ROME — Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich has warned of “prophetic” denunciation by the U.S. bishops if President-elect Donald Trump tries to deport illegal immigrants.
In an interview this weekend with the Argentinian daily La Nación, Cardinal Cupich said that the bishops “are going to have to be prophetic and denounce any abuse of human dignity that may occur” during the Trump presidency, especially regarding immigrants.
“We are going to be vigilant and we are going to defend the human dignity of immigrants,” he stated.
Cupich said that he and the bishops conference have “expressed our concern regarding the issue of the deportation of undocumented persons, something that could divide families and make many see the newcomers as enemies.”
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“I think that would be intolerable, especially in a country where we are all immigrants. I am a product of immigration!” he added.
Cardinal Cupich has made a name for himself by suggesting moral equivalency among diverse social issues, such as immigration, abortion, capital punishment, and joblessness, provoking a sharp response from his brother bishops.
In a signed 2015 op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, Cupich listed a series of social ills that people should find just as loathsome as ripping apart unborn children and selling their organs.
As appalling as it is “to speak freely of crushing a child’s skull to preserve valuable body parts,” Cupich wrote, we should be “no less appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighborhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.”
By asserting the moral equivalency of many different societal problems, Cupich reduced the abhorrent offense of slaughtering the unborn and trading in their body parts to just another social ill, no worse than unemployment or a broken immigration system.
The former archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput, was quick to offer fraternal correction to his misguided brother bishop, penning his own essay titled “There Is No Equivalence.”
Attempts to equate the intentional taking of human life through abortion with other social justice issues – such as poverty, racism, and unemployment – are wrongheaded and deceptive, Chaput wrote.
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“The deliberate killing of innocent life is a uniquely wicked act,” Chaput contended. “No amount of contextualizing or deflecting our attention to other issues can obscure that.”
Nearly all Catholic dioceses in the United States spend far more time and talent on providing social services to the poor rather than on opposing abortion, Chaput noted, yet the fact remains that “children need to survive the womb before they can have needs like food, shelter, immigration counseling and good health care.”
“Humanity’s priority right – the one that undergirds all other rights – is the right to life,” Chaput argued, and being “right” on other matters of social justice “can never excuse a wrong choice regarding direct attacks on innocent human life.”
Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, similarly called abortion the great “moral crisis of our time,” overshadowing immigration, health care, and capital punishment.
While many other moral issues merit attention from the bishops, Naumann said, it would be a mistake to treat them as if they had the same weight, noting that the “vast majority of bishops” understand that abortion is the preeminent moral crisis of our time.
In early 2021, Cardinal Cupich reproached the president of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference (USCCB), Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, for voicing criticism of President Biden for his overt promotion of abortion.
In a series of tweets, Cupich called the archbishop’s statement “ill-considered” and instead issued his own whitewashed statement, which extended his “warmest wishes” to Biden, while decrying the evils of the Capitol riots, poverty, and racism, without mentioning abortion at all.
Shortly afterward, the Vatican’s former doctrinal chief, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, slammed Cardinal Cupich for his unwillingness to call out President Joe Biden for his abortion advocacy.
Cardinal Cupich was clearly in the wrong, Müller said and sacrificed his role as teacher of the faith on the altar of “political preferences.”
“A Catholic bishop is distinguished from power politicians and ideologues by his obedience to the revealed Word of God,” Müller stated. “He would be a false apostle if he relativized the natural moral law for the sake of his political preference or because he favored one party or the other.”
“Anyone who relativizes the clear acknowledgment of the sacredness of every human life with tactical games, sophistries and window dressing because of political preferences, publicly opposes the Catholic faith,” the cardinal declared.
“Vatican II and all the popes down to Francis have described the deliberate killing of a child before or after birth as a most grievous violation of God’s commandments,” Müller added.
“I cannot support a pro-abortion politician just because he builds public housing, as though I had to put up with what is absolutely evil on account of something relatively good,” he said.
