On Nov. 3, Clark County voters will once again choose among candidates who mostly disappoint them. For many faithful Catholics, the disappointment runs deeper. Neither party fully reflects what the Church teaches about life, marriage, the family and the common good. So a growing number of serious Catholics have reached a conclusion they consider principled: stay home, or leave the ballot blank, and keep your hands clean.
Mark Rose
I understand the impulse. I think it is a mistake.
Fr. Jonathan Loop, a Catholic priest who once served as pastor of Our Lady of Fatima in Vancouver, puts the question in a much older frame. The Church has always taught that Christ is King, not only of individual hearts but of nations. Pope Pius XI made that the subject of an entire encyclical in 1925 and gave the Church a feast day to drive the point home. A Catholic does not get to treat politics as somebody else's business.
But the Church has also always taught prudence: the virtue of applying unchanging principles to concrete, messy circumstances. Fr. Loop draws on history, from the Middle Ages to modern times, to make the point. Catholics in every age have faced rulers and options far from ideal. The saints among them did not wait for a perfect candidate. They asked what would actually protect the innocent, defend the Church and serve the common good in the situation in front of them, and then they acted.
That is not compromise. It is responsibility.
Here is the uncomfortable part. In a two-party system, abstaining does not register disapproval; it simply hands the decision to someone else. If the result is more abortion, less religious freedom and more pressure on families who want to raise their children in the faith, the voter who stayed home does not get to call himself innocent. Elections have consequences, including for the Church.
Prudence cuts the other way too. No party is the Church. No candidate deserves the kind of devotion owed to Christ alone. Catholics who wrap the faith in a campaign flag, or who treat a politician as a savior, have forgotten who the real King is. Vote to limit evil, yes. Then go to Mass, raise your children well, and stop expecting Washington, D.C., or Olympia, to save your soul.
That balance is harder than either retreat or partisanship. It requires knowing the principles, reading the moment honestly and accepting that every real choice involves imperfect options. It is also exactly the kind of judgment Catholics are called to exercise.
Fr. Loop will present "Christ the King & Political Prudence" at the West Coast Catholic Conference, Nov. 13–14 at the Holiday Inn Portland Airport. By then the votes will be counted, and the questions will be more pressing, not less: What now? How do Catholic families live their faith in public, whoever won? Come hear him, along with Dr. Peter Kwasniewski and attorney Christopher A. Ferrara, and bring your hardest questions to the speakers' panel. Details and registration are at sspxolf.org/2026conference.
But first, on Nov. 3, vote.
Mark Rose is the founder of Heed His Call (heedhiscall.org), a nonprofit dedicated to supporting religious contemplative and eremitic vocations. A longtime technology industry consultant, he contributes opinion pieces on local politics and is a guest contributor for a prominent, long-running traditionalist Catholic blog. He is a coordinator of the 2026 West Coast Catholic Conference.
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