Conscientious Catholic refusal to vote accomplishes several things: It accomplishes non-participation in an un-Catholic governmental process.
Short-term, or as a strong statement in a given race, this may be commendable. But as a long-term solution, this is tantamount to acquiescence and surrender. If it's this bad, then it's incuмbent upon some of us Catholics to sacrifice and run ourselves, even if it's just to air the issues that make the other candidates so bad in our eyes.
It accomplishes a refusal to choose a "lesser evil" that's hardly lesser at all.
Good idea--and then sit back and pat ourselves on the back over the next six years while we live under the rule of the "greater evil."
And it accomplishes disabusing oneself of the delusion that one can "win" in a rigged game of Three Card Monty.
Are you going to town meetings/public appearances and asking questions about the issues to get them out there to some degree; are you writing the candidate who is the "lesser evil" and saying I would consider voting for you if you re-consider your position on xyz; are you urging people with Catholic viewpoints to run for office?
Change the "delusion." Don't just pick up your toys and go home and forfeit.
It's the sobering pot of black coffee that we all need a good draught of in order to recover from the inebriation of our more than two century long bender as Catholics believing and participating in the disastrous American Democratic Lie.
Should our ancestors have never moved here? Should we pack up and move home to Ireland--the bastion of Catholicism? Is it bad enough to take up arms? Catholics aren't passifists--at what point is it bad enough to take up arms?
I don't fault anyone who chooses to sit out this election cycle, especially with the choices that I'll have. But I don't think it's the right thing to do long-term.