Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Voting Obligation Revisited

How self-righteous would I be to make a conscious decision to avoid a scriptural instruction?

I read a friends Blog about not voting for President, specifically due to the precarious and morally flawed Candidates put in front of us. I pondered his post and logic for a good week, and while I have met others (RC and Protestants) who are taking the same position, and I myself cannot intellectually embrace either Candidate fully, I have to vote.

It is a scriptural instruction from Christ.

Whether its a perceived forgone conclusion or not...futile or not...best of 2 evils or not.

I am 99.999% with his feeling on both candidates, truly, we are in sync...except for the voting part. I sincerely believe the intentional "act" of voting in accordance with your developed Catholic or Christian Conscience, in any best case or worst case scenario, is deserving of merit.

Look at last Sundays reading from Mt 22:21 = "....Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God."

In context, when amplified, He is telling us to perform our Citizenship obligations, period. And perform our Holy Obligations, period.

Nothing less.

Do you think that the last 4 Sunday Gospel Readings, (all of them were Jesus narrated Parables/Analogies), are "coincidentally" aligned with this Election decision process? I don't. I see the Fairness doctrine, Social responsibility of Exodus and Thes., and Christs instructions to carry out our moral and political duties in all of those scriptures as immaculately timed prior to this Election event. Imperfect candidates are no excuse for avoiding the obligation for me, (although it is convenient, I must admit).

2 comments:

~Joseph the Worker said...

I appreciate this response. I'm going to write one on my blog as well - kind of a response to you and to others.

Anonymous said...

Well said! While our choices this election may or may not be great, there is one big difference in these candidates and that is who they will put on the Supreme Court- and that is where the abortion issue will come up once again.