(OSV News) — In the wake of the news that the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office of Human Dignity and Solidarity Immigration Ministry and Cardinal Blase J. Cupich are scheduled to give Sen. Dick Durbin, who is Catholic, a “Lifetime Achievement Award” for his work on immigration issues in November despite the senator’s longstanding public position on abortion, Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, in whose diocese Durbin officially resides, has issued a fraternal correction to Cardinal Cupich, calling on the archdiocese to change its plans.
“Because this decision threatens to scandalize the faithful and injure the bonds of ecclesial communion, it should be reversed,” Bishop Paprocki wrote Sept. 23 in First Things.
In an interview Sept. 24 with OSV News, Bishop Paprocki said that regardless of Sen. Durbin’s record on other issues, his public position supporting policies to protect legal abortion disqualifies him from receiving any awards, per policies of both the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Archdiocese of Chicago itself. He argued that the award is not consistent with the church’s teaching on life issues, and that standing up for the truth is not “breaking unity” within the church.
The full interview is below, edited for clarity and length.
OSV News: You issued a formal fraternal correction earlier this week to Cardinal Cupich over the decision to give Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois a “Lifetime Achievement Award.” What in your mind is the best outcome at this point?
Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki: I believe the best outcome at this point would be that Cardinal Cupich and the Archdiocese of Chicago would rescind giving their life achievement award to Senator Durbin.
I think that it’s clear that he’s had a very strong, consistent pro-abortion policy as a United States senator, and despite whatever other good things he’s done, we talk about the consistent ethic of life. That was a big issue with Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, who was the archbishop of Chicago back in the 1990s when I served as his chancellor. It seems to Senator Durbin, he’s taken this position for a number of years, that all the other good things that he does outweighs the fact that he’s been a pro-abortion politician, and it simply doesn’t work that way. It’d be like saying that a person’s a good Catholic because he follows nine out of the Ten Commandments — “but that one about the Fifth Commandment, Thou shalt not kill, we don’t follow that one, but the other nine, I do fine.” So it’s very inconsistent then to say we’re going to give a lifetime achievement award to somebody who is promoting the killing of unborn babies. ….
