Chaput asks: ‘What are we to do this election cycle as Catholic voters?’

The archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, offers some thoughts in his column this week:

My column this week is a collection of personal comments.  Read it as thoughts from a brother in the faith, not as teachings from an archbishop. Presidential campaigns typically hit full stride after Labor Day in an election year.  But 2016 is a year in which two prominent Catholics – a sitting vice president, and the next vice presidential nominee of his party — both seem to publicly ignore or invent the content of their Catholic faith as they go along.  And meanwhile, both candidates for the nation’s top residence, the White House, have astonishing flaws. This is depressing and liberating at the same time.  Depressing, because it’s proof of how polarized the nation has become.  Liberating, because for the honest voter, it’s much easier this year to ignore the routine tribal loyalty chants of both the Democratic and Republican camps.  I’ve been a registered independent for a long time and never more happily so than in this election season.  Both major candidates are – what’s the right word? so problematic– that neither is clearly better than the other. As Forbes magazine pointed out some months ago, the Republican candidate is worth roughly $4.5 billion.  The Democratic candidate is worth roughly $45 million.  Compare that with the average American household, which is worth about $144,000.  The median U.S. income is about $56,000.  Neither major candidate lives anywhere near the solar system where most Americans live, work and raise families.  Nonetheless, we’re asked to trust them. That’s a big ask.  One candidate — in the view of a lot of people — is an eccentric businessman of defective ethics whose bombast and buffoonery make him inconceivable as president.  And the other – in the view of a lot of people – should be under criminal indictment.  The fact that she’s not – again, in the view of a lot of people — proves Orwell’s Animal Farmprinciple that “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” So what are we to do this election cycle as Catholic voters?  Note that by “Catholic,” I mean people who take their faith seriously; people who actually believe what the Catholic faith holds to be true; people who place it first in their loyalty, thoughts and actions; people who submit their lives to Jesus Christ, to Scripture and to the guidance of the community of belief we know as the Church. Anyone else who claims the Catholic label is simply fooling himself or herself — and even more importantly, misleading others.

He goes on to offer some advice for discerning how to vote. Read it.