Pope Leo’s praise of Cardinal Bernardin should have set off alarm bells among the faithful; Bernardin’s Seamless Garment philosophy has med to a multitude of errors among Catholics.
by Kathy Clubb
Some Catholics were taken by surprise to hear Pope Leo’s opinion of the plan by his friend, Cardinal Cupich, to give a “lifetime achievement award” to a notorious pro-abortion Catholic politician. After all, the majority of the mainstream Traditionalist Catholic media have been assuring faithful Catholics for months that the new pope “needed time” to establish himself and that we should not be too hasty to judge his agenda.
Yet the signs have been there all along, from the moment Prevost announced he would follow in Francis’ footsteps, to the day it became known he had praised Bernardin as his inspiration. That alone should have set off alarm bells among the faithful; as will be seen below, Cardinal Bernardin was not a man whom any faithful Catholic would want to emulate.
Leo’s Seamless Garment moment
When Pope Leo was asked for his opinion of Cardinal Cupich’s decision by a journalist, he didn’t hesitate. The Illinois politician, Dick Durbin, is a known supporter of partial-birth abortion, sodomy, trans-sexualism and other extreme Progressive causes, which should have made the Pope’s response a very clear condemnation. Instead, he made a statement that drew the world’s attention and shocked the pro-life community. Here is the Pope’s response, with the most important points in bold:
“I’m not terribly familiar with the particular case. I think that it’s very important to look at the overall work that a senator has done during, if I’m not mistaken, 40 years of service in the United States Senate. I understand the difficulty and the tensions, but I think, as I myself have spoken in the past, it’s important to look at many issues that are related to what is the teaching of the church.
Someone who says I’m against abortion but says I’m in favour of the death penalty is not really pro-life. Someone who says that I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants who are in the United States. I don’t know if that’s pro-life.
“So they’re very complex issues. I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them.
“But I would ask, first and foremost, that there be greater respect for one another and that we search together both as human beings in that case as American citizens or citizens of the state of Illinois as well as Catholics to say we need to you know really look closely at all of these ethical issues and to find the way forward as church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear. Thank you. Thank you.”
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin
There is plenty of evidence to show that Bernardin was a prelate who espoused several very anti-Catholic ideas. For example, at his request, Windy City Gay Men’s Chorus sang at his funeral wake.
Worse than that, he was accused by two complainants of sexually abusing them while they were seminarians. While one of those later recanted, it is worth noting that he died soon afterwards of AIDS, and it was found that $1,000,000 had mysteriously – and recently – appeared in his bank account.
There are rumours of even more grotesque behaviour from Bernardin: that he was involved in satanic ritual abuse. Although these rumours may well be unfounded, what we know for sure of Bernardin is alarming enough. It was he who gave us the ideology of the Seamless Garment – an idea that has led to the widespread abandonment of abortion being acknowledged as the pre-eminent social issue of our times.
Seamless Garment
The Seamless Garment ideology has pervaded the pro-life community over the past decades. It has accompanied the rise of the secular pro-life movement, eschewing religious arguments against abortion and belittling those who admit that humans are unable to defeat attacks on life without the help of God.
The term, “Seamless Garment”, takes its cue for a passage in the Gospel of John, which mentions that the soldiers cast lots for Christ’s tunic as it was “without seam, woven from the top throughout.” (John 19:23-24). Its first use is credited to the Catholic pacifist, Eileen Egan and became part of the “consistent life ethic” philosophy that began to permeate the pro-life community during the 1970’s.
The term was picked up by Cardinal Bernardin who officially promoted it in his 1984 talk at St. Louis entitled “A Consistent Ethic of Life: Continuing the Dialogue.” Bernardin’s main concerns at the time were nuclear war and abortion, which he said can’t be “collapsed into one problem,” yet should “be confronted as pieces of a larger pattern.”
Death for the pro-life movement
The Seamless Garment philosophy has as its basis the idea that all life is equally precious and thus all humans have an equal right to be protected. Thus the unborn baby, while precious, is no more worthy of life than the hardened murderer. An elderly grandparent deserves no more advocacy than an illegal migrant rapist. Aligned with this idea is the talking point espoused by pro-choice Catholics, including nuns, who say that it is all well and good to protect the unborn but pro-lifers have the obligation to provide for mothers once their unplanned babies are born.
The American Life League referred to the Seamless garment as “death for the pro-life movement” and it is not difficult to see why. Indeed, if the Pope’s claim that “Someone who says I’m against abortion but says I’m in favour of the death penalty is not really pro-life” is taken seriously by the majority of Catholics, then this would be the death-knell of the pro-life movement.
Common Ground Initiative
Not long before his death, Cardinal Bernardin was able to embed his Seamless Garment theory deep into the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. It formed the framework for his Common Ground Initiative, which sought to unite what he saw as polarised groups within the Church: traditionalists, progressives, clergy and laity.
The project was embraced despite pushback from three of his fellow American Cardinals who thought it did not sufficiently acknowledge Church teaching. They also who decried the Initiative’s emphasis on that particularly Modernist brand of “dialogue” which supposedly draws the truth out from polarised opinions. In other words, the Common Ground was a forerunner of “synodality.”
Some have suggested that it was the Seamless Garment/Common Ground ideology that led many Catholics to reject the pre-eminence of abortion both culturally and electorally, and give their votes to politicians like the pro-abortion, “Catholic” Joe Biden.
So when Pope Leo speaks of his desire to end polarisation, that idea comes straight from the philosophy of Bernardin. When he says that he doesn’t know “if anyone has all the truth on” complex issues such as abortion and other social issues, he is reiterating the Common Ground talking point that “no single group or viewpoint in the church has a complete monopoly on the truth.” (Catholic Common Ground statement, Part IV, 1996.)
When he says that the pro-abortion politician, Dick Durbin, deserved greater respect, he is again echoing an admonition from Bernardin:”We should presume that those with whom we differ are acting in good faith. They deserve civility, charity, and a good‑faith effort to understand their concerns…”
Liturgy Wars
One of the most significant sections of Bernardin’s statement is found in the conclusion and pertains to the Liturgy. It reads, “The revitalised Catholic common ground will be marked by a determined pastoral effort to keep the liturgy, above all, from becoming a battleground for confrontation and polarisation…”
The Pope has echoed similar ideas in his comments on the traditional Mass. Although he claims not to know much about the debate, something so unbelievable as to be disingenuous, if he is following the line of Cardinal Bernardin, then his potential openness to the traditional Mass is a cause for alarm and not approval.
For Bernardin wrote in his Catholic Common Ground statement, Part II:
An informal or “horizontal” liturgy, demystified and stressing the participation of the congregation, is pitted against a solemn or “vertical” liturgy, unchangeable and focused on the sacerdotal action of the priest. The former is rightly feared as unable to carry the weight of the transcendent, and as opening the liturgy to the trivialising currents of the culture. The latter is rightly feared as becoming a concert, a show, or a spiritless exercise in rubrics, closed to the particular needs and gifts of the community.
This smacks of an attempt, not to return to the widespread acceptance of the Latin Mass and the theology it expresses, but rather to promote a Hegelian synthesis of the Novus Ordo with Vetus Ordo.
In the current context, this would appear to mean a return to the “Reform of the Reform” advocated by Benedict XVI – a more faithful application by priests to the Conciliar document, Sacrosanctum Concilium. And in fact, Timothy Flanders from One Peter Five has already given the order that “every diocesan priest must buy a Latin Novus Ordo Missal immediately and begin saying the Novus Ordo in Latin.”
Yet this is a grave compromise and will never satisfy those wanting open access to the Latin Mass. In fact, it constitutes a betrayal of the traditionalist movement – and of the ruling of Pope Pius V to suggest that a hybrid Mass is – without denigrating the good intentions of many Novus Ordo priests – anything other than putting lipstick on a pig.1
Bernardin, and not Peter, is the Key
During the papacy of Jorge Bergoglio, it was suggested that the key to understanding his method was understanding that of his mentor, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, who was the brains behind the St. Gallen Mafia and the deluded creator of the concept of “synodality.”
It is thus concerning to think that the key to understanding the papacy of Robert Prevost is Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who was, in fact, a friend of Cardinal Martini.
Bernardin’s insidious “Seamless Garment” ideology has done great damage to the cause of life, toppling abortion from its place as the pre-eminent moral injustice of our days to a much lower rank, where it is seen as just one of a number of equally worthy causes. The Pope’s comments have confirmed this falsehood in the eyes of many, while exposing him as yet another progressive occupant of the Chair of St. Peter.
Despite this, we must remain faithful in praying daily for the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Click here to find a Petition asking Pope Leo to perform the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart.
Kathy Clubb is an Australian writer who home-educated her children for 30 years. She has written on Catholic and pro-life issues at The Remnant Newspaper, Family Life International, LifeSiteNews, Fidelity magazine, Endeavour Forum and more.
Kathy is the founder and editor of Pax Orbis.
- Of course, this is not to debase the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by equating It with a pig. Rather the comment points to the lack of integrity in the Novus Ordo, due to its creation by Freemasons and its concessions to protestants, which no amount of traditional aesthetics can negate. ↩︎
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