Cardinal of Chicago pitches new way to fight (asking politely?) abortion, Catholic Charities uses pro-abortion lobbyist for abortionists. What on earth is going on?
Sun-Times spills beans, Card. Cupich urges discussion . . .
Say what?
Cardinal Cupich talks a good game about abortion — he’s against it anyhow — but his Catholic Charities operation “is using a lobbying firm that also represents an abortion provider, and the same lobbying firm and its employees have given campaign money to politicians and groups backing abortion rights, the Chicago Sun-Times found.”
Gosh. And just the other day he was proclaiming a new ways to fight abortion, “Renewing the pro-life mission,” drawing on a recent Vatican document, “Life Is Always a Good: Initiating Processes for a Pastoral Care of Human Life,” which “offers a new pastoral framework” for “strengthening and promoting the pastoral care of human life” emphasizing “dialogue, listening, prayer and discernment on the part of the faithful,” so as “to create conditions to welcome and accompany life anywhere and anytime.”
Nothing there about hiring a company that works to create conditions that sabotage human life.
He calls for “a shift in our way of thinking,” abandoning the “logic of performing activities to achieve objectives” to one of “co-responsibility and transformative discipleship.”
Are you listening?
This new strategy is not “taking up a project,” but building an “ecclesial intelligence,” on the strength of which all will realize what’s happening and respond accordingly.
Ah.
This strategy enables us to join one another as “fellow pilgrims in solidarity, advocating and promoting the dignity of every human being.”
But what about the Catholic Charities’ lobbying firm that also represents an abortion provider and with its employees gives money to politicians and groups backing abortion rights, as the Sun-Times found?
The cardinal: “In many countries, attention to life issues is kept high by pro-life movements, but many of them mainly focus on civil and political action.”
Heaven forfend.
“What is needed,” he said, “is an approach marked by pastoral care . . . an ecclesial action of the Christian community, laypeople and pastors together, which cannot be delegated and is called to address every situation in which human dignity is threatened, without confining itself to specific areas.”
Will they say, first of all, dump the pro-abort people?
This ecclesial action will produce in people a “situational intelligence, empathy, intuition, and practical wisdom” in the matter “to implement pastoral action and care wherever human life is at risk.”
Will the people in charge then find new lobbyists?
This document which got the cardinal going on the issue can contribute to “helping us,” he said, “when polarization has so paralyzed our dialogue about life issues.”
We’re polarized? That’s why we hired the pro-abortion lobbyists? Why didn’t you say so?
So anyhow, let’s be done with “projects and policies,” he said, but rather go after “the formation of the Christian community,” so that each of us — all hundreds of thousands — “will be guided by a logic of co-responsibility and transformative discipleship in safeguarding and promoting the life and dignity of every human being.”
I say let’s go!
A final word from the cardinal, urging us, every darn one of us, “to read and study this document.”
And lest anyone think he or she is alone in this, be assured, he says, “Our Respect Life Office already is studying it with the aim of developing resources that might be helpful as we take up the work of helping parishioners, educators, parents and young people to develop and deepen a surpassing respect for the value of life.”
And where to find new lobbyists.