Two major proxy advisors have partnered with Catholic University of America (CUA) to develop a set of guidelines for investors to use based on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) guidance, according to an Oct. 30 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
“Every investor who opts into this service can be confident that his proxy votes will be consistent with his Catholic beliefs,” Andrew Abela, dean of the Catholic University of America’s Busch School of Business, and Nicholas Schmitz, a chair in finance at the Busch School of Business, wrote in the op-ed.
The two CUA experts said they worked in recent months with proxy advising companies ISS and Glass Lewis, which “control 97% of the proxy voting market for shareholder initiatives at publicly traded companies,” on developing the guidelines.
In this new service, “If a shareholder resolution urges the company to pay for its employees to obtain abortions across state lines, the proxy advisers will recommend voting no,” they explained. “If a proposal encourages a business to cover sex-change treatments in its health plans, they will reject it. For issues not involving intrinsic evil, on which the church offers no definitive guidance, the proxy advisers will defer to management or abstain.”
The USCCB offers guidelines that outline Catholics’ responsibilities in financial investing, such as avoiding investing in companies that generate large revenue from “immoral activities,” the authors noted. Strategies should protect life and promote human dignity.
Before collaborating with CUA on the new guidelines, “Neither proxy adviser respected this counsel,” the authors wrote. CUA staff found that ISS’s “Catholic Faith-Based Voting Policy” had wide divergences from the USCCB’s guidelines. The voting policy included upholding Church teaching on abortion but lacked any mention of bioethical issues, such as in vitro fertilization and euthanasia.
The authors described Glass Lewis’ Catholic policy as “nearly indistinguishable from its secular offers,” also falling short of the USCCB’s provisions.
Abela and Schmitz wrote that they approached ISS and Glass Lewis about creating guidelines that respect Catholic Church teaching.
“It took some effort to convince them there was a sizable market for a proxy-voting service that applied the bishops’ guidelines faithfully — but to both companies’ credit, they listened and agreed to work with us,” they wrote. “In recent months we created a set of guidelines directly based on those issued by the bishops.”
The new guidelines will be available to investors in the shareholder resolution season beginning in spring 2026.