“Allow me to share reflections drawn from the discourses and insights of three cardinals—all from Chicago: Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who was Archbishop of Chicago in the 1990s; Cardinal Blase Cupich, who is currently the archbishop; and myself, as you know, born in Chicago.” — then-Cardinal Robert Prevost, 2023
It is tempting to read a lot into the way then-Cardinal Prevost drew a line of connection from Cardinal Joseph Bernardin to Cardinal Blase Cupich to himself, writing that line with the consistent ethic of life as his pen. It is a curious sort of autobiographical reflection, the way this unexpected cardinal who became an unexpected pope traces a cardinalatial lineage across decades and through the neighborhoods of Chicago. Prevost’s amazement at his situation seems almost palpable for the way that he reaches for a comparison that seems both surprising and, when we think about it, natural. His effort is so revealing, it is useless not to read into it—all the more, because Prevost drew that line of connection in the way he did.
The consistent ethic has been controversial. I won’t rehearse the controversy here because I have written here about it before. It is enough to quote then-Cardinal Prevost who referred to the “misinformation” and “distortions” that prevail among a certain sort of critics “who harshly criticize the Holy Father [Pope Francis].” The same sorts of people have distorted and criticized Cardinal Bernardin, too—attacking him still decades after he died. Bernardin’s legacy and the consistent ethic of life as much as the Second Vatican Council that formed both of them have been grist for an ongoing argument cast between “liberals” and “conservatives,” “progressives” and “traditionalists” over the merits of what critics call a “culturally-accommodating Catholicism” or a “beige Catholicism” that critics say frustrated the proper reception of Vatican II. Of course, that argument offers its own misinformation and distortion.
This is at least one sense, then, in which we do want to read something into Cardinal Prevost’s remarks. Claiming the consistent ethic of life so unwaveringly—and, associating himself with Cardinal Cupich’s re-formulation of a consistent ethic of solidarity—Cardinal Prevost certainly is signaling his refusal to join that senseless culture war quarrel. Even as the attacks on Vatican II and Cardinal Bernardin eventually became attacks on Cardinal Cupich and Pope Francis, Cardinal Prevost seemed to be telling us he had no time for any of that.
But I am intrigued by yet another inference suggested by Cardinal Prevost’s remarks. Cardinal Prevost proposed in 2023 that “we again embrace Cardinal Bernardin’s proposal [the consistent ethic]—perhaps now more urgently than ever” because of the “Divisions [that] exist among Christians.” The consistent ethic, he seemed to say, is a sort of common ground that can be shared by all Catholics—indeed, by all people everywhere. This style of thinking not only mirrors Cardinal Bernardin’s own thinking very closely, but it may signal something very important about the Leo XIV pontificate.
The consistent ethic certainly did fall prey to the divisions of the culture wars and abortion politics that have dominated the last four decades. What Bernardin intended to become a public outreach based on reason as much as faith, a way to heal arguments so that critical threats to human life might be addressed with moral seriousness and practical effectiveness, was reduced to an easy attack line. Scorn for the consistent ethic is far easier to find today than praise. In what world should we see the consistent ethic as a bridge across divisions in 2023, or in 2025? Is this even realistic?
Prevost seemed to tell us that he believes it is. More than realistic, it is what Catholic faith demands. The consistent ethic, after all, was not really Cardinal Bernardin’s invention. It is articulated by paragraph 27 of Gaudium et Spes and affirmed by paragraph 87 of Evangelium Vitae. There is no reasonable theological argument against this ethical approach given by the Magisterium, to which Cardinal Bernardin gave particular and public expression. The argument, actually, is about something else.
At the heart of the whole matter is Vatican II and all of Vatican II’s challenging implications for a church determined to meet the modern world. A subtle and determined effort has been underway for a very long time to blunt those challenging implications, suggesting that they don’t really mean what they say they mean. The boldest attempt, I think, was made ten years ago in a book that not only re-translated Dignitatis Humanae in order to recover its “authentic meaning” and strip out what they see as the unwelcome influence of John Courtney Murray (whose collapsed lung that prevented him from participating in the final draft they ascribe uncharitably to “providence”). The result was an idiosyncratic reading of an important document, one that tried to evade and interpret away the purpose of the document itself.
Few critics have been so blatant, but the overall effort to insist that the texts have been misunderstood and the Council fathers really did not intend to ‘open the windows and let in the fresh air’ is quite common. In the decades that ensued those critics made their argument as holding on to the past against modern or accommodating impulses. But what characterizes these critics the most is not their devotion to tradition. Rather, it is their skepticism that “everything, even human differences, leads to the greater good of the Church.” Tradition, in the hands of those critics, is a means toward an end. Their real objective is to resist the persistent tug of plurality, the way a global church increasingly insists that the Church cannot just be one thing.
This was why Cardinal Bernardin, Cardinal Cupich, and Pope Francis have seemed so threatening for many people. Their ministries pointed in that more inclusive direction. They were framed by critics as liberal or progressive or culturally-accommodating. They actually were saying that the Church can be more than one thing and still be the Church.
The consistent ethic offers a good example. It asks us to gather around shared commitments enshrined in the Magisterium and it also invites us to reflect prudentially on the best way to live out those commitments. It is not a simple, one-size-fits-all answer to a complex moral question. It allows for how many things can be true, and “even human differences” “lead to the greater good of the Church.” The consistent ethic of life invites the richness of our problems’ complexity and our different human perspectives on how to solve those problems to enter a fruitful dialogue with one another. Some like to say this sort of approach invites confusion. The reality is that plurality and complexity sit at the heart of the Church. They are a resource, not a problem.
In this way, we might read then-Cardinal Prevost’s 2023 remarks as signaling how he understands that the long argument between “liberals” and “conservatives” masked what has been at stake since Vatican II. What had been a centralized, Roman, and European Church became a global Church. That certainly meant that the Church had to learn to make space for many different languages, histories, and cultural expressions. More challengingly, though, it meant that the Church needed to become accustomed to a more decentralized, inclusive ecclesial model where many voices chatter together from the peripheries, gathered around our shared faith in the Gospel and the Church. This is the central issue. When we think about it this way, all the other arguments begin to make a different kind of sense. We see what they really were about. They also start to seem a little silly and pointless because those arguments mostly distracted us from the critical challenge.
What has been contested since Vatican II is control. The effort to retain control, to maintain a centralized church, in fact has come at the expense of what the Church teaches about itself and the world. The argument made consistently by the Council, by Cardinal Bernardin, by Pope Francis, and by Cardinal Cupich is that the Church gains far more than it loses when it restores protagonism and agency to the margins. The “Divisions [that] exist among Christians” become less destructive when we do that. What is central and essential in our Christian faith—the common ground that holds us together—stands more surely and certainly in our midst. The Spirit speaks more loudly and clearly. The Gospel and what the Church teaches about it reclaim the central space. “Our thinking and teaching…[begin to] manifest coherence” that arises not from our certainties but from the light of the Gospel that shines from the whole Church.
I have no more privileged insight to Pope Leo’s thinking than anyone else who hasn’t met him. But as I listen to him and read him, it seems quite clear that this is what he means by unity and peace. And, in a line proceeding from Vatican II to Cardinal Bernardin to Pope Francis to Cardinal Cupich, this is the point from which Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate begins.
Image: “Pope Leo XIV Inauguration Mass In St. Pe” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by Catholic Church (England and Wales). © Mazur/cbcew.org.uk.
Steven P. Millies is the author of Good Intentions: A History of Catholic Voters’ Road from Roe to Trump (Liturgical Press, 2018) and his most recent book, A Consistent Ethic of Life: Navigating Catholic Engagement with U.S. Politics (Paulist Press, 2024)
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