Brendan Hoban: Pope Leo spells out what pro-life really means
Western People 21.10.2025
American Catholicism can be a strange bird. A core belief is that Catholicism dovetails nicely with the presumption that being rich is God’s blessing – with the unstated corollary that being poor is always your own fault. Thus, by casually flipping a core truth of Catholicism, the American rich are almost always sainted while the poor are ritually despised. Thus too character is a moveable feast with millions and millions of Catholics voting for policies that run directly counter to the gospel truth.
Little wonder that American Catholicism can get skewed in its priorities and in its focus. Recently it’s pro-life stance had to be held up to the light by none other than the new pope – himself an American – who knows a bit about Catholicism, both the real thing and in its American version.
It happened like this. A US Senator, Richard Durbin, was given an award by the Archdiocese of Chicago for his work helping migrants. It generated some controversy because Durbin was known too for his support for abortion rights. A controversy ensued with ten bishops publicly calling on Cardinal Cupich of Chicago to rescind the award.
The nervous ground for American Catholics – including especially politicians like Joe Biden and others – of reconciling their own personal conviction of being against abortion while accepting that for others it is a civil right is ritually presented by bishops and Catholics generally as a fundamental denial of their Catholicism.
The problem, as Cardinal Cupich noted in his response, is that in the US today, Catholics who embrace the breadth of Church teaching are ‘politically homeless’.
He explained: “The tragic reality in our nation today is that there are essentially no Catholic public officials who consistently pursue the essential elements of Catholic social teaching because our party system will not permit them to do so.”
What Cupich objects to is that unless Catholic politicians are seen to reflect the essential elements of Catholic teaching in its entirety, they cannot be honoured even if they make a significant contribution (as Senator Durbin did) to a key part of that teaching. Cupich concluded: “Total condemnation is not the way forward, for it shuts down discussion. But praise and encouragement can open it up, by asking their recipients to consider how to extend their good work to other areas and issues. No one wants to engage with someone who treats them as a moral threat to the community.”
Pope Leo was asked about the controversy and he voiced strong support for Cardinal Cupich’s position. “I understand the difficulties and the tensions,” he said, “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 I’m in favour of the death penalty, is not really pro-life. Someone who says, I’m against abortion, but I’m in favour of the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
The pope’s clarification is a clear refutation of the workable American definition of pro-life as opposition to abortion while at the same time defending the death penalty and opposing the rights of refugees and migrants. This clarification by the first ever American pope is a direct challenge to conservative Catholics – in America and elsewhere – to widen their definition and their understanding of what ‘pro-life’ actually means and, in particular not to limit it to just being anti-abortion.
When the late Pope Francis covered this ground before, conservative Catholics tended to dismiss his approach in opening up issues that were regarded as closed – like divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Communion, his welcome for gay Catholics including the blessing of gay marriages; and, not least, widening the definition of pro-life. His pontificate was easily dismissed as an aberration that would be righted as soon as his successor came along – a consummation for which (it seems) some Catholics were actually praying!
But now Pope Leo has indicated that, while he is different in many ways from his predecessor and has already made that plain for all to see, he will travel his own path and that means following the trajectory that Francis mapped out for the Church. While conservative Catholics may be disappointed that Leo is not mirroring their views, it is absolutely clear now that his pastoral approach is in direct continuity with that of Pope Francis.
American Catholics, including American bishops and priests, will have to re-align their policies by rejecting the ‘culture warrior focus’ that has led to American Catholicism becoming identified with exclusion rather than inclusion, with defining their own version of Catholicism at odds with a much broader and fuller understanding of what Catholicism is.
The culture warrior approach of dismissing Catholics who didn’t measure up to their narrow definition of Catholicism as an unacceptably low water-mark for authentic Catholicism – as not ‘real Catholics’ – is now being unapologetically jettisoned. While Leo will be happy to make more room for conservative Catholics, unlike his more impatient predecessor, it is clear that he will no longer grant an indulgence to American (or other) Catholics who imagine that they can decide what ‘pro-life’ is or isn’t and even what Catholicism means.
To sum up, on the direction of Pope Leo XIV, it’s now crystal clear that whether we are American or Irish or anything else, that as Catholics we can’t hold two patently opposite positions at the same time – we can’t say that we are ‘pro-life’ if we are for the death penalty or hostile to immigrants.
Full stop.
The achilles heel for millions of catholics was abortion. Trump seized on this vulnerability and used his debatable “pro-life” stance to catapult him into the presidency.
Today our understanding of the Cross includes personal responsibility to live life as Jesus showed us. He was compassionate, forgiving, humble etc. etc.
The prosperity gospel seems to go against the “grain of the wood.”
Father Hoban’s article is spot on.
You can’t call yourself pro-life and then support the death penalty or treat immigrants badly — that just doesn’t add up.
While Father Hoban is right to call out Americans on this issue, maybe we should also take a look at ourselves here at home before pointing fingers across the ocean. Perhaps we could start by challenging our own political leaders — both Catholic and non-Catholic — who claim to stand up for immigrants and other communities, yet still push for policies that go against the pro-life message from conception to natural death.
The silence of the pen is deafening.
To create a moral equivalence between the slaughter of innocent children in abortion and the execution of those convicted of murder after a fair trial is surely misguided at the very least. Abortion is the deliberate killing of the most vulnerable human beings in our society, unborn children who have committed no sin, no crime. In Ireland, there are 10,000 abortions annually, an obscenity promoted as an egregious lie “reproductive healthcare”. The moral crime of abortion stands in its own right, it does not equate with anything else in our lifetime, it surely is the purest evil of humanity. Yet, today it has been made acceptable, we do little, we don’t want to hear about it, it’s embarrassing, we want to be proud to be Irish and yet we ignore the evil in our midst and accept the “healthcare” lie. We like to rub shoulders with politicians and healthcare professionals who have facilitated this abomination and continue to do so. Why aren’t there street protests every day of every week condemning this? We often wonder how the people of Germany during the war said nothing about the Holocaust, many didn’t know it was happening. Well, we can’t use that excuse. Our silence is in effect tacit support. We as Catholics have an awful lot to answer for. It’s not about traditionalists versus anything else, we can fudge it with unwarranted comparisons, but the truth of what’s happening is plain for everyone to see.
Robert, is it all so plain? If you discuss with women or with moral theologians or with medical folk the coordinates begin to shift. The exclusion of open discussion does not inspire confidence.
There are some basic scientific facts that never shift. For example, the life of a new human begins at conception, abortion is the killing of a human being, a biological man can never be a woman, the earth is spherical, the sun exists. These are all scientific facts, scientific truths, where is there room for discussion? Did God give any of us human beings the right to kill another human being?
It’s heartening to read not just the late Pope Francis, but also Pope Leo, and a Cardinal Archbishop take a broader, more inclusive approach to people of good will, and good action, even if they don’t satisfy all the demands of the most legalistic Catholic authorities and their supporters.
On the matter of scientific “facts”, the earth is indeed spherical, but in the scheme of things it’s not that long since that was not only denied as fact, but it’s proposition was regarded as heresy by the legal authorities of the Catholic Church. The point at which human life begins has long been, and continues to be, a matter of legal and ethical debate.
That’s similar to what pro-abortionists say, legal and ethical arguments are used to cover up the biological reality that abortion is the taking of the life of a human being.
Scientifically or biologically, a new, genetically distinct human organism begins at fertilization when a sperm and egg unite to form a zygote. This zygote has its own human DNA and the capacity to develop through all later stages (embryo, fetus, infant, child, adult) and will do so unless interrupted at any of those stages. As far as I am aware, that fact is still accepted by the Catholic Church.
Pope Leo seems to give rise to ambiguity with some of what he says, whether it’s intentional or not I cannot say, but there are some principles in life where there should be no ambiguity and the sanctity of human life is one of them.
So very, very true, Joe@4
Brendan, thank you for that excellent article. Thank God Leo is now coming alive.
A zygote is not an individual, since it can split or fuse with another up to 14 days.
Biological sex does not always coincide with psychological gender.
Excellent, Joe @10, you are precisely correct as usual though in fairness to Robert, the truth contained in your last sentence @10 has only relatively recently been properly understood.
I have mentioned here before my moment of revelation in Earlsford Terrace listening to the great Professor Don Hingerty, Professor of Biochemistry explaining the control feedback mechanisms deployed in the endocrine system and how progesterone, the female sex hormone, inhibits the anterior pituitary gland from secreting the follicle stimulating hormone once implantation takes place in the placenta so no further ovum release is possible.
And then he added that that is the working method of the contraceptive pill which uses a synthetic form of progesterone.
So no ovum, no fertilisation possible by the male sperm.
Until that moment I didn’t dare question Humanae Vitae (HV) if indeed I even understood it but I then vowed from that moment on I would always look carefully at church teaching.
Now, the point could be made that HV wasn’t concerned whether fertilisation occurred or not. What it was concerned with was any attempt to disrupt the reproductive process.
Fair enough, but then how could the church possibly accept, indeed encourage, use of the so called natural form of contraception which, in fact, is completely unnatural and, furthermore, insulting to women.
A zygote develops as an individual human being in the two weeks after fertilization, unless it splits as twins, all this happens by 4 weeks gestation (4th week of pregnancy), there is now a new developing human being. But, virtually all abortions take place after this time. Even by 10-11 weeks gestation, the new human being has all its limbs, fingers, toes, head, eyes, mouth, nose formed. Ireland, allows unrestricted abortion for any reason up to 12 weeks, and only partly limited after that. People may use legal or ethical arguments to justify this killing and make it legal in Ireland as in other countries, but it is nevertheless still the killing of a human being and is disingenuous to say otherwise.