When Cardinal Joseph Bernardin first articulated the “consistent ethic of life” nearly forty years ago, he was trying to help Catholics see the interconnectedness of the Church’s defense of the human dignity of all persons. Whether confronting abortion, euthanasia, unjust war, or mistreatment of immigrants and refugees, the consistent ethic of life (also known as the seamless garment) holds all life issues together under the conviction that every person is created in the image of God. For such a vision to have moral credibility, however, consistency is not optional.
This is why Cardinal Blase Cupich’s decision to honor Senator Dick Durbin in November with a lifetime achievement award at the annual fundraiser for the Archdiocese of Chicago’s immigration ministry, Keep Hope Alive, while well intentioned, is imprudent. Durbin has been a leading defender of the rights of migrants, and his public service has often placed the dignity of the vulnerable at the center. He has worked hard to enact legislation to help immigrants, including the DREAM act and comprehensive immigration reform. He has been outspoken — on September 8 of this year, he gave an impassioned speech challenging President Donald Trump’s deportation policies and decrying Trump’s plan to enact “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago. Cardinal Cupich rightly wanted to highlight this good work. But by recognizing him in such a public way, the cardinal risks undermining the very consistency that the seamless garment requires.
Durbin began his political career as a strong defender of unborn life. For example, in 1982, Durbin served as master of ceremonies at a Right to Life event at the Capital Rotunda in Springfield, Illinois. In a 1989 letter, he expressed his belief that Roe v Wade (the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in all 50 states) “should be reversed.” Like many of his fellow Catholic Democrats, however — including Senator Ted Kennedy and President Joe Biden — Durbin shifted to a pro-choice position as his political career progressed. In a 2005 interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press, Durbin said that the issue of abortion was “a struggle for me. It still is. I’m opposed to abortion. If any woman in my family said she was seeking abortion, I’d go out of my way to try to dissuade them from making that decision.” But he added, “I finally came to the conclusion that we really have to try to honor the Roe vs. Wade thinking, that there are certain times in the life of a woman that she needs to make that decision with her doctor, with her family and with her conscience and that the government shouldn’t be intruding.” In recent years, abortion rights organizations have given him 100% ratings for his record on the issue. In 2023, he tweeted, “Abortion is a fundamental right.”
This doesn’t erase the good Senator Durbin has done on behalf of migrants, but it does create a jarring dissonance: the very figure being celebrated for defending life in one area has consistently worked against life in another. The optics alone hand ammunition to critics who have long claimed that “consistent ethic” Catholics treat abortion as negotiable, as though it were just one item on a long menu of social concerns. To present him with a lifetime achievement award from the Archdiocese of Chicago, no matter how narrowly framed, risks sending the message that the Church is willing to minimize the moral weight of abortion when political allies excel on other life issues.
I want to state clearly that I believe Cardinal Cupich truly does uphold the sanctity of unborn life. His record demonstrates this clearly. In a 2016 address at Fordham University, he frequently spoke of the human dignity of the unborn and in opposition to abortion. He has consistently and publicly upheld the Church’s position in the political realm, both at the state level and in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade. He has regularly and forcefully advocated for the right to life of the unborn, but has often grouped it with other life issues (which irks certain “cafeteria Catholics” on the right).
Additionally, when it comes to teaching the faith, standing with the pope (both Francis and Leo), upholding Catholic social doctrine, and advocating for social justice, few US bishops are as consistent and outspoken as Cardinal Cupich. Many are using Durbin’s award as an opportunity to attack Cardinal Cupich as a bishop and as a person. These attacks are unjustified, and many of his critics don’t have a leg to stand on, frankly.
Yet his decision to honor Senator Durbin creates the appearance of partisanship, an impression that the consistent ethic of life is only a rhetorical shield for one side of the political aisle. In such a politicized and polarized Church, when a Catholic bishop honors someone so prominently identified with expanding abortion access, the integrity of the ethic we claim to uphold is compromised.
Critics have been quick to pounce. It should be noted that some of the loudest voices — such as Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco — are hardly models of consistency themselves. Both have been appointed as advisors in the administration of President Donald Trump, a man whose policies and rhetoric trample the dignity of migrants, the poor, and his political opponents. During the pontificate of Pope Francis, both bishops consistently stood with the pope’s critics, dissenting from the exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia and attempting to undermine Traditionis Custodes, Francis’s document regulating the Tridentine Mass.
I do not remember either bishop raising their voices in 2015, when the Franciscan University of Steubenville awarded an honorary doctorate to former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, who spearheaded the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation” program, which violated the Church’s opposition to torture because it is intrinsically evil. Nor did they speak up in 2020, when the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast honored then-Attorney General Bill Barr, who was at the time overseeing an execution spree of federal prisoners at the behest of Donald Trump. They have also been silent about the effusive and extremely partisan praise for far-right political figures like Representative Riley Moore and Donald Trump by Bishop Robert Barron and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who compared the late MAGA pundit Charlie Kirk to St. Paul.
The selective outrage expressed by Cupich’s critics betrays a partisan double standard. Yet their hypocrisy does not nullify Cupich’s error in judgement.
We live in a polarized Church and a polarized nation. Catholics in the United States are already tempted to sort the Church’s moral teachings into “conservative” and “progressive” baskets, aligning themselves with whichever side confirms their existing politics. Bernardin’s vision was meant to resist that tribalism. But when Church leaders make decisions that can easily be interpreted as partisan gestures, they unintentionally reinforce the very divisions they want to heal.
Honoring Senator Durbin may have been meant as a recognition of his commitment to refugees and migrants, but it will be received as a broader statement. It suggests that abortion can be bracketed, or that a consistent ethic really means “pick your favorite issues.”
To be consistent means precisely that: we must advocate for the unborn and for the refugee, for the poor and for the elderly, for the disabled and for the prisoner. Cardinal Cupich’s desire to affirm Durbin’s work on behalf of migrants is understandable and laudable. But such recognition must always be weighed against the broader witness of the Church. Without careful discernment, gestures like this risk confusing the faithful and undermining the credibility of the Church’s public witness to life in all its stages.
If the consistent ethic of life is to be our approach to defending human dignity, it must be lived with clarity, courage, and genuine nonpartisanship. Otherwise, it will be dismissed as little more than another political slogan, instead of the prophetic challenge it was always meant to be.
Mike Lewis is the founding managing editor of Where Peter Is. He and Jeannie Gaffigan co-host Field Hospital, a U.S. Catholic podcast.
Popular Posts