Blase, the Indecent: Being Unemployed not the same as being Killed, Chopped Up, and Sold

Pieter Aertsen
A meat stall with the Holy Family giving alms, 1551 

When a Bishop goes to the depths of nonsensical depravity in order to create a moral equivalency between the murder, mutilation, and selling of parts of innocent human beings (as the victims of the grotesque marketplace set up by Planned Parenthood and revealed little by little by the most horrendous series of videos in recent memory) and a plethora of other smaller social concerns, then he has placed himself beyond the boundaries of decency.

Blase Cupich, Francis-appointed Archbishop of Chicago, has become Blase the Indecent with his latest intervention in the public square trying not only to preserve but to even extend the rotten theory of the "seamless garment" favored by his predecessor Cardinal Bernardin.

Phil Lawler, a conservative commentator who is not (well...at least yet...) a traditionalist, said the pertinent words:

The late Cardinal Bernardin muddied the waters of Catholic social teaching with his “seamless garment” argument, suggesting that opposition to abortion was no more important than opposition to the nuclear freeze. But Archbishop Blaise Cupich, who now sits in Cardinal Bernardin’s Chicago seat, has jumped the shark with his response to the Planned Parenthood scandal:

While commerce in the remains of defenseless children is particularly repulsive, we should be no less appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighborhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.

If Archbishop Cupich means to compare the Planned Parenthood scandal with all the other horrors taking place around the world, it’s curious that he doesn’t mention the slaughter of Christians in the Middle East. If he’s restricting his focus to the US, then his claim that “thousands” of people die “daily” because they lack access to medical care is shameless hyperbole. But it gets worse.

Yes, of course, the archbishop mentions the death penalty. Full disclosure: I oppose the death penalty. But I can’t say that I am “no less appalled” by the execution of a convicted serial killer than the destruction of an innocent child. The two are not morally equivalent actions. As the late, great Congressman Henry Hyde said: “Show me an unborn child who has been convicted of a capital crime by a jury of his peers, and he’s all yours!”

Joblessness? I’ve been unemployed. I’d like to think that upon reading this, you feel a pang of sympathy. But if you would be “no less appalled” to learn that I had been chopped into pieces, and the parts sold to the highest bidder, I’m afraid I can’t count you as my friend.

Not only as Catholics, but as simple human beings, we are appalled by this outrageous and indecent moral equivalency that only tries to give cover to Blase's (that's his preferred way of being called) political friends. But this is so much beyond any political friendship!... Can't he realize that? Can't he have the decency to at least avoid cheap political equivalencies at such a horrendous moment? Will you, Blase, please?... Respect these chopped up and sold brethren! Please, do not try to score cheap political points with their livers and brains, with their beating hearts and hands, with their crushed skulls! This is not the time, this is not the moment, this is not decent! By drawing such equivalencies, you, Blase, are being indecent and causing grievous scandal. Shame on you.