Skip to content
Daily Theology
  • Listen
  • Write
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Search
Bishops, Catholic Social Teaching
by Kevin AhernFebruary 8, 201411:30 pmMarch 24, 2014

It’s Time to Stop Bashing Cardinal Bernardin

You have been told, O mortal, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

I was dismayed, but not all that surprised by Nicholas G. Hahn III’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal. It has become fashionable in conservative circles in the United States to blame everything they dislike in American politics and religion on Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the late archbishop of Chicago. With the papacy of Pope Francis and the need for a new archbishop in Chicago, the legacy of Bernardin is again attracting much attention. joseph

Toward the beginning of his opinion piece, Hahn rightfully points out: that “those trying to interpret Pope Francis, on the left and the right…see in him a reflection of their own hopes.” The risk, as he suggests, is that we remake the pope into our own image.  Unfortunately, his selective and uncharitable reading of Cardinal Bernardin does just that.

The most vicious (and ridiculous) of the Bernardin-bashers is by far Michael Voris, a sensational conspiracy theorist who often blames the late Cardinal for everything from “ObamaCare” to the sexual abuse crisis in the church. But the Bernardin-bashers also comes from more serious voices. George Weigel, for instance, wrote an often-cited article in 2011 that (falsely) portrays Bernardin as an authoritarian, Chicago style political boss who imposed his “left-wing” Catholicism on all the other bishops in the United States—as if they were fooled or force to elect him as the president of the conference.

If one, like Hahn and Weigel, dislikes the Catholic Church’s commitment to social justice—the easiest thing to do is to blame Bernardin. If one dislikes the pro-poor empowerment efforts of Catholic agencies like Catholic Relief Services or the Catholic Campaign for Human Development—blame Bernardin. If one disagrees with the Catholic Church’s critique of individualism, capitalism, racism, and the United States’ hawkish position on foreign policy—blame Bernardin. If one feels uneasy with bishops and popes speaking about healthcare and education as rights and public goods—blame Bernardin. If the president of the United States has learned something from the Catholic tradition…

Joseph Bernardin’s moral vision, best articulated with the phrase “consistent ethic of life,” should make us uncomfortable. Rooted squarely in the Gospel message of Jesus Christ and the Christian tradition, this vision challenges all of us to humbly reflect on how our politics, lifestyle choices, and ideologies promote or harm human dignity, with particular attention to the least among us.

In his article, Hahn accuses the “Catholic left” of trying to “resurrect the ghost of Bernardin.” However, the so-called Bernardin ghost gets far more attention from those seeking who want to find someone to blame for the fact that the Catholic church’s position does not clearly match with American partisan politics. It is not  easy for people who deeply adhere to partisan divisions to realize that the Catholic moral vision challenges all partisan and human ideologies. Rather than accepting the breadth and depth of the Catholic social and ethical tradition, the temptation is to pick and choose.

Pope Francis washing feet on Holy Thursday
Pope Francis washing feet on Holy Thursday

In Caritas in Veritate, his 2009 social encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI surprised many who looked at him through the limited partisan vision of American politics, by making strong arguments for social and distributive justice including an appeal or governmental regulation of the economy. Rooting the encyclical in Paul VI’s vision of integral human development and John Paul II’s teaching on solidarity and human dignity, Benedict clearly presents a consistent ethic of life framework.

In his response, which was seen as absurd by people in the Vatican Curia, Weigel presented a new conspiracy theory. Maybe because Bernardin was no longer around to blame for Benedict’s holistic approach to social justice, he blamed the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. In his article titled “Caritas in Veritate in Gold and Red and Gold,” Weigel urged readers to disregard anything in the text that offered a critique of American conservative positions.  In the text, he claimed, one should distinguish between those sections written by a supposed gold pen by Benedict and those written by a supposed red pen by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace that forced their opinion on the pope (a very strange claim to anyone who knows how the Curia operates).

One of the main ironies with Weigel, Hahn and other Bernardin-bashers is that they end up becoming just like the so-called “cafeteria Catholics” they disdain so much.

Bernardin’s commitment to the consistent ethic of life is deeply rooted in the Gospel and the holistic vision of the Catholic social and ethical. Catholic doctrine has emphasized this point in different ways. For example, Pope Paul VI frequently appealed to the notion of “integral human development” and the church’s vocation to work for the development of “all people and the whole person.” Like Bernardin, Pope John Paul II often addressed the connections between pro-life issues and social justice in speaking for a culture of life that extended from “conception to natural death.” John Paul II’s homilies on his visits to the United States, for instance, stress the interrelationship between a wide range of social issues including anti-abortion efforts, solidarity with the poor, and the military disarmament. More recently, Pope Francis has not been afraid to critique both the structural evils within global capitalism and the throw away culture that accepts abortion and euthanasiafurnishingsMy_Pictures2

While I do not know what the future holds for the Catholic Church in Chicago or anywhere in the world, I suspect that the papacy of Pope Francis and the increasing prominence of global Catholicism will be frustrating for Hahn and other Americans (including liberals) obsessed with the partisan divisions between Republicans and Democrats. In his response to another Bernardin-basher in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Fr. Bryan Massingale summarizes the consistent ethic of life (CEL) this way:.

The CEL is deeply rooted in the church’s official teaching and is not a recent invention to provide a “liberal” cover to vote for pro-choice candidates. This is why one finds CEL advocates (such as the famous “Nuns on the Bus” participants) working for a strong network of prenatal support for unwed mothers, just wages, adequate unemployment coverage and comprehensive health care reform. Because measures such as these facilitate a choice for life at its beginning, ending and every stage in between.

Rooted deeply in the Christian tradition, the message of Bernardin is challenging for us all and is not always easy to accept. Bernardin’s message of the consistent ethic of life is challenging to us not because it deviates from the Catholic tradition, but because it radically reflects the fullness of that tradition—a tradition that does not fit nicely into our conservative or liberal boxes. In the end, however, the value of human life is more important than our political or partisan worldviews. Bernardin summed it up this way:

A consistent ethic does not say everyone in the Church must do all things, but it does say that as individuals and groups pursue one issue, whether it is opposing abortion or capital punishment, the way we oppose one threat should be related to support for a systemic vision of life…. No one is called to do everything, but each of us can do something. And we can strive not to stand against each other when the protection and the promotion of life are at stake.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Tagged with: Cardinal Joseph Bernardin Chicago consistent ethic of life George Weigel Nicholas G. Hahn III

Kevin Ahern

All posts

Kevin Glauber Ahern, PhD is an assistant professor of religious studies at Manhattan College. He defended his doctoral dissertation in Theological Ethics from Boston College in 2013. His dissertation was entitled “Structures of Grace: Catholic NGOs and the Church’s Mission in a Globalized World.” From 2003 to 2007, Kevin Ahern served as the President of the International Movement of Catholic Students (IMCS-Pax Romana), an international network of students in over eighty countries. He continues to be active on the boards of several national and international networks, including the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, the board of directors of America Press and as a Vice-President of the ICMICA-Pax Romana, He has edited the Radical Bible and Visions of Hope: Emerging Theologians and the Future of the Church, both with Orbis Books. When not teaching, writing, or going to international meetings, Kevin enjoys hiking, Cape Cod, and spending time with his wife. Follow him on twitter at @kevin_ahern

  • Profile at Academia
  • Kevin J Ahern's page.

9Comments

Add yours
  1. 1
    Chris Nunez on February 10, 2014 at 2:20 pm
    Reply

    BIG THANKS FOR THIS ARTICLE ON THE MUCH RESPECTED CARDINAL!
    But you don’t need to mention the names of detractors… even ‘negative publicity’ is still publicity.
    Attrition is the best ‘policy’… just a thought.

    • 2
      Kevin Ahern on February 10, 2014 at 5:32 pm
      Reply

      Thanks Chris. I agree with you! I also do wonder if we need to name (in a spirit of sibling correction) the destructive and divisive attitudes that threaten Christian unity and deny the fullness of the Catholic faith. We need to say basta! But, you are right – let’s avoid free publicity too, particularly when there are people making money by sensationalizing ecclesial debates.

  2. 3
    James Stagg on February 12, 2014 at 4:10 pm
    Reply

    This is a wide-ranging comment from someone not in the Church Magisterium:

    Joseph Bernardin’s moral vision, best articulated with the phrase “consistent ethic of life,” should make us uncomfortable. Rooted squarely in the Gospel message of Jesus Christ and the Christian tradition, this vision challenges all of us to humbly reflect on how our politics, lifestyle choices, and ideologies promote or harm human dignity, with particular attention to the least among us.

    May you spend many hours meditating on this, and many years on the defense of this minimalist position.

    • 4
      Kevin Ahern on February 12, 2014 at 5:39 pm
      Reply

      Thank you James for your comment. I actually spend many hours meditating about this point and have spoken with many bishops, members of the Roman Curia and theologians on the legacy of Bernardin (a member of the Magisterium). My point is that the consistent ethic of life is very Catholic. We can see the same meaning in the writings of John Paul II on the Gospel of Life (from conception to natural death) and Paul VI and Benedict XVI on integral human development. One bishop who is now a cardinal in the curia told me that the he could not understand why Americans hate the late cardinal so much who is seen by many in Rome as a holy bishop.

      As an aside, theologians have often been considered part of the magisterium–well into the late medieval period. I don’t claim that title, but it is worth noting.

      If you have a statement from an authority in the church (Holy See office, curial position or cardinal) that condemns the consistent ethic of life, I’d love to see it. If it is so bad, then why haven’t we seen an outright condemnation?

      Thank you for the invitation to meditate more on the consistent ethic of life.

  3. 5
    Matthew Davis on February 14, 2014 at 11:04 am
    Reply

    Thanks for the thoughtful piece!

  4. 6
    The Pro-Life Progressive: An Endangered Species? | Political Jesus on February 14, 2014 at 12:33 pm
    Reply

    […] the past, pro-life Democrats were treated as second-class citizens once again.  At Daily Theology, Kevin Ahern pointed to the rise in the number of Op-Eds making Joseph Cardinal Bernardin the scapegoat from […]

  5. 7
    A (Truly) Consistent Commitment to Life | Daily Theology on February 27, 2014 at 11:21 am
    Reply

    […] most of the readership of this blog is undoubtedly aware (thanks in no small part to Kevin Ahern’s recent incisive post), Joseph Cardinal Bernardin remains a controversial figure almost two decades after his death. In […]

  6. 8
    The Pro-Life Progressive: An Endangered Species? | MennoNerds on August 28, 2015 at 11:13 am
    Reply

    […] the past, pro-life Democrats were treated as second-class citizens once again.  At Daily Theology, Kevin Ahern pointed to the rise in the number of Op-Eds making Joseph Cardinal Bernardin the scapegoat from […]

  7. 9
    The Pro-Life Progressive: An Endangered Species? | The Resist Daily on October 3, 2017 at 7:54 pm
    Reply

    […] the past, pro-life Democrats were treated as second-class citizens once again.  At Daily Theology, Kevin Ahern pointed to the rise in the number of Op-Eds making Joseph Cardinal Bernardin the scapegoat from […]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Advertisements

Recent Posts

  • Invitation to an Antifascist Reading Space January 15, 2021
  • Beyond Kendi: Antiracism and Non-White Sovereignty in the US Political Economy October 30, 2020
  • Sinful and Holy: The Human Nature of the Church October 29, 2020
  • To Jesuits, Black Americans were Objects of Ministry, Not Agents Of their Own Faith October 28, 2020
Advertisements

Archive

Advertisements

Follow DT on Twitter

My Tweets
Advertisements

Like us on Facebook!

Like us on Facebook!
Advertisements

Tags

Advent Anti-Racism Catholic Catholic Church Catholicism Catholic Social Teaching Christianity Christmas Church College Theology Society discipleship faith Holy Spirit Hope Jesuits Jesus Jesus Christ Lent liberation theology love Mercy Oscar Romero podcast podcast season 1 Pope Francis Prayer racism Saint Leo University Saints spirituality Stephen Okey Stephen Okey Podcast Episode Theological Shark Week theology theology and culture
Advertisements

Authors

  • Amanda Osheim
  • Alexandria Griffin
  • Benjamin Durheim
  • Brian Flanagan
  • B. Kevin Brown
  • Brianne Jacobs
  • erik martin
  • Catherine R. Osborne
  • Christine E. McCarthy
  • Leo Guardado
  • Kelly L. Schmidt & Billy Critchley-Menor, S.J.
  • The Editors
  • Guest Post
  • DT Podcast
  • Dave de la Fuente
  • Dannis Matteson
  • Heather M. DuBois
  • Gunnar B. Gundersen
  • John DeCostanza
  • Jessica Wrobleski
  • Kevin M Johnson
  • John P. Slattery
  • Katharine Mahon
  • Katherine Wrisley Shelby
  • Kathleen Bellow
  • Br. Ken Homan, SJ
  • Kevin Ahern
  • Katherine A. Greiner
  • Krista Stevens
  • Andrew Staron
  • Lorraine Cuddeback-Gedeon
  • Marjorie Corbman
  • Michael L. Avery
  • Marcus Mescher
  • Michael Rubbelke
  • Meg Stapleton Smith
  • Katie O'Neill
  • Paul Louis Metzger
  • Stephen Okey
Advertisements
Advertisements

Categories

Advent Catholicism Catholic Social Teaching Christian Life Church Community Conversation Conversion Current Events Discipleship Doing Theology Ethics and Moral Theology Faith Guest Post Jesus Christ Justice Lent Mercy Podcast Politics Pop Culture Pope Francis Racism Saints Shark Week Social Justice Solidarity Spirituality Theology and Culture Vatican
Advertisements
Advertisements
Advertisements
Advertisements

Tags

#Laudato Si Advent Anti-Racism Catholic Catholic Church Catholic Higher Education Catholicism Catholic Social Teaching Christianity Christmas Church College Theology Society Community conversation dialogue discipleship education Ethics Eucharist faith Forgiveness grace Higher Education Holy Spirit Holy Week Hope Incarnation Jesuits Jesus Jesus Christ John DeCostanza John Paul II Kevin Ahern Lent liberation theology Liturgy love Martin Luther King Mary Media Mercy Ministry Oscar Romero peace Pentecost podcast podcast season 1 podcast season 2 Pope Benedict XVI Pope Francis Prayer Public Theology Race racism resurrection Saint Leo University Saints scripture Shark Week social justice spirituality Stephen Okey Stephen Okey Podcast Episode Teaching Teaching Theology Theological Shark Week theology theology and culture Thomas Merton Vacation Bible School Vatican Vatican II vocation war white supremacy
Advertisements
Advertisements
Advertisements
Advertisements
Advertisements
Advertisements
Website Built with WordPress.com.
Footer navigation
  • About Us
  • Theological Shark Weeks
  • DT Podcast
  • Who We Are

Begin typing your search above and press return to search. Press Esc to cancel.

  • Follow Following
    • Daily Theology
    • Join 12,305 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Daily Theology
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.

    %d bloggers like this: