Canada celebrates its Thanksgiving today. Soon Canadians will also go to the polls. In democracies voting is a cherished right never to be wasted. Voting is fraught with compromise, a “blunt instrument,” to use the metaphor of theologian Brett Salkeld: it neither converts candidates nor baptizes issues. Yet many are tempted to think otherwise. Mr. Salkeld:
We do not like to think that the ways our vote exemplified Catholic teaching might not have been perfectly efficacious in manifesting Gospel values in the law of the land, and so we are tempted (and the parties are there to goad us on) to imagine a straight line between our vote and the achievement of the goods we seek, even though politics is much messier than that.
Mr. Salkeld’s essay is well worth reading: its clarity balances its length. A gentle and alert reading rewards with an accurate knowledge and better understanding of Catholic reasoning about the civic right and responsibility of voting.
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Image “Arnaud Jaegers | Unsplash "
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