How Will Catholics Vote?

Will Catholics be “salt” and “light” in the 2024 election? Cardinal Dolan fails to show the way.

Donald Trump’s parade of vulgarity, racism, misogyny and grift is always on display. He is proud of it. His outrageous lies are his version of “truth,” or as his running mate JD Vance would say, they come “from the heart.” It’s easy to condemn Donald Trump but the more urgent question is how will our vote stack up against our professed values, and for believers, how does it square with our faith?

I am deeply ashamed that Catholics were enablers of Trump’s rise to power. And that Catholics, by a slim but crucial margin, still support Trump over Kamala Harris in seven battleground states, according to a National Catholic Reporter survey of self-identified Catholics.

I remain Catholic, not because of the Catholic Church, but in spite of it. The official teachings of the Catholic Church have repeatedly fallen short. Last year, the largely out-of-touch male hierarchy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) decided that “the threat of abortion” would remain their “preeminent priority” as they offered guidance to Catholic voters leading up to this year’s election. While “euthanasia, gun violence, terrorism, the death penalty and human trafficking” are also recognized as “grave threats to life and dignity” they do not command the attention of the bishops the way abortion does. Inexplicably, their concern for life has not prompted them to condemn the withholding of care for pregnant women in distress. The death of two women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller in Georgia who did not get the care they desperately needed in the middle of an abortion using pills, did not draw the ire of bishops for the circumstances that led to “an end to human life.” Two women’s lives. Amidst all the focus on what is in the womb, the woman is rendered invisible.

But as we approach Election Day, perhaps the public example of Cardinal Dolan’s betrayal of Gospel values at the recent Al Smith dinner may be helpful as Catholics consider their vote in the light of their faith.  Days earlier the Los Angeles Diocese, after a decades long fight, had agreed to a payout of nearly $900 million to those who had suffered sexual abuse by pedophile priests.  But the shame of that did not keep Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York from inviting Donald Trump, a man convicted of sexual assault,  to an event named for a politician respected for his faith and his values. Worse, Dolan seemed amused, not outraged, by the stream of abuse and vulgarities that Trump directed at fellow Americans. Did none of Trump’s crude remarks offend the Cardinal at least as much as women’s insistence on equality in the Church and autonomy over their own bodies? Clearly he seems to still think that Trump is “a great gentleman” and a “great friend of mine.”

In the face of this abysmal moral failure by someone who should be a model for Gospel values, it is left to Catholics—and all Christians—to ask themselves if they can give their vote to a candidate whose behavior and language run counter to everything Jesus would do or say.  Would they countenance the same language and behavior from their children?  Catholics must look to their own conscience, not to the USCCB, to ask if they can, in good faith, vote for someone whose outrageous lies endanger immigrants, election workers and even hardworking FEMA teams serving those whose lives have been upended by climate disasters. 

Cardinal Dolan honored a convicted felon, serial liar and adjudicated rapist at an event named for a truly decent man to raise funds for an organization, Catholic Charities, that serves immigrants, a frequent target of Trump’s poisonous rhetoric. If, as the bishops say, we are called to be salt and light, Catholics would do well to listen to Pope Francis’ call for “a different kind of politics, one truly at the service of the common good.”  That is why this Catholic has cast her vote for the Harris/Walz ticket. I urge all Catholics to not vote for a man who has demonstrated repeatedly that he has not an iota of respect for women, people of color,  or even his own supporters, let alone all of America.

Author Bio

Dawn Morais was born and raised Catholic in Malaysia where she was educated in a Franciscan school. She is an American citizen who has made Hawaii home these past 25 years.  Her recent published work includes an essay “Political Engagement: A new Article of Lived Faith” in the Value of Hawaii 3: Hulihia, the Turning (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) and “Salt,” a poem in Unruly Catholic Feminists (SUNY, 2021). She has voted for the Harris/Walz ticket.