"Millions of Abortions Have Continued"

Abortion Cancel Culture Wins Again. What Was Gained?

“Millions of abortions have continued.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) has declined an award honoring his lifetime of work on behalf of immigrants. I assume he was hoping to spare the Archdiocese of Chicago further tumult after so many critics have made so much noise. It was an honorable act of decency—no surprise coming from Durbin. But now here we have a moment to take stock.

Sometimes I think I was there when abortion cancel culture was born.

I was a graduate student at The Catholic University of America in the 1990s. I was behind the scenes when Candace Gingrich was invited to speak on campus. Perhaps you’ll surmise that Candace Gingrich is the sister of you-know-who. She is LGBTQ+ and pro-choice. After 5pm on the day she was to appear, word came from Cardinal Hickey’s office—someone had faxed him, he didn’t like the event, it was cancelled less than two hours before it was set to begin.

“Millions of abortions have continued.”

I also remember when Rev. Robert Drinan, S.J. was invited to speak at the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America. Drinan was the last Catholic priest to sit in Congress, and he also was pro-choice. Perhaps it was a clerical privilege, he wasn’t disinvited from speaking. But the protests outside were large and noisy.

“Millions of abortions have continued.”

There were other cases too. In those days, it was earnest students who did the cancelling, not Catholic bishops. But little else has changed. A whole lot of noise gets made to cancel these pro-choice Catholics. It begins to seem like everything depends on keeping them from finding an audience or getting an award. The abortion cancel culture almost always succeeds. And then you can depend on one thing always being true—

“Millions of abortions have continued.”

I keep quoting fmr.-Rep. Daniel Lipinski who wrote earlier today in First Things about how, as he sees it, Cardinal Cupich is “Undermining the Church’s Public Witness.” I’d say it’s an interesting claim. But any merit this threadbare, forty-year-old canard might have is undermined on its own terms. As Lipinski tells us—

Democrats…crafted their rhetoric to profess a false claim about the doctrine of the Church—that understanding abortion to be “intrinsically evil” is only a faith-based belief….Catholic politicians have used this template over and over again as they duck their responsibility to defend the defenseless. Millions of abortions have continued.

We have been hearing this since Cardinal Joseph Bernardin proposed the consistent ethic of life in 1983—anything that introduces any nuance or subtlety about abortion into the public debate is “Undermining the Church’s Public Witness.” Anything that asks us to think about another issue, in Phyllis Schlafly’s words, threatens to “sabotage the pro-life movement” (which, you know, must only be about abortion).

For forty years, we were told to vote and to act and to believe as though only overturning Roe v. Wade mattered. It was the “pre-eminent priority.” And, if you haven’t heard, Roe was overturned 2 years, 3 months, and 6 days ago. The Great Victory was achieved. And, the result?

“Millions of abortions have continued.”

No matter how many speakers have been cancelled, no matter how often Catholic Democrats have been scolded or shunned, no matter even that the Supreme Court overturned Roe: abortion cancel culture is undaunted by how nothing it has done has changed the situation. They just go on cancelling. And, millions of abortions have continued.

In recent days, it has been extraordinary to see so many Catholic bishops with no canonical claim on the Archdiocese of Chicago come out of the woodwork to tell Chicago’s bishop whom he should and should not honor. I have written about this elsewhere. But let me say here, as Cardinal Bernardin’s biographer: I am aghast at this breach of collegiality among U.S. bishops. It eclipses the scale of the breach when U.S. cardinals attacked Cardinal Bernardin after he proposed Catholics should be in dialogue with one another. In its day, that was jawdropping. This is worse.

Perhaps my surprise is diminished only by knowing who some of the bishops are who have done this. Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki already has made a spectacle of how little he values collegiality. Disgraced Bishop-emeritus of Tyler Joseph Strickland is notable mainly for how he cast his lot with excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Mario Viganò (who called for Pope Francis to resign and now secludes himself in a secure, undisclosed location). These are the bishops with whom Archbishops Cordileone and Naumann, Bishops Conley, Kemme, Johnston, Olson, Ricken, and Wall have cast their lot when they reached over the boundary of Cardinal Cupich’s canonical authority. That should speak for itself.

But there are far worse things here than the ecclesial breach. The Church does not exist for itself. The Church is a ministry. The failures here we can name in that light are worse.

First, there is Dick Durbin, himself. In a long and honest career in public service, Durbin has been a primary sponsor or co-sponsor of the HERO for At-Risk Youth Act, the Creating Pathways for Youth Employment Act, and the Global Poverty Act. He has helped expand access to affordable health insurance for people in low-income situations. He protected SNAP and Medicaid benefits. He’s voted for bills that protect the climate, and he’s also voted to help end predatory lending. That’s the short list. He’s also the primary sponsor of the DREAM Act, he co-sponsored the America’s CHILDREN Act, and he has been laboring to strengthen the H1-B and L-1 visa programs.

But somehow—all these Catholic bishops and their abettors want us to think about is abortion. Nothing else. Nothing.

That’s a crime and a calumny against Dick Durbin. I wish I could apologize to him in person for the Roman Catholic Church.

But there is something far worse.

Throughout this stupid imbroglio, while those bishops and other perpetrators of abortion cancel culture have gotten us thinking entirely and only about abortion, ICE has been on Chicago’s streets. On the streets of the city where Durbin was to be honored November 3, an eight-year-old girl and her family were taken into detention. Others have been seized and not heard from.

On November 3, Cardinal Cupich and Sen. Durbin had a chance to cast a bright light on what has been happening. A prominent Church leader and a U.S. senator brought together to speak for immigrants would have brought a lot of attention to the problem.

That opportunity is gone now. All the attention has been wrested away to abortion. The detentions and family separations go on, roving bands of masked ICE thugs still roam Chicago’s streets to terrify honest people. And what has been achieved?

“Millions of abortions have continued.”