First and foremost, I greatly respect both Simcha Fisher and Mark Shea for the work they do and have done in the past. Generally speaking, they are great apologists and better writers than I. Many a blurb penned by their hands has enriched my faith and, often enough, made me chuckle. I have no desire to assassinate their character or to cast doubt on the sincerity of the support for the pro-life cause and the Church’s teaching on the matter. Despite some problems with their language and tone from time to time, they remain valuable members of the Church and the Catholic blogosphere.
Really, I am writing this to address one thing that both of them have said. Namely, that it is permissible and maybe even a good idea to vote for Hillary Clinton if your intent is to stop Donald Trump. To be fair, Fisher has said that she probably won’t vote for Hillary Clinton, but when pressed in online conversation, she has said that she would vote Clinton if the race in her state seemed close enough that Clinton needed help to beat him.
Now, Shea in particular has been persistent about his claim that any pro-lifers who support Trump will ultimately spend their time defending Trump’s wickedness. In the very same post, he goes on to say he could vote for Hillary but oppose every single one of her policies. He writes: “the sole case for her is that support for her is remote material cooperation with evil when you are attempting to lessen evil, not supporting the evil that she will do.” He then cites Pope Benedict as saying “When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favour of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”
There are three problems with his approach to the matter. First of all is his resolute denial that the reverse is at all possible; that anyone could vote Trump and oppose all of his wicked policies and wicked behaviors. Perhaps it is the different circles we move in, but the vast majority of the people I know personally who support Trump are quite clear about denouncing his wickedness. It could be that Shea suffers from a kind of imposed confirmation bias. He asserts that pro-life support for Trump is misguided and hypocritical and never runs out of examples because he is so keen on spotting them and because he tends to attract the worst of Trump supporters. When I responded directly to him, he simply dismissed the idea that a reserved vote for Trump is possible.
Secondly, there is a problem with his reading and application of Cardinal Ratzinger’s words on voting in a perplexing case (he wasn’t Pope Benedict when he wrote them). The major problem is the need for proportionate reasons. I’m pretty certain he is not giving full enough weight to what “proportionate” actually means. In this context, it means that the evil being “lessened” is significantly greater than the evil with which you are remotely cooperating. In application to a vote for the president, such a proportion really only exists if both candidates are basically equivalent regarding abortion (and euthanasia) so that they nullify each other on that point. Not only do they both need to support it, but they need to support it to the same roughly the same extent and be about equal in how much they will advance (or continue) abortion.
To their credit, Shea and Fisher are both keen to point out Trump’s flip-flopping and unreliability on the issue of abortion. I, for one, do not believe that Trump is personally opposed to abortion nor that he is particularly zealous to overturn Roe vs. Wade. The other part of that equation, however, is how aggressive Hillary is about advancing abortion. It was stunning to see her give full support to partial-birth abortion on live television. In order to even consider the two proportionate, you need reasonable evidence that both candidates will have the same effect on abortion. I don’t think the case is there, especially in light of their respective platforms. Are Trump and other republicans using pro-lifers just for the votes? Sure, but they have and continue to throw bones to the pro-life cause, especially at the state level and when President Bush signed the ban on the very action Hillary just publicly supported. They are also not committed at the party-wide level to advancing abortion. The democrats put it in their platform and re-iterate it at every presidential election.
Even if you could bring yourself to believe the outlandish claim that the two are proportionate on abortion, I do not see solid grounds for the claim that there are other proportionate reasons to vote for Hillary to stop Trump. Hillary has publicly said that Christians have to change their beliefs, she wants us to pay for contraception and abortion, her Vice-President boldly contradicts his own Catholic faith, and there is solid evidence that her party seeks to undermine the Church from the inside. What is proportionate to that on the part of Trump? A deliberate, coordinated, and persistent attack on the Church and the faith itself?
Lastly – and this is my weakest argument – I don’t think the two are proportionate in their ability to advance evil. Clinton has a massive political machine that is quite good at accomplishing what she wants to do in addition to constant media support. Trump is constantly criticized and lacks the vast political network it would take to be nearly as efficient as Clinton.
Is this my endorsement for Trump? Nope. My point is this: I see no way you can claim that Trump is so great an evil that you can knowingly give power to Hillary Clinton. There might be a case for Trump in order to lessen Clinton, but that hinges on the voter’s firm determination to oppose and denounce the evils of Trump even as they vote for him: war crimes, torture, unjust use of immigration laws, and the disturbing support he receives from the alt-right movement.
But you know what? I can agree with Shea and Fisher about going third party. If American Catholics were more willing to get past the apocalyptic claims every 4 years and think long term, they could make the parties chase them. If 25% of the population “wasted” their vote on a third party for even a single presidential election, don’t you think that one or both of the major parties would be quick to adopt whatever components of the the third party cost them in the previous election? Especially in a deadlock of nastiness like these two candidates, I think we have missed our chance to tell the whole system “we’re tired of being used politically; either start actually working for what we want or you won’t get our vote.” I’d much rather defend Catholics who lost an election while trying for what is truly good than defend Catholics who “bit the bullet” repeatedly until they had no more teeth.