Today has brought two developments in the polarizing case of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Keep Hope Alive award.
First, Pope Leo personally weighed in on the matter. The Holy Father delivered a brief lecture to an American reporter in which he laid out the “seamless garment” teaching associated with the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, in strong and explicit terms:
I understand the difficulty and the tensions. But I think as I myself have spoken in the past, it’s important to look at many issues that are related to the teachings of the Church. Someone who says I’m against abortion but says I’m in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life. Someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants who are in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro life. So they are very complex issues, I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them, but I would ask first and foremost that there’d be greater respect for one another, and that we search together both as human beings—in that case as American citizens and citizens of the state of Illinois—as well as Catholics, to say that we need really look closely at all of these ethical issues. And to find the way forward as a Church. The Church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear.
In some ways this is a stronger statement of this point than the late Pope Francis ever made, because Leo is well aware of the connotations and stakes of the American English political terminology that he is using.
Then, some hours later, came a statement from the Archdiocese of Chicago in which Cardinal Blase Cupich announced that Durbin had decided on his own not to receive the award. Cupich decries political polarization within the Church in what are by now familiarly Leonine terms, and he ends the statement with this suggestion:
This leads me to make a proposal for moving ahead. I believe it would be worthwhile to schedule some synodal gatherings for members of the faithful to experience listening to each other with respect on these issues, all the while remaining open to maturing more fully in their common identity as Catholics. Perhaps our Catholic universities can be of assistance. As I give thought to how such gatherings might take place, I welcome suggestions.
Read the whole statement. I think there is a lot of merit to Cardinal Cupich’s idea here, and I pray that it bears fruit.
I also think that Senator Durbin is to be commended for stepping back from a situation that was producing more heat than light. According to Bishop Paprocki, from Durbin’s diocese of origin (Springfield, Illinois), Durbin generally declines to present himself for communion in the diocese. I think that this shows a basic integrity otherwise conspicuously lacking in most of our Catholic politicians, regardless of party or culture-wars orientation. Durbin and Cupich have both, in my view, acquitted themselves well in following Leo’s unifying, deescalation-oriented priorities.
Image: Pope Leo from YouTube screenshot; Senator Dick Durbin Wikimedia Commons.
Nathan Turowsky—a native New Englander, an alumnus of Boston University School of Theology, and one of the relatively few Catholic alumni of that primarily Wesleyan institution—works in the nonprofit sector and writes at Silicate Siesta.
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