How to Vote Catholic
Applying the Principles
Political judgments are rarely black-and-white—most require prudence (the application of a general principle to a concrete situation).
All Catholics bear the responsibility of making prudential judgments, but these judgments rely on information that is often not easily available. We need guidance, and the bishops offer it through the publications of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
The USCCB represents a merging in 2001 of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and the United States Catholic Conference (USCC), which were created in 1966. Since then, the bishops have released more than 100 pastoral letters and statements that take positions on dozens of public policy matters, ranging from handguns, racial prejudice, and U.S. relations with Panama to treatment of the aging, farm laborers, and war in the Middle East .
These statements are intended to educate Catholics on pressing issues of law and policy. Some confusion has also been created unintentionally by this official commentary on such a wide range of issues: Few Catholics make the distinction between binding statements of principle and the non-binding prudential judgments on policy issues.
The bishops themselves recognize the potential for confusion and have addressed it directly, for example, in their pastoral Economic Justice for All: "We do not claim to make these prudential judgments with the same kind of authority that marks our declarations of principle." Instead, the letters are attempts at applying Catholic principles to concrete situations. But the authority of bishops in matters of faith and morals does not extend to their prudential judgments in other matters.
Don't misunderstand me: Catholics need the education in social teaching offered by the bishops. We can learn from the bishops' examples of how to think prudentially and how to gather the expertise and data necessary to put principle into practice. But the habit of prudence belongs to individuals, not to a group. Prudence is not prudence when it is handed down like a rule to be followed. Individual prudential judgment follows from principles and cannot be commanded or dictated.
The U.S. bishops have clearly stated, "Decisions about candidates and choices about public policies require clear commitment to moral principles, careful discernment and prudential judgments based on the values of our faith" (Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility).
What's important to recognize, first of all, is the commitment to principle at the core of policy recommendation. What must be considered is how effective a policy will be in implementing the principle that underlies it.
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