Disgracefully, a Catholic Cardinal Fronts for Abortion

The incoming archbishop of the notorious archdiocese of Boston is slamming a “Catholic” college for hosting a Harris-Walz fundraiser, while his Chicagoan counterpart is taking the opposite approach to America’s Abortion Party.

Ahead of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) this month, Salve Regina University in Rhode Island hosted a fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, featuring the Democratic nominee’s running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz (D). The fundraiser brought in an estimated $600,000 and was attended by over 300 Rhode Island Democrats.

Walz himself spoke at the event, reportedly touting abortion. “Who’s asking to take away women’s reproductive rights?” Walz asked, in a speech reportedly centered on attacking former President Donald Trump and his Republican running mate, Catholic convert and Ohio senator J.D. Vance. Walz is said to have quipped, “Things really work best in communities when you mind your own damn business.”

Bishop Richard Henning of the Diocese of Providence, soon to be the archbishop of Boston, had his office issue a statement saying that he and the diocese “were surprised and disappointed by the decision of Salve Regina University to rent space to a partisan political event and fundraiser, and we’ve received a number of messages from Catholics across Rhode Island expressing the same surprise and disappointment.”

“The Church’s role in political matters is firstly to form the consciences of the lay faithful,” Henning’s statement insisted, continuing to note that the diocese “does not permit Catholic institutions in Rhode Island to endorse candidates for office nor even give the appearance of such endorsements.”

I’ve written extensively for The American Spectator on just how antithetical to Catholic moral and social teaching the policies of both Harris and Walz are. Topping the list of decidedly-un-Catholic positions the Democratic duo share is the issue of abortion.

It seems that for the past twenty years, conservatives have suggested that whoever is the Democratic nominee is the most pro-abortion candidate in American history. This is generally true, as the Democratic Party has rapidly become the party of abortion adoration.

At this point, women are praised as heroes just for slaughtering their unborn offspring, regardless of circumstance (although Democrats love to find the most sordid stories possible to try to play the heartstrings of those uninitiated into the abortion cult), and any who dare suggest that butchering babies in the womb mightn’t be the glorious kindness Democrats think it is are smeared as extremists and reviled as everything from oppressors and misogynists to Hitlerian dictators. Harris and Walz are now leading the pro-abortion charge.

The Democrats’ abortion cultism was on full display during last week’s DNC, with speakers ranging from state-level legislators and high school girls to the head of the abortion giant Planned Parenthood and a veritable pantheon of the most radically pro-abortion presidents to still walk this earth.

One thing not on display was the pectoral cross — or, indeed, the Catholic faith — of Chicago’s archbishop, Cardinal Blase Cupich, who offered the opening “prayer” at the DNC. Without ever mentioning the name of Christ Jesus, it seems that Cupich elected to walk in the footsteps of two of Christ’s disciples: Judas Iscariot and St. Peter.

The Chicago cardinal made no mention of the atrocity of abortion, which the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has repeatedly reiterated is the paramount issue of our time and which even progressive-leaning Pope Francis has consistently condemned and likened to hiring a hitman.

More importantly, the Catholic Church has definitively and irrevocably condemned abortion as among the gravest of moral evils, imposing upon those who participate in the sin the most stringent of penalties in the Church’s arsenal: excommunication.

That penalty serves a more-than-punitive purpose; excommunication is meant also as a warning against particularly grave sins and as a remedy for the harm caused by such sins, urging the sinner to repent of his crime and return to communion with the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.

With a crowd of certainly the most pro-abortion people in the whole country, and arguably in the whole world, Cupich had a rare and blessed opportunity to call those present — many of whom, such as President Joe Biden and governors Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) and Phil Murphy (D-N.J.), identify as Catholic — to repent, a chance to speak out against this sin which has claimed the lives of tens of millions of innocent American children. Not a word did Cupich say against this horrific evil, this veritable genocide, even though an abortion bus was parked right outside, operated by Planned Parenthood.

At least Judas was paid thirty pieces of silver for his betrayal of innocent life. I don’t know which would be more damning: if Cupich did it for free or if he billed the DNC.

While the Judas comparison may strike some as harsh (I assure you, it isn’t nearly harsh enough), Cupich did also imitate the chief of the Apostles — unfortunately, he chose the lowest point of St. Peter’s story to pay homage to. Just as the first Pope denied even knowing Christ, so Cupich hid the cross around his neck, neatly tucking it into his inside jacket pocket, and refused to utter the name of Jesus.

However, both Judas and Peter recognized that they had done wrong. I wonder if Cupich has. The Iscariot, famously, despaired of the forgiveness of God, even as Christ was suffering torture and death for the sake of His betrayer’s sins, and hanged himself in shame over his sin.

Peter also recognized that he had sinned, denying that he even knew the God-made-man whom, just hours before, he had pledged to follow even unto death. But where Judas despaired of God’s mercy, Peter did not. “Tears wash away the sin which the voice is ashamed to confess. Tears do not ask for pardon, they merit it,” wrote St. Ambrose. “I know why Peter kept silence. It was because an earlier request for pardon would have added to his offence. We must weep first, and then pray.”

Let us hope and pray that Chicago’s cardinal — and, indeed, all those who call themselves Catholic but insist on supporting the demoniac policies and child-slaughter of the Democratic Party — will follow more nearly in St. Peter’s footsteps, instead of in Judas’s. Yet to do either necessitates a sense of sin. With the naked barbarism on display in Chicago last week, it seems that many (if not all) of those clamoring for more and more unborn children to die are oblivious to the evil they are hailing. Again, an opportunity Cupich squandered, likely costing thousands of souls, and possibly hundreds of thousands of lives.

READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy:

A Painful Division in the Heart of the Church

The Atrocity Known as ‘Catholics for Kamala’

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