Can Catholics on your street
be expected to vote like Catholics?

It depends …


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Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:

G. K. Chesterton said that in theory all Englishmen could keep a vow of silence for the same 24 hours—but you shouldn’t bet on it.

Likewise, it’s possible that in November Catholics will cast their votes in line with Church teachings—but should you bet on it?

I say, “It depends . . .”

It depends on whether Catholic voters know what the Church teaches on key moral issues.

If Catholics don’t know, they’ll vote just like other Americans—which is what most of them have been doing for a long time. And that’s part of the reason things are such a mess in our country. After all, if your moral instincts are wrong, you can’t get anything else right—not economics, not foreign affairs, nothing.

Just consider what might have been . . .

If Catholics—who are about 23% of the population—had consistently voted in line with Church teaching over the last few decades (and had insisted that their elected representatives do likewise), our society would look much different.

We have virtually unrestricted abortion? We wouldn’t, if America’s Catholics had raised a ruckus about it forty years ago—and kept raising a ruckus.

We have embryonic stem-cell research? We wouldn’t, if Catholics had told Congress, “Not with our money, you don’t!”

We have same-sex “marriage” and euthanasia and even human cloning making headway? We wouldn’t, if Catholics had been persistent in voting according to Church teaching on these matters.

But the sad fact is that Catholics haven’t voted like Catholics. They haven’t really made their faith part of their civic lives.

Oh, sure, many of them go to Mass regularly, and they self-identify as Catholics when asked about their beliefs. But that’s pretty minimal, and it’s not enough. It’s not enough because we have a duty to apply our faith in the public square.

That’s right. Catholics have an obligation to live out their faith publicly, not just privately.

That includes learning about public issues, evaluating them, and then supporting or opposing them according to the teaching of the Church (which is simply the teaching of Christ, after all).

I know you’re in agreement with me on all of this, and no doubt you already apply your faith this way. You, at least, don’t hesitate to take your faith into the voting booth.

But what about the rest of America’s nearly 70 million Catholics? How do we get them to follow your good example and vote like Catholics?



You might suspect it’s too simple. On hearing my solution, you might ask, “Come on, can it be that easy?”

Well, in countless cases, the answer is “Yes—it really can be!”

And what is my simple way to get Catholics to vote like Catholics?

Get them to read our Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics.

This solution is simple because our voter’s guide is simple. It’s a booklet. Nothing flashy. Nothing breathtaking. But it’s been really effective!

Since its debut in 2004, it has been distributed by the millions. If we can believe the countless thank-you notes we’ve received—and I think we can—our voter’s guide has formed consciences and changed the way Catholics vote.

The great thing about our voter’s guide is that it tells the reader how to form his thinking and his conscience, but it doesn’t tell him which candidates to vote for, which political parties to join, or which ballot propositions to endorse.

It’s all about principles, particularly as those relate to five key moral issues that are facing our country.

We call those issues the “five non-negotiables.” Granted, they aren’t the only important issues out there, but we decided to highlight them because (a) they strike at the core of what it means to be a virtuous society and (b) they’re in play politically.

These five issues (abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning, and same-sex “marriage”) are make-or-break issues when it comes to evaluating a society as just, wholesome, and, yes, virtuous. (And a society should be virtuous, because the ultimate goal of society is—or at least should be—to help us get to heaven.)

These five issues are in the news and on ballots throughout the country, which means that Catholics who vote like Catholics have a real chance to make a difference. (There are other non-negotiable issues that aren’t in play politically today. That doesn’t mean they aren’t important. It just means that there isn’t much we can do about them at the moment.)

As I said, Catholic Answers’ Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics has a proven track record.

Over the years, we’ve heard from countless Catholics (and many non-Catholics too) who said our voter’s guide changed their minds and helped them see their duty as Catholics in the public square.

They said that in past elections they entered the voting booth with a fairly secular mindset. They didn’t give thought to applying Catholic teaching to what they were about to do.

But, after reading our voter’s guide, their attitude changed. They realized that they had to vote according to Catholic moral principles.

Our voter’s guide changed their votes—and a lot of other people’s votes, too.

Now just imagine if, say, another million or five million or ten million Catholics went through the same metamorphosis!


In 2010—as in 2004, 2006, and 2008—we want to distribute our Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics by the millions.

We want to turn Sunday-only Catholics into Catholics who apply Church teaching everywhere, even in the voting booth. With your help, we can.

We plan to mass mail the voter’s guide to Catholics around the country, so they can see it and say, “Hey, this is great! I want to distribute hundreds of copies!” We also want to send the voter’s guide to parishes and Catholic groups of all sorts, just as we’ve done in the past.

Our experience is that if we send out lots of single copies, we’ll be inundated with calls asking for boxes and boxes of copies.

When civic-minded Catholics see our voter’s guide, they realize its value and want to pass out copies left and right—precisely what we want.

We need to get those single copies into lots of hands for this to happen. That’s where you come in.

I’d be gratified if we could raise $200,000 toward this project. That would allow us to send out many thousands of voter’s guides, which in turn would induce the recipients to order and then to pass out many thousands more. It’s a multiplier effect.

But $400,000 will allow us to “seed” the country with twice as many voter’s guides, resulting in twice as many bulk orders, resulting in turn in twice as many Catholics ultimately seeing (and learning from) this highly effective booklet. [Click here to donate.]

The more generously you and our other donors respond to this letter, the more effective this project will be.

How effective? I hope the number of people influenced by our voter’s guide will be so great that, come the post-election analysis, commentators will be forced to conclude that “Catholics Who Voted Like Catholics Made a Big Difference.” (That’s a headline I dearly would like to see!)



I thank you in advance for making a generous donation to this effort. But beyond my thanks I want to send you, as a token of our gratitude for your help, Tim Staples’ brand-new CD set called Five Non-Negotiables for your donation of $35 or more. [Click here to donate.]

On two CDs Tim explains, in his engaging and inimitable style, not just what the Catholic teaching is on these five issues but why all Catholics (and everyone else, for that matter) ought to subscribe to that teaching wholeheartedly—and how that teaching can turn our country around.

It’s really a fine pair of CDs. I invite you to listen to them yourself and then to share them with friends. Included in each set is a printed copy of our Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics—everything anyone needs to come to an understanding of Church teaching on these issues.

If you have followed our work during earlier election years, you know that our voter’s guide has made a difference—and it can make a difference again, if you and others sacrifice now so that more and more of our country’s Catholics can start acting like Catholics when in the voting booth.

Please be generous when you bring out your credit card.

We need lots of donations in the $50 to $100 range, but we also need lots in the $1,000 to $5,000 range.

(I dearly would love to reach that $400,000 total because it would mean a real impact on our society, but I promise that we’ll do the best we can with whatever you and our other donors give.)

Many thanks for all you have done for us in the past and for your help with this project!

Best wishes in Christ,