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What to Do on Election Day

What to Do on Election Day

Dear Friend:
 
I'm grateful to everyone who responded to my October 26 post and decided to help me produce the CD I produced last week entitled “Submitting to the Social Kingship of Christ: The Radical Surgery That Alone Can Save America.” Each of those kind supporters has hopefully received his or her copy of the CD by now. (A few actually paid for ten copies, to distribute to family and friends!)
 
Though I don't have the space or time right now to share with the rest of you the full contents of that CD, nevertheless in view of the seriousness of our national crisis I feel obligated to at least summarize here “the bottom line” of the conclusions I've reached on the matter of the presidential election tomorrow (Tuesday, November 8).  
 
The social kingship of Christ is the doctrine found in Scripture and elaborated in the teachings of the magisterium (especially the social encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius IX) that Christ must be acknowledged as King, not only by private individuals, but by holders of public office and all aspects of society: political, economic, cultural, etc.

Those of us who profess to be faithful to this teaching cannot possibly be fully enthusiastic about ANY of the current candidates for President, for not a single ONE of them — even the so-called “conservatives” — accepts (or perhaps is even aware of) this teaching on the social reign of Christ the King. (This does NOT mean that we cannot morally vote for one, as I will explain in the next few paragraphs.)

Hillary Clinton of course doesn’t even profess to be interested in the Kingship of Christ, or in conforming her politically-correct policies to His immutable laws. Her advocacy of unrestricted abortion rights (including even the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion), and her aggressive promotion of the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transsexual-Queer (LGBTQ) agenda — to say nothing of her lack of honesty or trustworthiness or any moral character whatsoever — make her singularly unfit, not only for the Oval Office, but for any public office, and in my estimation any Catholic voting for her would be clearly committing a mortal sin by enabling evil on an unprecedented scale.

But Donald Trump, the only rival in this race who possesses even a mathematical chance of beating Hillary, also has a massive character issue with many people due to what they feel is his narcissism, his lack of honesty, trustworthiness, and moral and sexual purity. He seems further hobbled by a lack of awareness of, or interest in, the fundamental principles of Christian social, political, and economic thought as found in such documents as Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno. These considerations make him (in my view and in the view of many others) also unfit, at his present level of development, for the highest office in the land.

Unfortunately, no one else — neither Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson nor newly Independent candidate Evan McMullin nor Constitution Party candidate Darrell Castle nor American Solidarity Party candidate Michael Maturen (if more than a handful of people have even heard of him) nor Green Party candidate Jill Stein — stands the proverbial snowball’s chance of beating Hillary. (And they each have their own disqualifying features besides.)

Catholic moral theology — a discipline that tragically all too few Catholics even trouble themselves to become familiar with (please contact me if you’d like to take my St. Hermengild Online College course in moral theology via Skype) — has something to say to our painful situation. Here is one representative quote:

Voting is a civic duty which would seem to bind at least under venial sin whenever a good candidate has an unworthy opponent. It might even be a mortal sin if one’s refusal to vote would result in the election of an unworthy candidate. One may vote for an unworthy candidate [e.g., Trump!] only when this is necessary to prevent a still less worthy candidate [e.g., Hillary!] from obtaining office; but in such a case one should explain the reason for his action if this is possible.” (Fr. Heribert Jone, O.F.M. Cap., J.C.D., Moral Theology, Rockford IL: TAN Books, 1961, p. pp. 131-2)

That last sentence seems to me to provide the only justification for voting for Trump (and in fact the obligation to do so), which most of us will probably end up doing, some of us somewhat holding our noses. But notice what the second half of Fr. Jone’s sentence (after the semicolon) requires: we must explain to family and friends, post on our Facebook page and/or other social media and websites and online forums, write a letter to the editor of our local newspaper — and get the word to Mr. Trump himself — to make it clear that we are not so much voting FOR Trump as we are using our vote “for” him (formally, not materially) as our only opportunity to vote AGAINST Hillary. This is morally required of us.

As I said above, the other candidates not only cannot stop Hillary — to vote for any of them would be a wasted vote, in that respect — but they have their own disqualifications as well:

Jill Stein agrees with Hillary on abortion and the LGBTQ agenda.

Like current VP Joe Biden and VP-hopeful Tim Kaine (both Vatican II “Catholics,” to use that oxymoronic label) Gary Johnson is “personally opposed to abortion, BUT” wouldn’t dream of imposing his views on abortion on others (and says the same about his views on LGBTQ). This dodge is an immoral and dishonest schizophrenia roundly condemned by the magisterium. (See, e.g., Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, “On the Christian Constitution of States,” paragraph 47: “It is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue.”) This, of course, is part and parcel of Johnson’s “libertarianism,” a philosophy also explicitly anathematized by the nineteenth-century popes.

Evan McMullin is a Mormon, and if anyone needs to review what I said in 2012, when Mitt Romney was the Republican candidate, about the Masonic roots of the polytheistic, pseudo-Christian cult known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I’ll send you a copy of my CD “Mitt Romney, Masons, and Mormonism: Occult Origins, Oligarchic Objectives,” for $11.95 plus $6 shipping & handling.

Michael Maturen is a “Vatican II Catholic” who therefore accepts the Masonic idea of “freedom of religion” for ALL religions, which puts truth and error on an equal footing in our society (a policy consistently condemned by the popes), and he rejects classic Catholic teaching in favor of Vatican II errors on other matters as well, such as capital punishment.

If the above information is not enough to persuade you to vote for Trump, I would urge you to go to catholics4trump.com, a website I just became aware of this morning. Although I would not describe myself (for reasons stated above) exactly as a “Catholic for Trump,” on that website (just scroll down a bit on their home page) you’ll find an article by Jason Richardson entitled “The Catholic Obligation to Vote for Donald J. Trump: An Application of Theological Principles to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.”

I find Mr. Richardson's article to be extremely thoughtful, thorough, well-argued, and well-documented, with copious quotes from popes up through Pius XII, from St. Thomas Aquinas, and from many classic Catholic moral theologians. Please read it and send the link to it to others on your email list, Facebook page, etc.

In short, if Trump loses tomorrow, then Hillary wins. And if Hillary wins, we ALL lose.

I started out this election cycle unsure of what I’d end up doing. I was initially more impressed with just about all the other Republican candidates during the primaries than with Trump. After Trump received the Republican nomination I was open to voting for a third party candidate, or even open to not voting at all. But I am now persuaded that it is my moral obligation as a Catholic to vote “for” Trump tomorrow as the necessary means of voting against Hillary, upon pain of mortal sin.

In both the short run and the long run, no so-called “conservative,” whether Protestant or Vatican II Catholic, can possibly reverse the cultural decline nor “restore” a Christian culture, because their most fundamental principles are fatally flawed. Most of them are further crippled by their myopic belief that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution are “Christian documents” and that the United States of America was founded as a “Christian nation,” a status to which we supposedly can return by turning back the clock or gaining political victories.

This myth, contrived by the Freemasons who were the real spiritual parents of our republic to dupe our largely Protestant populace into accepting their revolutionary achievement as a gift from God, has been adequately debunked in many books. But it tragically continues to keep many Americans satisfied with a more superficial solution to our society’s ills, rather than the radical surgery required to establish this country on the only sound basis God has ever offered, or ever will offer: complete recognition of and submission to the social reign of Christ the King.

In the meantime, hopefully this post has given you some direction, or at least food for thought. If you'd like to see me interviewed on YouTube for a more detailed exploration of these issues, please click on the following link:
 
http://www.jeffcassman.com/the-catholic-churchs-teaching-on-voting-and-political-discernment

Yours in Christ our King,
Gerry Matatics 
Updated On: November 8th, 2016

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December 5th, 2024

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