R.I.P. Seamless Garment 1984-2004: Pope Benedict XVI Shreds Bernardin's Fabric of Lies

would imagine that at least one situation would be that in which there's no anti-abort on the ballot! You can go for the lesser of two evils.

How about just not voting? Works for me.

21 posted on 04/27/2005 11:50:10 AM PDT by te lucis ("A Catholic likes using his mind on his Faith, like burnishing a treasure." -Bp. Richard Williamson)

I did say the Church's PRIMARY Concern was the Spiritual Welfare.

The responsibility to perform Corporal Works of mercy falls upon the individuals and communities who are closest to those in need. Subsidiarity in other words.

Government bureaucracies create more injustice than the injustices they purport to heal.

22 posted on 04/27/2005 11:55:18 AM PDT by jrny (Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Benedicto Decimo Sexto.)

I can't imagine how a Catholic could say "I'll vote for the pro-abort who will cut my taxes as opposed to the pro-abort who will raise taxes".

How about "I'll vote for the pro-abort who will insist on a conscience clause for hospitals as opposed to the pro-abort who thinks that shouldn't be allowed."

23 posted on 04/27/2005 12:39:43 PM PDT by maryz

How about just not voting? Works for me.

If that's how you're comfortable, fine. But someone is going to be elected and deciding things for all of us. My own feeling is that it's better to vote for the least harmful.

24 posted on 04/27/2005 12:48:03 PM PDT by maryz

To: old and tired

I always thought that the "Seamless garment" thing was put forward by liberal Catholics not so much in defense of pro-abortion Catholic pols, but as an argument against those who could be against abortion but support capital punishment.

25 posted on 04/27/2005 1:24:29 PM PDT by brooklyn dave (Catholic school survivor and proud of it.)

To: brooklyn dave

An interesting history of the seamless garment can be found here:

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/politics/pg0020.html

A brief excerpt follows:

Cuomo's sophistry

On September 13, 1984, barely one year after Cardinal Bernardin announced his seamless garment project, Cuomo delivered his famous speech on abortion at the University of Notre Dame. At the time, Cuomo was the leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and a much-touted presidential possibility. The central point of his speech was to claim that while he “personally” accepted, and lived by, the Church’s teaching on abortion, he considered it wrong to deny his fellow citizens, including many who did not accept the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, the choice of whether to have an abortion.

Noting that the Church does not insist that every immoral action be prohibited by law, Cuomo depicted the question of abortion’s legal treatment as a matter of prudence akin to the range of questions with which the seamless garment was concerned. It was a question on which, he suggested, reasonable people, including reasonable Catholics, could disagree. According to Cuomo, what made a politician truly pro-life and truly someone prepared to act in the spirit of the Catholic teaching was not his opposition to legal abortion or its public funding. Though Cuomo acknowledged the bishops’ clear teaching on those issues, it was, rather, the politician’s stance on the whole range of sanctity and quality of life issues. And here, he implied, liberal Democrats, such as himself, who shared the bishops’ stated positions on capital punishment, welfare, housing, taxation, defense spending, and international human rights policy had records far superior to those of pro-life conservatives whose only specific areas of policy agreement with the bishops had to do with abortion and related issues.

Cuomo prides himself on being something of an intellectual, and there is no denying that he is a bright fellow. He must know then that, at its root, this is utter nonsense. He must be aware that the Church’s teaching on abortion truly does “translate” straightforwardly into a specific public policy — the unborn, like the rest of us, are to be afforded equal protection under law; abortion is to be generally prohibited and never publicly promoted — in a way that her teachings regarding care for the poor or the requirement of fairness in distributing tax liability, for example, simply do not. But the fact is that Cuomo brilliantly exploited Bernardin’s seamless garment teaching, and the USCC’s practice of adopting specific positions on a wide range of policy questions, to undermine the bishops’ efforts to give the right to life the priority it deserves in a society in which more than a million unborn human beings are destroyed by abortion every year.

Cuomo’s Notre Dame speech provided a virtual playbook for pro-abortion Catholic politicians who wished to claim that their public support for “the right to choose” abortion was not inconsistent with their personal moral opposition to deliberate feticide. It taught liberal politicians of every religious persuasion how to explain to Catholic constituents that their differences with the bishops over the particular issue of abortion are overshadowed by their broad agreement with the bishops across the wide range of “quality of life” issues. It relieved much of the internal and external tension experienced by public men and women, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, who wanted to be pro-life and pro-choice at the same time.

26 posted on 04/27/2005 1:42:43 PM PDT by Diago

This story is available at: http://www.cathnews.com/news/412/120.php

US theologian calls for ´seamless garment´ approach to life issues

Notre Dame theology professor Fr Richard McBrien has attacked bishops who hold a pro-life position on selective issues, claiming that they negate the importance of other concerns such as capital punishment, just war, or social justice.

Writing in his syndicated column, Fr McBrien outlined his argument that all issues concerning the dignity of human life – including abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, war, social justice and human rights – carry equal moral weight, and should therefore have equal influence on a Catholic voter´s decision.

McBrien wrote that this approach is the one adopted by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in the statement "Faithful Citizenship” published in October 2003, in the run-up to this year´s elections.

He criticised what he called a "significant minority in the bishops´ conference”, "some of whose number played a highly visible role in the recent U.S. election,” who say that "abortion is the only life-issue that matters --- to the point where it is said to ‘trump´ all others.”

He also pointed out that the emerging backlash against the "seamless garment” theory is evident in the fact that "many bishops apparently broke with precedent last month and withheld their votes from Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Washington, one of ten candidates for Conference president.”

SOURCE
Fr. McBrien attacks pro-life bishops in syndicated column (Catholic News Agency 17/12/04)

LINKS
Essays in Theology - Richard P. McBrien

SOURCES - FULL STORIES

21 Dec 2004

27 posted on 04/27/2005 1:50:43 PM PDT by Diago

Didn't Cardinal Bernardin request a known, homosexual men's choir to sing at his funeral?

28 posted on 04/27/2005 6:57:43 PM PDT by Coleus (God Bless our New Pope, Benedict XVI)

29 posted on 04/27/2005 7:01:41 PM PDT by te lucis ("A Catholic likes using his mind on his Faith, like burnishing a treasure." -Bp. Richard Williamson)

30 posted on 04/27/2005 9:39:38 PM PDT by Coleus (God Bless our New Pope, Benedict XVI)

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