Are Catholics allowed to oppose women's suffrage?
related question: Are Catholics allowed to oppose women holding public office?
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2 Answers
G.K. Chesterton had some great reasons for opposing women's suffrage that he wrote about in "What's Wrong With The World". While it's true that it was written before his reception into the Catholic Church, the book hasn't been suppressed or added to the index (as if anything gets added to an index nowadays) and it was recently republished by Sophia Press.
The best reason he gives for opposing women's suffrage is simply that women are too good for such a banal, feckless, pointless, fruitless and uncreated effort like politics.
Catholics are bound to follow their well-formed consciences, not the spirit of the age, the age of "votes for women" has passed in many countries - it would probably be repressive and immoral to oppose women's suffrage today. This is not a relativistic idea, it's not that women voting could be bad before and good now or could go to being bad in the future. It could be, as Chesterton points out, that a majority of women simply did not want to vote in the 1910's and a majority of women would probably feel strongly about having their votes taken from them today.
There could be other forms of suffrage, or citizenship requirements, like Robert Heinlein wrote about in Starship Troopers where suffrage was incumbent on military service could be viable alternatives to universal suffrage, suffrage based on property ownership, suffrage based on merit, more votes for larger families (as J.D. Vance purportedly proposed).
Even now, we don't have "universal suffrage". I think most democracies have an age restriction, which is a measure of dubious morality.
Even with all that, democracy is not morality and Catholics can thrive under any system of government that doesn't explicitly hate Jesus.
The best argument that Chesterton had in What's Wrong With the World was the idea that women didn't need to vote because their power, over their husbands at least, was universal. Voting, according to Chesterton, is giving someone power over the electorate. The great thing about not voting, and not having a vote, is that your power is unquestioned and universal to begin with. So "votes for women", in his eyes, was a privation - not a privilege.
So, hypothetically, one could make a moral case to oppose women's suffrage, but practically, one couldn't remove franchise from any current voting bloc without consent. So the only moral way to oppose women's suffrage today is to convince women they don't need to vote, which is probably a waste of time and therefore an immoral sin against the virtue of industry therefore Catholic should not oppose women's suffrage in places where it is already granted.
answered Sep 19 at 13:29
The family (not the individual) is the cell of society, so one vote per family is more just:
Crean, O.P., & Fimister, Integralism: A Manual of Poilitical Philosophy ch. 8, § "Suffrage":
‘who may vote?’ and ‘should the voice of each voter bear the same weight?’ If civil society is a union of families, then if we desire with St Thomas to have a democratic element within civil society, each family must be represented. If both parents are living, the father represents it within society and thus votes. If he dies, his widow takes his place at the family’s head, and she represents it and votes. If both husband and wife were to vote, the family itself would no longer be represented, and their votes might mutually nullify themselves.
(xvi) Since the family is the unit of society, it is fitting that the family as such have a voice in the person of its head.
Also, it is a myth that women were unable to vote until the French Revolution. In fact, the French Revolution forbade women's suffrage, whereas before, heads of households (be they husbands or widows) alone were allowed to vote. See Rev. Titus Cranny, S.A., M.A., S.T.L., The Moral Obligation of Voting, §6 "Women and the Obligation of Voting", pp. 100-8.
Kristin M. Popik, The Philosophy of Woman of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part Two: The Role of Woman, §"Women Outside Domestic Society":
Because women do not participate in the ruling activities of civil society, they are not citizens absolutely speaking. While all those who live in a city or come under its jurisdiction may sometimes be called citizens, only those who have full rights of citizenship are properly called citizens, for example those who can debate or vote in popular assembly, or those on whom deliberative or judicial functions can be conferred. But Thomas says that women are not citizens simpliciter [simply], but only secundum quid [in a certain respect], like others who merely dwell in the city but do not have the capacity to exercise functions that directly pertain to the community: old men, children, and so on.98 The woman is a citizen, however, in that she is a subject of the laws and the rights of the city, even if she does not have full power of citizenship; she has civic rights and duties to the law, but she does not participate in the directing activity of the city.99
Notes
98. In Pol. III, 1, 352-5; S.T. I-II, 105, 3.
99. In Pol. III, 1.
So, yes, a Catholic can oppose universal women's suffrage. One vote per head of a household (be the head a husband or a widow) is more just, as families (not individuals) are the basic unit of civil society. Allowing all women to vote would over-represent women.