From Catholic World Report:
Durbin declines Chicago Archdiocese award after global backlash over pro-abortion views
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, will decline an award from the Archdiocese of Chicago after global backlash over his strong pro-abortion views that included comments from Pope Leo XIV and criticism from U.S. bishops.
Chicago archbishop Cardinal Blase Cupich announced Durbin’s decision in a Sept. 30 statement, revealing that Durbin informed the prelate that he “decided not to receive [the] award” at the archdiocesan Keep Hope Alive celebration on Nov. 5. Durbin was scheduled to receive a “Lifetime Achievement Award for support to immigrants” at the event. [This let’s Cupich off the hook, of course.]
Cupich’s announcement brings an end to a chaotic late September in which his brother bishops in the U.S. criticized the decision to grant Durbin the award, citing the Democratic senator’s long track record of pro-abortion politics.
The controversy even reached the Vatican itself, where on Sept. 30 Pope Leo XIV — responding to a question from EWTN News — said it was “important to look at the overall work that a senator has done [during] 40 years of service in the United States Senate.” [This seems to have been an off-the-cuff remark]
“I understand the difficulty and the tensions,” the Holy Father said. “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.”
Multiple U.S. bishops and archbishops criticized the decision. Springfield, Illinois, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, who presides over Durbin’s home diocese, described the senator as “unfit to receive any Catholic honor.”
[…]
Read the rest there.
Here’s the video of the Q&A between EWTN and Pope Leo:
TRANSCRIPT (my emphases):
EWTN: Can I ask a question in English just quickly? One question in English. Thank you. Thank you for speaking with us. I just wanted to ask one thing that has become a bit of a divisive subject in the US right now with Cardinal Sup giving an award to Senator Durbin. Some people of faith are having a hard time understanding this because he is for legalized abortion. How would you help people of faith right now decipher that, feel about that? And how do you feel about that?
LEO XIV: I’m not terribly familiar with the particular case. I think that it’s very important to look at the overall work that a senator has done during, if I’m not mistaken, 40 years of service in the United States Senate. 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 what is the teaching 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. So, someone who says, “I’m against abortion,” but is 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’re very complex issues. I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them, but I would ask first and foremost that there be greater respect for one another and that we search together both as human beings—in that case as American citizens or citizens of the state of Illinois—as well as as Catholics, to say we need to really look closely at all of these ethical issues and to find the way forward as Church. The Church’s teaching on each one of those issues is very clear.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Speaking of the Church’s teaching, very soon St. John Henry Newman will be declared to be a Doctor of the Church.
Again at Catholic World Report we find a piece by Edward Feser, an expert on the Church’s teaching about capital punishment.
After clarifying that the teachings of Doctors are not coterminous with the official doctrinal declarations of the Church though they are of highly value, Feser exposes what Newman thought about capital punishment. He includes an overview of Catholic writers who have written in defense of capital punishment. He goes through what Newman thought. Here is the conclusion.
Newman on capital punishment
[…]
Similarly, to say that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong, or that it is not sanctioned by scripture, or that it is never permitted by the higher standards of Christian morality, would contradict and reverse what scripture and tradition have consistently said. Hence, to teach such things would, by Newman’s criteria, not count as a development of doctrine, but rather as what he calls a “corruption” of doctrine that attempts to “correct” rather than corroborate it, and which “obscures” rather than illuminates it.
Newman, then, gives no aid and comfort whatsoever to Catholics who would like a doctrinal reversal on this matter. On the contrary, his words clearly condemn them.
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Pope Leo XIV should have stopped at “I’m not terribly familiar with that particular case.”
I was a little disappointed in the Holy Father’s comment as it seemed a bit “seamless garment” i.e. that abortion being just one of many issues along with capital punishment and the treatment of illegal immigrants. I would give him the benefit of the doubt being that it was an off the cuff comment to a reporter’s question.
The changing treatment of the death penalty in the current Catechism detracts from my confidence in its reliability. The campaign to declare the death penalty in all cases to be immoral is what ought to be “inadmissible.”
You stated that Durbin’s declining the award lets Cupich off the hook. Does it, though? I feel like it humiliates him. He was trying to accomplish . . . something – I suppose – by giving Durbin the award. Instead, he stirred up controversy, found himself isolated among the US bishops, and then didn’t even give the award and accomplished nothing. He walks away with egg on his face and nothing to show for it.
I understand folks who are doing elaborate gymnastics to parse every single word Pope Leo has been saying lately in an attempt to paint him as the astoundingly clever, verbally dexterous, and shrewdly but secretly orthodox champion they all hope he actually is . . . . but it seems rather silly after the papacy of Francis. While Pope Leo may not be as rabidly radical as Pope Francis, he clearly thinks in a very similar mindset (which is consistent with what we know of his life before becoming pope). When he says he thinks those who like the Traditional Latin Mass are polarizing, it’s because he thinks they’re polarizing and not because he’s trying to throw the Leftist hounds off the scent for a surprise reversal of TC which is just around the corner. When he says Capital Punishment and being against unrestricted and never ending migration into one’s country is just as evil as abortion, as insane and absurd as that is, it’s what he actually thinks. When he says nothing about LGBTQ+ celebrations in St. Peter’s and meets with Fr. Jimmy Martin while refusing to condemn the sordid agenda of such activists – it’s probably because he sees such perverts in the same light as Francis did.
While I will continue to pray for him in earnest, any hopes that this will be anything other than a slower, more civilized continuation of the Jorge Bergoglio agenda have been eradicated from even the most remote corners of my mind. And with bishops continuing their pogrom against the Latin Mass, I see myself having to swim to Lefebvre’s life boat in the near future.
There must be a great sea change in the Church – the power of the pope and the bishops must be checked. Both the legitimate limit of that authority must be better defined as well as the illegitimate abuse of their authority must be rebuked. Bishops should not be the sole property owner of everything in their diocese. The pope should not be seen as having the power to transform the liturgy in any way his whims suit nor to abolish, change, or ignore Canon Law as his fancy dictates. Their power must fall under the scope of their obligations to the preservation of the Deposit of the Faith, the promulgation of the Grace of God through the Sacraments, and to the pastoral care of the laity – in that order. I don’t know what it will take to break the great masses of Catholics out of their stupor, or to get them to understand that the paradigm they live in is both inadequate and a novelty within the history of the Church, but God help us, I get the feeling we will be suffering under the legacy of Jorge Bergoglio until we understand and fight for the Church and stop waiting for some magical future Super Pope to swoop in and save the day.
Needless to say, it’s worrisome that the Holy Father’s first instinct was to parrot the leftist talking points that relativize abortion as just one of countless issues that implicate Catholic moral teaching. With all due respect, the man needs to be informed of the words of his 2nd most recent predecessor, Joseph Ratzinger: “Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”
A win-lose conclusion. The win is that the scandal will not proceed (though much of the damage is already incurred); the lose is that we have a continuation of Pope Francis’ obfuscatory pronouncements on doctrine, just offered more politely by Poppe Leo.
Supporting the death penalty is the pro-life position. For a society which declines to execute murderers, rapists, arsonists, terrorists, and perpetrators of similarly serious crimes is not serious about protecting life. If anyone who held political authority before the so-called “Enlightenment” could live again and see the sorts of criminals who are allowed to draw breath in these United States, that person would think that we are a joke.
Pope Leo’s comments are disappointing. I am not completely surprised because ever since Pope Leo was elected I have known that it is wishful thinking to think that he is in the mold of JPII or BXVI. Yet I am disappointed because shortly after his election I read that while at Villanova he started Villanova’s pro-life club. Typically someone who is active in the pro-life movement recognizes the unique gravity of the evil of legalized abortion. So it’s really hard to say what is going on. It is perhaps possible that his comments were driven not so much by his beliefs about the issue but more by a concern with not undercutting a prominent Cardinal. It appears that Pope Leo is seeking unity by allowing space to both sides of the “aisle.” Perhaps for that reason he did not want to come down hard on Cardinal Cupich.
The line “if you are not [fill in leftist social justice cause] you are not pro-life” is annoying and stupid. “Pro-life” is nothing but a rhetorical term that the pro-life movement for political reasons adopted to identify itself. It has no content or meaning beyond that.
Concerning the Pope’s remarks:
If the “Church teaching on every one of those issues is very clear,” why do we “need to really look closely at all of these ethical issues and to find the way forward”?
If teaching is already clear, what are we moving forward to?
A completely disingenuous response from the Holy Father. “Not really pro-life”? Who cares? The man supports unlimited abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, can we please get some love for abolitionists?
In economics we are taught that everything has a cost. The cost of doing or having good or activity “A” is the highest value one can get from doing or having something else that you cannot have if one does activity “A”. I am surprised when supposedly well-trained-in-philosophy-and-theology clerics do not recognize that not implementing capital punishment might have a cost to both society and the Church militant. They certainly recognize this with abortion because they recognize that it does not involve just the mother, but a baby, a father as well as attitudes toward promiscuity if people treat it as just another method of birth control. The church’s entire set of teaching on sexual morality goes out the window if it becomes tolerant of abortion. (And if Aidan Nichols is right, so does Its theology of Holy Communion—assuming I understand him, which I doubt.) This is the cost of tolerating abortion. It is possible that part of the cost of not having capital punishment is more murders. Another is the feeling that one’s own government (and maybe one’s own Bishop) does not care enough about the victims of heinous crimes to support punishing the perpetrators.
The bishops generally do not recognize the cost of illegal immigration, nor do they consider that there may be a cost to legal immigration, though the costs of the former are higher. Immigrants to a country take away jobs from its native population. There are many cases where firms bring in hundreds of foreigners on H1 (or is it H1B) visas and then layoff an equal number of current employees because they pay the immigrants less. Sometimes the soon-to-be laid-off workers are required to train their replacements in order to get severance pay. Firms doing this have even required these workers not to publicly complain, since that is usually a requirement for getting the severance pay. Of course what the bishops are really concerned about are the payments they get for temporarily helping the immigrants. Don’t they know if they are helping them with someone else’s money (that is with tax dollars) it is not charitable work. Don’t they ever consider that those hurt by immigration may also be the poorest of the poor? [Not to mention the reports of rape and child trafficking. How many children went missing?]
Recently I read an article on Substack where a priest who was driven out of his ministry for reporting sexual scandals pointed out that the Bishops are using immigration to distract the public from their sex scandals. Maybe, but Cupich is certainly using it to be allowed to be tolerant of all sorts of sexual sins.
Dear WVC,
When he says he thinks those who like the Traditional Latin Mass are polarizing, it’s because he thinks they’re polarizing
I agree with you there. The thing is, he thinks that because (let’s face it) they are, and the American ones especially.
He seems to be adamant in not having the Catholic doctrine confused with Trumpism – and setting the details aside on this or that topic, that really is a necessary thing in my opinion as well.
(Details: such as capital punishment. Pope Francis on this was unscriptural [and Pope Leo has so far not repeated him]; but Pope St. John Paul II really was within the boundaries of authentic development of doctrine when he opposed it too. Some might disagree with his prudential judgment; I tend to agree with him there at least for developed societies in peacetime, but I don’t really follow his assumption that it would be tactically wise in the pro-life fight not to insist on the world of difference between capital punishment [perhaps accompanied with an “even if we don’t think that’s a good thing either”] and abortion. But as I said: details.)
Now, in the case of Pope Francis, he hated the politics trads tend to favor (and perhaps also was indignant, partly due to guilty conscience, at Tschugguel’s actions) and, out of anger at this very probably, chose to get at them and do so unjustly. (At the beginning of the pontificate, he was more like “i don’t understand them and care about them”). We may hope it won’t go so far with Pope Leo; but he’s a human being. It’s becoming sort of a mantra with me, but: Pope Leo is not Pope Francis. Do not make him.
I agree with Marine Mom. Every good speech has a stopping point, long before the end of a bad speech.
Dear Holy Father, the question wasn’t whether people who are opposed to the abominable sin and crime of abortion may possibly fail to be pro-life because of some other failure, real or imagined.
The question before us was whether an unrepentant advocate of the abominable sin and crime of abortion, who has promoted it publicly for decades, can ever be called prolife, under any circumstances.
And is it really such a complex issue?
What a weak response.