Against Abstention

Last updated on: April 22, 2017 at 9:29 pm by M.Z.

Against Abstention 2017-04-22T21:29:27-05:00 M.Z.

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As the election season has progressed, I have become further convinced that abstention isn’t prudent. As the Republicans noted at their convention, voting ‘present’ isn’t leadership. Likewise, not voting or voting for a 3rd party isn’t an engagement with the present political realities. As has been noted by others numerous times, voting is a very small part of our engagement in the political process. If a person believes, particularly on a consistent basis, that they cannot support the candidates placed before them to choose as leaders, then their actions should manifest this reality. I commonly choose the Amish as an example of a people that have disengaged from the larger politic, and I do think they are an extreme example of this. They are not merely disinterested in the larger politic, they are disengaged from it. When people look at the Amish, they don’t say, “Here is a red blooded American.” When people look at the typical non-voter or 3rd party supporter, they have no difficulty calling the person a red blooded American.

Since at least the 1960s, there has been commentary offered on the lack of a Catholic identity in this country anymore. The claim was that Catholics were becoming indistinguishable from their secular counterparts. There are any number of theories to describe the why behind this. I happen to subscribe to the suburbanization theory: suburbs and in particular the mobility they engendered ripped apart the social bonds of community. This also helps to explain the destruction wrought in mainline Protestantism about the same time. Additionally we have an explanation for the “new church” model that is premised on the church existing before the family and therefore needing to market itself, and, yes, I’m using family in the sense of including one’s 200 cousins. (Needless to say, the preceding sentence would be worthy of elaboration into a post in its own right and is probably not as precise as it should be.) Moving back on point, this lack of identity has impaired the Church’s own witness. The Bible uses the imagery of a bishop guiding his flock of sheep. The American version seems to be more akin to the herding of cats. This brings us to the phenomena today of numerous politicians having risen to power and maintaining their power without the blessing of the Catholic communion they profess. As one could reasonably expect given how they arose and maintained power, many of these politicians are in disagreement with the Church and their bishops, to put it mildly. In a rear guard action, people are demanding bishops hold these men accountable. We even, in some cases, have bishops from far away dioceses of relatively little prominence offering extended commentaries and demanding accountability from specific politicians, as if cat herding were more effective if done from 500 miles. Excuse the mini rant there.

I bring up Church governance in a lot of my posts because there are so many similarities with secular governance. In both cases there is the tendency to want to act based on how you want things to be versus how things are. Such is not about seeking goals but acting as if the goals had already been achieved. In the voting booth this manifests itself in placing high value in moral purity. To pick on Joe Schriner for a bit, a number of Catholics have indicated he seems to be a good enough guy and they can feel good about voting for him. Let’s be honest for a moment. Mr. Schriner makes Sarah Palin look like Margaret Thatcher. I don’t say it to be ‘mean.’ His executive experience is managing a Little League team. If he were to run in either the Democratic primary or the Republican primary he would be roundly defeated as well he should be. Lots of nice people don’t ‘win’ in life, and the same is true in politics. After one of my wife’s pregnancies there was a complication. It was an emergency situation at the time so I wasn’t researching or taking notes, but a doctor was called in and performed the equivalent of an abortion except the baby had already been born. I’m pretty sure, but not positive, they called a doctor that performs abortions to do this procedure. I might not have liked any of the other work that doctor did, but I did like having my wife alive. Our obstetrician was a good and decent guy, not that I knew him socially, but I knew he was a family guy. I didn’t argue with him and claim that he should perform a procedure he wasn’t qualified to do – or at least he didn’t feel qualified to do. One shouldn’t have to apologize for making the best choice available, and one shouldn’t have to apologize for not choosing someone that can’t do the work.

But doesn’t this make me a relativistic fool? Most choices involve relative goods. Placing men into leadership is not an intrinsic evil. It is in fact quite necessary. Given the choice between no headship and imperfect headship, imperfect headship is the preferred choice. Likewise given the choice between no speech and imperfect speech, speech is preferred. Contrariwise, given the choice between genocide and imperfect genocide, neither can be supported, because genocide is intrinsically evil. Applying this, we are faced with the question of whether seeking the election of either of the two contending candidates for president is a furtherance of ESCR. Some have answered this question in the affirmative and have chosen not to support either candidate. They have used as evidence the Congress supporting and President Bush vetoing twice a bill supporting ESCR. Personally, I would interpret this as there being significant existing support for ESCR blocked only by the stubbornness of one executive, a stubbornness I happen to admire in this instance. I don’t see how refusing to support either candidate for the executive lessens the likelihood of ESCR becoming normalized though. Even in Missouri with the full weight of Archbishop Burke opposing it, Missourians chose to fund ESCR. Similar measures have passed at the state house level across the country and in referendum. On the federal level, what we are talking about it funding, not even legality. This presidential race seems quite apart from the mainstreaming of ESCR. Certainly we have an obligation to oppose ESCR, but abstention from the presidential election seems an odd place to manifest that opposition. It certainly wouldn’t be obvious to a 3rd party observer that fewer people voted because both candidates supported ESCR, if that were to happen. In choosing to oppose ESCR, efforts would seem to be better placed at the legislator and state house level. Certainly if the opportunity arose at the presidential level to significantly impede ESCR or to prevent its significant expansion that would have to figure into one’s vote. This is not however the situation and we should make our choices based on how things are and not how we wished them to be. And there are still issues of grave importance that are germane to this election to which people should not express indifference no matter whom they are supporting.

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