Can you morally play a game you know is rigged?
Yesterday, I asked if it’s a sin to vote if one believes the election to be fraudulent. Yet, the Church teaches that participating in elections, in government, is a duty. Given the right to choose our representatives, we are obliged to carry out God’s will through government.
This creates a dilemma: voting in a corrupt system endorses the corruption, creating a scandal for others. Withdrawing from elections neglects our duty to cooperate with God’s will. So, what do we do?
It would seem that our only choice is to pray and vote.
Remember that prior to the fraudulent election (when we didn’t know for sure that the election would be so fraudulent), I wrote about the proper prayer for elections:
O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. Crush the plan of the enemy under your heel, and obtain from your Divine Son an election according to His holy will.
We did not pray for an election according to our will, but according to His will.
We did so assuming there would be corruption, that the Democrats would produce fake ballots, that judges would allow suspicious people to vote. That happens in every election, but rarely to a degree that changes the outcome.
At the time, we had no idea the fraud would be systemic, computer-based, and sanctioned by everyone from the governor of Georgia to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Now that we know this, we must align our wills to God’s will even more piously.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in men;
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in princes.
—Psalm 118
The more rotten the society, the more we must depend on God. Where we once felt safe putting reasonable trust in government and supreme trust in God, we now know we can trust nothing but God. If government were honorable, it was because the people in government surrendered their will to God’s and for no other reason.
If we trust in God, we must trust that His will is being done, even through corrupt elections. From the Petitions of St. Augustine:
Let me die to myself and live in Thee.
Let me accept whatever happens as from Thee.
Our obligation, then, to express His will through our votes remains. But our devotion to elections should wane.
Speaking for myself, I was way too caught up in the 2020 election. I trusted myself to influence events too much and God too little. I should have distrusted myself completely and trusted God completely. As St. Augustine said, again, in his Petitions:
Let me distrust myself and put my trust in Thee.
Let me be willing to obey for the sake of Thee.
So, I answer my question of yesterday this way: pray that God works through your vote, vote for God’s sake, and trust the outcome will be according to His holy will.