Chicago’s Cardinal Doubles Down on Honoring Pro-Abortion Politician | The American Spectator

Last summer, the Democratic National Convention centered on abortion, the wholesale slaughter of innocent, unborn children. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz touted the party’s record on abortion; Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) actually suggested that someone should rape a member of then-Sen. J.D. Vance’s family to see if he would still oppose abortion; a Planned Parenthood trailer parked outside committing abortions and performing sterilizations, and practically all Democrats united behind the unholy practice of killing unborn babies, citing “abortion” more than a dozen times in the party’s platform, compared to only a handful of mentions in years past.

The abortion-centered event was hosted in Chicago and the city’s Catholic archbishop, Cardinal Blase Cupich, spoke at the abortion-celebratory extravaganza. The cardinal spoke for less than four minutes but made no mention of either Christ or the Catholic Church’s age-old moral teachings on abortion. He even hid his pectoral cross.

Is it any surprise then that the same Cardinal Cupich has decided to bestow the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Lifetime Achievement Award upon pro-abortion Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who calls himself a Catholic despite his radical support for butchering the unborn? In fact, when Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Durbin’s home diocese of Springfield barred the pro-abortion politician from receiving Holy Communion, Cupich welcomed the senator to desecrate the Body and Blood of Christ in the Windy City. Paprocki, along with a cadre of other bishops, have called on Cupich not to honor Durbin, due to the senator’s decades of pro-abortion policies.

Is it any surprise that the same Cardinal Cupich has defended his decision to honor Durbin? “At the heart of the consistent ethic of life is the recognition that Catholic teaching on life and dignity cannot be reduced to a single issue, even an issue as important as abortion,” Cupich wrote in a press statement. No, Durbin’s decades of aggressive support for abortion pales in comparison to his warped position on immigration, which just so happens to align with the cardinal’s own warped position on immigration. “The recognition of [Durbin’s] defense of immigrants at this moment, when they are subjected to terror and harm, is not something to be regretted, but a reflection that the Lord stands profoundly with both immigrants who are in danger and those who work to protect them,” Cupich claimed.

It’s not a surprise that Cupich is overlooking the Catholic Church’s infallible, perennial moral instruction on abortion in favor of his own subversive take on immigration. But it should be. The Catholic Church is abundantly clear that the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ Himself. The newly-canonized St. Carlo Acutis dedicated his short life to documenting Eucharistic miracles, when the consecrated Host has bled or turned to flesh in the hands of the priest. St. Clare of Assisi stood outside the convent at San Damiano holding the Eucharist high and repelling a horde of Saracen invaders.

When an Albigensian heretic denied Christ’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament, St. Anthony of Padua held the Eucharist high before a starving donkey, who abandoned his trough of hay to kneel before the Blessed Sacrament. In the eighth century, when a monk questioned Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, the host turned to bleeding heart tissue in his hands. Centuries later, in the 1970s, a doctor examined the relics, preserved in the Church of San Francesco in Lanciano, and determined that the tissue was myocardial and the blood had no preservatives. When an Italian priest placed a Eucharistic host between the pages of his breviary, instead of in a pyx, to take to an ailing parishioner, the host bled through the breviary pages.

The Eucharist is the very flesh of Christ which was scourged at a pillar in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago; the very flesh which carried a cross to Golgotha, loaded with the sins of all mankind; the very flesh which hung on that cross after crying out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34); the very flesh which was pierced with a lance and poured out blood and water. And yet Chicago’s cardinal blithely allows Durbin, upon whose soul the blood of countless slaughtered children must weigh, to desecrate that very flesh every Sunday.

The least that Cupich could do is not rub salt in Christ’s wounds by giving Durbin an award.