. That was excellent. As always, we tend to turn to Trent on issues, just discussions on issues just like this. He does a very good job with it, and we appreciate him contributing to the conversation of course. Let’s see, we’re going to start with questions here, and once again, just to reiterate, if you do have questions, please just enter them into the question box, and we will take them as they come. The first question we’ll address this evening. Trent, Santiago asks, as Catholics. why are we finding it difficult to vote with what our faith teaches and go with the flow, and not using our god given gift of reason?
Trent:
Well, it’s going to be, that’s a good question, Santiago. It’s going to be different for every person as to why they have trouble voting in accord with the Catholic faith. For some people it’s just poor catechetics, especially when you look at people who go into the ballot box, identify as Catholic, and they vote. Look, we saw that survey recently that said 70% of Catholics, Catholic in quotation marks, don’t believe Christ is really present in the Eucharist. Now, that number drops to 30% among weekly attending Mass goers, but it’s still pretty bad. So, I think there’s a failure of catechetics of understanding what our faith teaches and also this mistaken idea that the Constitution mandates a separation of church and state.
The separation of church and state is not found in the Constitution. It’s a phrase that comes from a letter by Thomas Jefferson, to the Danbury Baptists saying that there’d be, and in fact, the phrase doesn’t come up in the Supreme Court until the 1950s, talking about this idea. Rather, the principle behind it is better enshrined in the First Amendment, which just says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. There won’t be a national church.”
That’s what the founders fled in the first place, but it doesn’t say that you can’t bring your religious principles to the ballot box, and you should, especially because there are religious principles that apply to everybody. Yeah, you can’t vote for a law that says everybody has to go to Mass. There was actually a conspiracy theory saying we want to do that. It’s called the National Sunday Law Movement. We’re not going to do that, but you can vote for a law that mandates principles of morality, rational people can agree with.
If you arrested a shoplifter, the shoplifter can’t say, “Hey, you’re imposing the Seventh Commandment on me. Thou shall not steal.” That’s just a basement moral principle rational people agree to. The same is true for killing. Killing the unborn, killing any human being. It’s a basic moral principle we all hold, and it should be applied to the unborn with basic principles of reason. I’d also add, a point that I bring up in my talk would be this, that when we choose to vote for people, this is the principle I think we should follow. Why would we ever vote for a candidate who thinks that some people aren’t people? I would just tell people that. I didn’t vote for Candidate A, because he thinks some people aren’t people. He doesn’t think the unborn are persons. Why would I vote for a candidate like that?
I would never vote for a candidate who thought a certain race were not people, or a certain nationality, or people with certain disabilities weren’t persons. Why would I vote for a candidate who thinks that the unborn are not persons? The only time I would do that would be if there are two candidates, and they both think the unborn are not persons, but one will treat the unborn better than the other. In that case, it’s a lesser of two evils. Otherwise, if it’s a choice between someone who believes all people are people, and some people are not people, I think the choice should be pretty obvious.
Cy Kellett:
Second question. This is from Jill, and Jill asks, “There are many ways to be poor, are there not? I sometimes feel guilty for not helping in a soup kitchen or something along those lines, but rather, I do consider leading a Bible study a means of helping people who are poor in knowledge.
Trent:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
How would you assess that?
Trent:
Sure. So I think the tagline here is, the concern, and Jill is asking the question, “Well, am I helping the poor? Am I making sure, am I allowing the poor to be destitute?” We should not ignore the poor. There are people who are poor in all different kinds of ways. That’s correct. There are those who have spiritual poverty and those that have material poverty, and Jesus calls us to minister to both. It’s not an either or proposition. Now, it’s up to us to pray and discern in our conscience if we have sufficiently helped the poor. We can take in mind that there are various ways that we do help the poor. For example, a portion of our income in the United States goes towards social programs that do help the poor. When we contribute to various funds in the church, that often helps the poor as well.
So one should contribute with the resources they have, whether it’s time, talent, or treasure, how they are helping those in material poverty and spiritual poverty. You’re at great risk of your spiritual health if you believe that the materially poor, if you look upon them with malice or scorn and have no desire to help them whatsoever, but I would encourage you not to become scrupulous in thinking you’re not spending enough time at a soup kitchen, or something like that. As long as you’re praying, seeking spiritual direction from your pastor, and you’re not forsaking the poor, you can reach the level of understanding that you’re providing based on the means that God has given you, whether it’s time, talent, or treasure and helping those who are in material and spiritual poverty.
If you’re concerned about where you are in that regard and making an examination of conscience, I’d recommend speaking to a priest or a spiritual director to help you be able to sort through that, but give yourself some grace.
Cy Kellett:
Very good. Trent, the next question. “In the 50th California congressional district,” asks Robert, “we have two radical pro-abortion candidates running,” and you touched on this a moment ago.
Trent:
Yeah, I did.
Cy Kellett:
“Could you go in a little more depth? How should someone differentiate in that case?”
Trent:
Wow. Two radical pro-abortion candidates in California? Who would have imagined? Who would’ve thought? I don’t know where, let’s see, the 50th district. Oh gosh. About to be embarrassed. I think that’s my district. I think I see a map here.
Oh, I think it’s right, I think the 50th, I’m looking here. It’s like Riverside. That’s right outside San Diego, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my Congressman supports abortion. I don’t know how you get a pro-life rep in California. What I would say, then, to the answer to the question is, that you always have to make your best judgment. You don’t have to vote in every election. We have a civic duty to vote. It doesn’t mean you have to vote for every single race and every single election. You could abstain from voting in that regard. Otherwise, you could just try to distinguish, once again, who is the lesser of two evils. There’s a difference between a pro-abortion candidate or pro-choice candidate who wants to fund it more with taxpayer funding and increase abortion access, and one who is in favor of legal abortion, but is very tepid about it. So it’s your judgment call whether to not vote or to vote for the lesser of two evils in that regard.
Cy Kellett:
How would not voting at all play into our duty to be good citizens?
Trent:
Sure. The catechism says, it talks about that we have to exercise the right to vote, but it’s couched along with other civic duties such as the duty to defend our country, but it doesn’t mean that all of those duties apply to everyone or to everyone in every circumstance. So we would be failing in our civic duty if we just ignored elections. If we said, “Oh, my vote doesn’t matter, and I don’t really care.” That’d be failing in our civic duty, which falls under the Fourth Commandment. So under honoring my father and my mother, there’s a broader thing of being, not just good children, but good citizens, good neighbors. So we have to take that into account, but at the same time, you may choose to not vote.
We only have a limited amount of time and resources. So God gives us a conscience to determine how to spend those resources. When I go on the ballot, there is a lot of offices that I leave blank,, because I’ve not had time to research the particular candidates that were involved and I’m not going to haphazardly vote in that regard. I just simply do not have the time available to research all of these candidates.
Though it is important that if you’re going to vote, I think it’s important to vote and take care of the larger offices first. Make sure the Presidential Senatorial, Congressional Gubernatorial, the politicians that have more power and influence, take more care. Make the time for voting. Then as you get further down the line, what time you have left, research and understand the different people in ballot propositions that are before you. Once again, I don’t want people to become scrupulous and think, “I have to vote in every race, right? I’m going to hell.” No, that’s not the case. God has called us to be civically minded, but he also understands we have limited time and resources, and we have to make a judgment to prudently apply them in different elections.
Cy Kellett:
Very good. Our next question. “Lately in the world at large, there’s been a lot of oppression on family values, and if you do not go with us, you are on your own. Before anything, I’m a child of God, and he has a special trust in me that is based on being able to make an informed decision. Do we believe in go with my faith before everything else?”
Trent:
Would Jesus say in Matthew 10:37 through 38, “Whoever loves mother, father more than me is not worthy of me,” and Acts 5:29, when Peter and the apostles are dragged before the Sanhedrin, before the authorities of their day, they said, “Hey, we’re the authorities. We told you not to preach the name of Jesus,” and Peter said right back to them, “We must obey God rather than men.” Acts 5:29. So that’s the principle of our faith is, our faith must always come first, but it doesn’t mean that we ignore or abandon our family, or we abandon our civic responsibilities. Once we get our faith right, and we have Jesus first in our minds, we have that priority first, every other priority we have, to our family members, to our friends, to our fellow citizens, will naturally fall into place. If we get that wrong, our priority to Jesus, to God, then we actually will fail to fulfill our obligations to friends, family members, and to civic society, cause we’ll fall into sin, and because of sin, will may have disordered thinking, disordered actions, and things that will ultimately harm the common good instead of promoting it.
Cy Kellett:
Will there ever be another Voter’s Guide from Catholic Answers?
Trent:
Timothy and Valerie.
Cy Kellett:
Gee, I wonder who they are.
Trent:
I wonder who that could be. Well, never say never. Will there ever be another voter’s, we used to have a Voter’s Guide, the Serious Voters Guide to Catholic Voter’s Guide, and you can still find traces of it on the internet [crosstalk 00:23:24]. Will there ever be another one? Only time will tell. If you would like us to produce another Voter’s Guide or voting material, please contact Christopher Check, and let him know, and we could pull together something. To give you a sneak peek, we’re thinking of putting together something, an educational, not a Voter’s Guide per se, but an educational guide to help people see that abortion is the preeminent social issue of our day, and then that it should influence their voting decision.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, I will also say, Trent, we have a brand new 20 Answers, for sure, and it’s on Catholic social teaching. This is probably the closest resource we have right now to what used to be the Voter’s Guide. I will tell you that the Voter’s Guide does come up in discussion regularly as we talk about what publications are next for Catholic Answers. We couldn’t just, I don’t think, reprint the old Voter’s Guide, because there are some issues that have come more to the fore and others that have faded a bit.
Trent:
Yeah. The old Voter’s Guide talked about embryonic stem cell research. So that was in 2004. That was a big deal. Now, I don’t hear anything about that anymore. So it needed an update.
Cy Kellett:
Right. So stay tuned. It is on our minds. In the meantime, you may want to pick up some copies of that Catholic social teaching, 20 Answers brochure. That might be close to what you’re looking for. It’s certainly a great brochure to consider.
This is a question that’s come up many times over the years. To my knowledge, it was first Governor Mario Cuomo who made this point of being personally opposed to abortion, but I can’t impose my faith on other people. I can’t tell them what to do. So we have, particularly Catholic politicians, who make this case without giving any names. There are many that are out there right now doing the same. So what do you say to someone who has that view? Again, I’m personally opposed to, maybe it’s abortion, maybe it’s LGBT, whatever it might be, but I’m not going to impose my will on somebody else.
Trent:
Right, and I think the key there is to ask the person, and this is not just Catholic politicians. It’s also Catholic voters who say, “Well, I don’t like abortion. I’m Catholic, but I can’t impose my faith through the ballot box.” I would ask them, “Why are you personally opposed to abortion?” “Well, because the church says, it’s wrong.” “Why does the church say abortion is wrong?” Ultimately, if they personally oppose abortion, it’s going to be because abortion kills a human being. There’s no other way to skirt around the issue. Why do you not like abortion? Why is it bad? Once you hack away with enough euphemisms it’s, I’m against abortion personally because it kills human beings. So they are innocent human beings. So then you can just ask the question, “Okay, so you personally are against killing innocent human beings, but you don’t want to vote for a law that says it should be illegal to kill innocent human beings.”
How does that make sense, please help me understand that. Of course, I know that it’s totally logically inconsistent. I want that person to see that it’s inconsistent. So instead of saying, “You’re totally inconsistent, and you’re a bad person, and you’re a bad Catholic, and you should go to confession.” Then the person will put up their shields and not listen to you. I would say, “Ask them, why are you personally opposed? If it’s because abortion kills human beings, how could you not be in favor of a law that stops that? Would you ever accept this reasoning on any other moral issue?” “Well, I’m personally opposed. Well, you can imagine even 30 years ago, well, not 30 years ago, 50 years ago, marital rape was legal in this country. You couldn’t prosecute a husband for raping his wife. Imagine a politician said at the time, [inaudible 00:27:24] If you said that now, it’d be horrifying. “I’m personally opposed to rape or marital rape, but I can’t vote for a law on that issue. That’s up to the individual to decide.” We would say, “If someone said that even 50 years ago, and it came up today, they would be canceled.” So it’s important to point out the inconsistencies in that response.
Cy Kellett:
If the life issue, specifically abortion, there’s other life issues as well, obviously. If that’s the preeminent issue, okay? Is there a hierarchy further down? This question, particular referenced the other items in the Voter’s Guide, but how do you go down the list, so to speak? Again, going back to the situation where, okay, we’ve got two radical abortion candidates. Okay, if I’m going to vote for one, what’s the next item down the list [crosstalk 00:28:23].
Trent:
What’d you’d have to go through is, the next ones you should privilege would be areas of other intrinsic evils. Other intrinsic evils are non-negotiable issues. So other issues that will come up, what are these candidates’ position on assisted suicide or euthanasia? States across the country are trying to legalize this. So what is their stance on that issue? Another issue is, what is their stance on marriage? Do they believe marriage is a union of a man and a woman, or it’s up for grabs?
Another issue to bring up is religious freedom and the ability to practice our faith, and the ability to abstain from moral evils, and the ability to educate our children in our faith, and educate our children according to what we believe is best for them. So you could have a position, a situation where you have two pro-abortion candidates, but one is even more radical, because they want to outlaw homeschooling, for example, and so they think that homeschooling should be illegal, and private schooling should be illegal, and children should just be educated in government schools to receive government propaganda. The other pro-abortion candidate is super pro-choice and says, “I’m all for choice. Choice for abortion. Choice for homeschooling, whatever.” In that case, Oh, here’s a candidate who, they’re both bad on abortion, but this other guy is good on religious freedom. So I can, in conscience, vote for him, since these are really my only two options.
Although you also have to decide if there’s a third-party candidate who you could vote for, but you do have to prudentially weigh that, and in almost every case with a third-party candidate, it’s essentially a protest vote, because that person will not be elected. So it would be on par with just choosing to not vote.
You could choose to not vote, or you could choose the lesser of two evils in that regard. That’s not out of the woods when it comes to banning homeschooling. There are politicians who want to do that, who want to require Catholic agencies to provide birth control to their employees through insurance coverage, who want pregnancy centers to advertise for abortion. They tried to do that in California. The Supreme Court shut it down. So it’s important that we put these intrinsic evils then after abortion, and then after that, you can use your own judgment on whether they satisfy these issues where we could reasonably disagree if they promote [inaudible 00:30:37]
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