The text of Vigano presents a forceful thesis regarding a recent episode involving Pope Leo XIV and his justification for the Archdiocese of Chicago's award to Senator Dick Durbin, a politician notoriously in favor of abortion. The central thesis of the text is that Prevost's stance represents a modernist capitulation that relativizes the intrinsic gravity of abortion by equating it with other social issues, such as the death penalty and immigration. This approach, it is argued, uses Joseph Bernardin's pseudo-doctrine of the "seamless garment" as a pretext to "domesticate" the Church's teaching, emptying it of its prophetic force in the name of political prudence and the refusal to "polarize." Such an attitude, the text concludes, not only scandalizes the faithful but also reveals a complicity with the moral dissolution of society, aligning itself with a secularist agenda at the expense of an uncompromising witness to the Faith.
The controversy in question, though specific to the ecclesiastical context, serves as an exemplary microcosm of the political and theological pathologies that have afflicted Western civilization since its divorce from Christendom. The following analysis, grounded in the principles explored in the work Liberty, The God That Failed, will demonstrate that the attitude attributed to Prevost is not an isolated deviation, but rather the logical and inevitable result of the subordination of religion to the power structure and epistemology of the secular liberal state—a project whose architecture was first outlined by John Locke and fully realized in the founding of the American Republic.🤔The Relativization of Moral Truth and the Law of Opinion
The assertion that issues like abortion are "very complex" and that "no one has all the truth on them" is a classic symptom of the skeptical epistemology that the Enlightenment imposed upon the West. This mentality represents a radical break with the Greco-Catholic tradition, which was founded on the certainty that objective moral truth is knowable and binding. Locke, in his Law of Opinion, proposed that, in practice, the concepts of "virtue and vice" are constantly attributed not to intrinsically good or evil actions, but to whatever, in each society, enjoys "reputation or discredit" (Ferrara, 2012, p. 58).
When a prelate of the Church adopts this rhetoric, he transfers the debate from the domain of divine and natural law—where abortion is an absolute and non-negotiable evil—to the domain of public opinion and secular political deliberation. In this new terrain, truth is no longer a rock upon which society must be built, but a commodity to be negotiated in the marketplace of ideas. The inevitable consequence is the loss of the Church's moral authority, which, instead of proclaiming the Truth that sets men free, begins to manage opinions in an effort to maintain its social relevance and avoid conflict with secular power. This is precisely the function that the liberal state assigns to religion: to be one voice among many, stripped of any pretense to final authority.
🏛️The Subordination of the Church to the State and the Myth of Religious Freedom
The thesis under discussion points to the concern for "avoiding polarization" as a central motive for Prevost's stance. This concern is a direct reflection of Locke's Law of Toleration, which obliges all religions to adopt tolerance as a fundamental dogma in order to be tolerated, in turn, by the state (Ferrara, 2012, p. 88). The liberal state does not demand that the Church renounce its doctrine internally, but rather that it refrain from imposing that doctrine in a "divisive" manner in the public sphere.
This is the core of the "American myth of religious freedom": religion is "free" only as long as it remains in the private realm and does not challenge the monism of power of the secular state (Ferrara, 2012, p. 511). John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech to Baptist leaders, in which he promised that no Catholic prelate would tell him how to act and that the Church would not speak for him on public matters, is the paradigmatic example of this capitulation (Ferrara, 2012, p. 512). By seeking common ground with a politician whose public career frontally opposes a non-negotiable principle of the faith, the hierarchy is, in practice, adopting the same posture of subordination. The "dialogue" with secular political power takes place on terms set by that power itself, which excludes beforehand any claim of absolute truth that might disturb the liberal consensus.
🧵The "Seamless Garment" as a Liberal Tool
The analysis of the "seamless garment" doctrine as an instrument that allows "Catholic" politicians to support abortion is accurate. Within the framework of Liberty, The God That Failed, this doctrine can be seen as a theological manifestation of the liberal project to "tame" Christianity (Ferrara, 2012, p. 516). By dissolving the hierarchical distinction between intrinsic evils (such as the murder of innocents) and complex social problems (such as the death penalty, whose legitimacy in certain cases is traditionally admitted by the Church, or immigration policies, which are of a prudential order), the "seamless garment" doctrine transforms Catholic morality into a menu of "conscience issues."
This approach is perfectly functional for the liberal state. It allows politicians like Senator Durbin to profess a Catholic identity while actively promoting a "culture of death," justifying themselves by their support for other "life issues." Morality becomes a matter of personal and political calculation, not submission to an objective law. This represents the triumph of the "politics of the body" over the "politics of the soul"—the state concerns itself only with the management of temporal interests, and the Church is invited to participate in this process, provided it accepts the rules of the game, which prohibit the proclamation of absolute and binding moral truths for the political order (Ferrara, 2012, p. 546).
⚖️The Abdication of the State's Moral Role
The submitted thesis correctly asserts that the State, "to be consistent with the purpose for which it exists, should prohibit and punish abortion." This view echoes the Greco-Catholic tradition, which understands the state as a moral institution whose purpose is to promote virtue and the common good, including the protection of its citizens' souls from public evil (Ferrara, 2012, p. 18). Plato, for example, advocated for state censorship of immoral materials so that the young would not be "bred among the symbols of evil" (Ferrara, 2012, p. 17).
The liberal state, however, was founded on the opposite premise: that the magistrate "hath nothing to do with the good of souls" and must limit himself to ensuring civil peace and property (Ferrara, 2012, p. 82). By treating abortion as a "human right" or a matter of personal choice, the modern state is not being "neutral"; it is, in fact, establishing an anti-theology, a state morality based on absolute individual autonomy that directly opposes the law of God. The hesitation of ecclesiastical figures to unequivocally condemn the politicians who promote this disorder is a form of acquiescence to this moral abdication of the state, accepting as legitimate the political structure that makes evil legally permissible.
In conclusion, the controversy surrounding Prevost and Senator Durbin is not a mere lapse in judgment, but an acute symptom of the advanced state of Christendom's decomposition. It reveals a hierarchy that has, to a large extent, internalized the premises of liberalism, trading the prophetic authority of the Church for a seat at the table of secular power. In so doing, it tragically fulfills the destiny that the failed god of Liberty has reserved for religion: to be a private, domesticated, and ultimately irrelevant opinion for the salvation of souls and of society itself.
References
Ferrara, Christopher A. Liberty, the god that failed: policing the sacred and the myth-making of the secular state, from Locke to Obama. New York: Angelico Press, 2012.