The church had a fight over an award. But did anyone learn anything?

Over the course of the last two weeks, many Catholic leaders and commentators have been caught up in arguments over an award the Chicago archdiocese had planned to give to Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois. Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., where Senator Durbin has a home and where he has been forbidden from receiving the Eucharist because of his political advocacy for legal abortion, made his objection to the award known and was joined by several other bishops. In response, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago made it clear that he intended to go forward with the award.

Eventually, the controversy reached the Vatican, as Pope Leo XIV was asked about it while departing Castel Gandolfo. Speaking in English, he did not pick a side between bishops, saying that he understood “the difficulty and the tensions,” but said that it was “important to look at many issues related to what is the teaching of the church.” He gave examples of someone who opposes abortion but supports the death penalty, or who opposes abortion but agrees with “the inhuman treatment of immigrants,” saying that such positions could not really be called “pro-life.”

Hours later, the controversy was resolved, at least for now, by Senator Durbin’s decision to decline the award. In his statement communicating the senator’s decision, Cardinal Cupich lamented that “the tragic reality in our nation today is that there are essentially no Catholic public officials who consistently pursue the essential elements of Catholic social teaching because our party system will not permit them to do so.” He called for “synodal gatherings for members of the faithful to experience listening to each other with respect on these issues.” 

So now that we are past the immediate controversy, has anything of substance actually changed? 

I would answer “No.” We are mostly back to the status quo ante before the award was first announced for Senator Durbin. His positions have not changed, and neither have the positions of any of the bishops who have opposed each other on this issue. No one convinced each other of anything other than that everyone was entrenched in their positions.

This lack of change is tragic and reflects a fundamental challenge for the proclamation of Catholic moral teaching. Even more sadly, this controversy—a predictable cycle of offense and outrage—has done next to nothing to address that challenge, despite publicly highlighting Catholic divisions.

To illustrate the problem here, consider these questions: At this point in reading about the controversy, do you even know what Senator Durbin would have been awarded for? Or do you mainly know that the issue is about his public support for abortion? Or, quite possibly, have you or someone you know ended up thinking that somehow the Archdiocese of Chicago was giving Senator Durbin an award recognizing his pro-choice stance?

The award, which was scheduled to have been given at a Keep Hope Alive benefit, was a “Lifetime Achievement Award for support to immigrants.”

Chicago is currently in the midst of an immigration crackdown; recently, a building in Chicago was raided in the middle of the night with doors broken down by armed agents in military fatigues who entered almost every apartment in the building and pulled families out into the night. But instead of giving clear witness to church teaching’s consistent defense of the human dignity of migrants regardless of their legal status, Catholic attention has been consumed by argument over whether or not Senator Durbin should have been given an award—and in that argument over an award for support to immigrants we have mostly managed not to talk about the church’s teaching on immigration at all.

I do not mean to dismiss real and significant concerns over the church giving an award to a politician who has consistently and avidly supported abortion and refused to acknowledge the human dignity of the unborn. Doing so contradicts a policy the U.S. bishops adopted in 2004, which said the church “should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” Both because of those concerns and because of the entirely predictable controversy that has ensued, I think the choice of awardee was imprudent. 

However, the award for support to immigrants given at a benefit to support ministry to immigrants was certainly not any kind of endorsement of Senator Durbin’s position on abortion, nor would any reasonable and charitable observer have interpreted it as such. In that sense, the outrage around Senator Durbin receiving this award, while authentic, was also deliberate and strategic. It was intentionally used to underline the Catholic Church’s moral opposition to abortion and to demonstrate the church’s ability to draw a line in the sand, showing that politicians who reject church teaching on the dignity of the unborn are firmly on the other side.

Bishops and other church leaders who focus on drawing such sharp and clear lines are not doing so out of malice or animus. They have a sincere hope that severe sanctions will motivate political leaders to reflect in conscience on the teaching of the church and repent of their support for evil. Sincerity of hope, however, cannot guarantee the effectiveness of the means chosen to encourage conversion—and I see no evidence of any sort that public restriction of the Eucharist, much less policing who gets awards, is succeeding in changing minds or hearts, either of elected officials or of Catholics in the pews. Instead, it mainly serves to reinforce the conviction of those who are already convinced of church teaching. As I have argued extensively before, no one can win the Communion wars. 

A significant cost of the focus on policing adherence to church teaching on abortion at every opportunity is that it implicitly teaches that church teachings on other moral issues, such as immigration, are less important, and can be treated as optional or merely prudential so long as one maintains opposition to abortion. Pope Francis wrote about this tendency in “Gaudete et Exsultate,” warning against the view that “the only thing that counts is one particular ethical issue or cause that they themselves defend,” and setting defense of the lives of the poor and marginalized alongside the defense of the lives of the unborn as “equally sacred.” Pope Leo XIV’s comments about who can really be called pro-life echo this insight.

What is saddest about this whole sorry episode is that no one, as far as I can tell, has been moved any closer to embracing the fullness of church teaching. We are still stuck, as Cardinal Cupich put it, with “essentially no Catholic public officials who consistently pursue the essential elements of Catholic social teaching.” Decades of insistence on the pre-eminent priority of abortion in the church’s political witness has done nothing but make this problem worse: We have failed not only in forming faithful voters, but also in forming faithful candidates for office.

Senator Durbin’s track record of supporting the human dignity of immigrants is worth celebrating, but it cannot erase the moral failure of his support for abortion. We also ought to be equally concerned about the many Catholic elected officials on the right who may accept church teaching on abortion but are even now cheering on, to use the Holy Father’s language, “the inhuman treatment of immigrants.” Indeed, insofar as part of the moral logic of the church’s teaching on abortion is that no other rights can be truly secure without the right to life, perhaps we ought to express greater concern that public officials who recognize the dignity of unborn life and speak about their faith as a reason for doing so are so willing to celebrate the dehumanization and demonization of our migrant brothers and sisters. 

I do not have any quick solutions to this problem. But I respectfully suggest that the efforts to draw a clearer moral line around abortion have proven insufficient. Cardinal Cupich has suggested some form of synodal conversation for members of the faithful on these issues, which could certainly help. There is also a pressing need for similar conversation among the bishops, which ought to include reflection on how both Pope Francis and now Pope Leo have modeled discussing these issues. The popes have been fully clear about Catholic teaching on abortion—and they have also been fully clear about their concern regarding Catholics who fail to integrate other issues into their defense of human dignity.