The “lesser of two evils” and the “common good”

The Vicar of Christ is giving Catholics (and other Christians willing to listen) an assignment of conscience ahead of the presidential election: figure out who between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is “the lesser of two evils.”

The New York Times reporters Emma Bubola and Elisabetta Povoledo wrote, “Asked his advice to Catholic voters in the coming U.S. presidential election, Pope Francis said on Friday that they must choose the ‘lesser of two evils’ because ‘both are against life’ — Kamala Harris for her support for abortion rights, and Donald J. Trump for closing the door to immigrants.”

The Roman pontiff’s missive to American Christian voters might have come as a surprise to many who would have expected him to lean toward Mr. Trump because of Ms. Harris’ abortion views. But Catholics who have followed the Pope’s emphasis on Christ’s call for charity toward immigrants and the church’s obligations to protecting the environment should have seen this coming.

Ms. Bubola and Ms. Povoledo wrote in The Times: “’Sending migrants away, not allowing them to grow, not letting them have life is something wrong; it is cruelty,’ Francis said in a news conference on the plane as he returned to Rome after his long trip to Southeast Asia and Oceania. ‘Sending a child away from the womb of the mother is murder because there is life. And we must speak clearly about these things.’”

Their report went on to say:

Francis described the rejection of migrants as a “grave sin” and “cruelty,” and abortion as “murder.” He said that both “are against life” and clearly wrong.

But when asked whether it would be morally admissible to vote for someone who favored the right to abortion, he responded: “One must vote. And one must choose the lesser evil. Which is the lesser evil? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know. Each person must think and decide according to his or her own conscience.”

The irony here is that the leader of Christ’s church on earth has chosen not to insert the church into taking sides in a decision belonging to the members of the state (American voters). This concept of a separation of church and state – per se – didn’t start with a Supreme Court decision, or even English Common Law. This goes back to Christ Himself, when the Pharisees tried to trick Him into treason against Caesar with this question: If God is as you say, is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” Christ replied.

Father Samuel Keyes wrote in the online magazine Catholic.com about this answer: “Here’s where we find what it is that Jesus is getting at with the Pharisees. They want him to say, ‘God is more important than the emperor; religion is more important than the empire.’ They want him to put them in competition with one another and declare a winner so that the other side can get mad. But for Jesus, God and the emperor are so far apart that this competition is meaningless. It would be like an ant wondering whether the sun cares that he collects food for his colony. Obviously, the sun is more significant, more powerful, more everything than the ant colony. We can render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s—not because God has nothing to do with them, but because God’s authority has no need of emperors to work.”

So when Pope Francis says to American Christians, “Each person must think and decide according to his or her own conscience,” he is telling Christian voters to reflect on which choice would be more pleasing to God in the face of all the worldly considerations at hand. And since we are made in the image and likeness of God, according to Scripture, and because we have free will, the American voter is capable of making the right decision, whichever that might be. Another priest, Rev. Dr. Adrian Graffy – a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission – gives us the formula for figuring it out, and it comes from his breakdown of the Caesar-God debate:

Jesus’ response is: ‘Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.’ As Christians we cannot cut ourselves off from the affairs of the world, but we should never compromise our beliefs and values. Our decisions and our loyalties must be decided by what furthers the ‘common good’.

Who between Trump and Harris will further the common good? According to the Pope, if you’re an American voter or you otherwise have some stake in the election or some way of influencing it, the right choice is simply a matter of conscience.