I enjoy jigsaw puzzles. Trying to figure out each individual puzzle piece’s place in the bigger picture and trying to find how it fits with other individual pieces is engaging for me.
Attending the Archdiocese of Chicago’s inaugural Life and Justice Conference last September was, in some ways, like opening a new jigsaw puzzle. There were many individual moments from that day that I knew fit together, but knew would take time to figure out where in the bigger picture they belong. With the next iteration of this conference taking place next month (registration is open), I’d like to take some time to lay out a few puzzle pieces and suggest a few ways they might fit together.1
The event is, to the best of my understanding, a re-thinking of the annual training and commissioning of the leaders of parish pro-life groups. It now provides training, resources, and opportunities for networking for other parish ministries as well, including immigration activism, anti-violence initiatives, and food pantries.The conference is part of a larger attempt in the Catholic Church in the United States to make more apparent the fact that the Church’s political activism and charitable efforts are inseparable. In several dioceses across the country, including Chicago, pro-life ministries and other causes have been brought under the same institutional umbrella.
The event itself began with a keynote and Q&A with Cardinal Cupich, followed by breakout sessions and a closing Mass.
During the Cupich Q&A, a woman stood up to ask for advice about a challenge she faces as the leader of her parish’s pro-life committee. She noticed that most parishioners averted their eyes when walking by her display table, and she worried that this was because parishioners had a pre-formed idea of what a pro-life activist looks like—a moralist, waving gory images. This stereotype didn’t represent her or what she wanted her parish’s pro-life group to be, and she wanted to know how she could make the pro-life cause seem more inviting.
Cardinal Cupich, as anyone who knows about the politics of the American bishops would predict, readily sympathized with her concerns. He recommended that she broaden the scope of the group’s activities to include discussions of, for example, the death penalty.
In the subsequent breakout session, a man who has been a prominent figure in the pro-life movement for decades criticized the Cardinal’s advice. Talking about other issues like the death penalty might alienate other people who would otherwise want to be part of the pro-life movement, he warned.
All three of these speakers—the woman, the cardinal, and the pro-life leader—clearly want the pro-life movement to grow, to appeal to a broader range of people and achieve the movement’s goal of building a society that better defends human dignity, not least by ending abortion.
Cardinal Cupich argued that the more interconnected our advocacy is, the more compelling it is. This is true- we need leaders and people on the ground working on issues across partisan lines to make the interconnectedness of these issues more apparent. But I think we also need people who specialize. We need people who focus on individual issues and people who focus on connecting the issues. These groups, moreover, should not get caught up in fighting each other. In fact, they need each other.Some people will be drawn in by comprehensive witness, but others will be drawn in by the one issue they care most about. Not all of the pro-life movement’s allies are ready to embrace everything the Church teaches (though perhaps they have rubbed off a bit too much on the Catholics they associate with- I have both sympathies with and reservations about the “ecumenism of hate” argument), but if the Church limits her public witness to only speaking about abortion, that does a disservice to the beauty and integrity of the Church’s social teaching and, more to the point, an injustice to the people whose lives and dignity are threatened by other problems.
Catholics across America are engaged in the work of justice, whether it is in regard to immigration or abortion or criminal justice reform. We may disagree with each other on strategies and even on policies, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the Church's witness to justice would not be complete without each one of us, engaged in our own unique vocation. I do not profess to know precisely how all of these vocations (all of these puzzle pieces) fit together, but I do insist that they all form part of a bigger picture.
I have little doubt that the conference next month will give me as much food for thought as last year's. Sr. Helen Prejean is scheduled to give the keynote. I’m not entirely sure what she will have to say to us in Illinois, where the death penalty has been abolished for some time.2 Will she discuss the need for more work on prison reform, and ministering to prisoners? Will she take interest in the fact that women come to Illinois from nearby states like Indiana and Iowa for abortions, and whether this gives a particular urgency to pro-life work in this state? Or will she discuss another topic entirely? I only have to wait a month to find out.
1 If the details are vague in the retelling, it is because they are fuzzy in the recalling. However, broad strokes should suffice.↩
2 The pro-life activist discussed above pointed this out in his critique of the Cardinal’s recommendations. Governor Rauner brought up the idea of reinstating the death penalty this past spring, probably as a campaign issue, but his proposal seems to have gone nowhere so far.
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