The Pope’s statement on the Durbin award: wrong, and irrelevant

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 30, 2025

Pope Leo’s answer to a question about the Chicago archdiocesan award for Senator Durbin was certainly disappointing. It was also largely irrelevant.

The key question—the question that American bishops are now asking—is whether Cardinal Cupich can justify bestowing an honor on a pro-abortion politician. Pope Leo did not address that question.

In rolling out the shopworn “seamless garment” approach, the Pope suggested that some other unnamed politicians should not be classified as pro-life. American Catholics have been debating that issue for 40 years. But right now the issue is not the status of those other hypothetical politicians. The question is whether Durbin is pro-life. By the Pope’s own statement, he is not. “The Church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear.” Therefore Durbin should not be honored by a Catholic institution. Case closed.

This is not a complex question, like an election in which one candidate offends against one aspect of Catholic teaching while the other offends against another. At times Catholic voters must choose between flawed alternatives. In this case there was no need to honor Durbin or any other politician. The Chicago archdiocese has chosen to single out this senator for an honor that he does not deserve.

”I am not terribly familiar with the particular case,” the Pope said as he began his response to a reporter’s question. That is an excellent reason for a Roman Pontiff to avoid any direct answer to a vexed political question. And in a sense (see above) Pope Leo did not answer. But his non-answer muddled the issue—in two different ways.

Several American bishops (there are ten names on the list as I write) have felt compelled, by their duty as defenders of the faith, to oppose the Durbin award. Unfortunately most of the American hierarchy has remained silent. The Pope’s statement will probably ensure that timid bishops—of whom there are many—will maintain that silence.

As for the substance of the Pope’s remarks, the arguments are familiar. A Catholic can be pro-life and still support the death penalty—unless centuries of Catholic teaching can be discarded. The Catholic Church unequivocally supported the death penalty until midway through the 20th century. Indeed many theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas, held that the sanction of capital punishment as a punishment for murder is an affirmation of the Church’s horror at the unjust taking of a human life.

The Pope’s claim that American treatment of immigrants is “inhuman” is a spectacular rhetorical excess. Faithful Catholics may criticize ICE tactics, but no one (save the most thoroughly irresponsible denizens of the extreme Left) argues that ICE is killing people. The immigration debate is in no way commensurate with the debate over the killing of unborn children.

But again these are familiar arguments. More to the point, they are not the argument that is troubling American Catholics today. By approving the Lifetime Achievement award for Durbin, Cardinal Cupich is pushing beyond the range of the “seamless garment” excuse. He is saying not merely that Durbin can be supported in preference to a (supposedly) flawed Republican electoral opponent, but that Durbin should be held up as a model for Catholic political leadership. Even an honest advocate of the seamless garment approach should reject that outrageous claim.