The pernicious legacy of Bernardin and his crowd is that the morality abortion has been reduced to the same level as the death penalty or even the same level as day-care for the working poor. Bernardin undoubtedly knew that this provided cover for the Democratic Party whom the great majority of bishops privately supported, a legacy of their once exhaulted place in that party’s circles. He knew that it provided absolution for the consciences of Catholics politicians and the Catholic upper crust who wished to ignore the fact that the United States had the most liberal abortion law in the developed world. Thus those people would now socialize with their “enlightened” neighbors and not be embarrassed by the possibility of having to defend the pro-life position, which was so declasse. Divine judgement fell upon the bishops with the sex scandal, and I suspect that most of them realize that no matter how they try that they will never rise in the estimate of
the right and famous to the level of fifty years ago.
You’re right. The whole seamless garment thing has provided cover for them to equate all issues.
As I understand it, though, proportionalim teaches, in accordance with the hierarchy of rights described in the article, that some rights or issues are higher or more important than others.
So, for instance, life trumps all other rights.
Abortion, as a denial of the right to life, must trump all other issues, even other injustices.
Proportionalism would reveal that while we should work towards eradicating poverty, avoid unjust wars, etc., if one was to add up the deaths of all other injustices combined, on a daily basis, in this country alone, they would not equal the loss, through abortion, of 4,000 souls per day.
So, in and of itself, life issues trump all other issues, and under proportionalism, abortion destroys more souls than the other indignities and/or injustices separately and even in combination.
There is no way someone can justify voting for a proabort even if the proabort is right on every other issue.