Catholic Bishops Tie Abortion Fight to Broad ‘Ethic of Life’ Issues

America’s Roman Catholic bishops adopted a sweeping plan for pro-life activities on Thursday that expands their previous anti-abortion efforts to a broad range of concerns the bishops consider life-threatening.

The document commits the 52-million-member church to a “consistent ethic of life,” working to oppose nuclear war, poverty, capital punishment, euthanasia, infanticide, racism, drug abuse and other matters.

A Role for Each Issue

“A consistent ethic, far from diminishing concern for abortion . . . recognizes the distinctive character of each issue while giving each its proper role within a coherent moral vision,” the 25-page plan says.

Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin of Chicago, chairman of the drafting committee for the Pastoral Plan for Pro-life Activities, said that the church’s anti-abortion stance must extend beyond that emotional issue if it is to be credible.

“This is why we were convinced that emphasizing the linkage between abortion and other attacks on human life--far from blurring the fundamental importance of the abortion issue--would actually highlight its importance,” Bernardin told nearly 300 bishops assembled here for their annual national conference.

A few bishops objected to the plan--a revision of one adopted by the U.S. bishops 10 years ago--on the grounds that anti-abortion should be a separate issue and not tied to efforts to eliminate capital punishment or end the nuclear arms race. But the document received an overwhelming majority vote Thursday afternoon.

A controversial aspect of the plan is a call to develop more pro-life lobbies at the congressional district level.

Such groups should be nonpartisan and not financed by the church, the plan states. But their goal is to “organize people to persuade their elected representatives to support a constitutional amendment (overturning the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing most abortions) and other pro-life legislation.”

In another action, the bishops enthusiastically moved toward adopting their pastoral letter on the U.S. economy, sending the proposed statement back for a “fine-tuning” third draft. A final vote on the document, which calls for a major reshaping of the economy to help the poor, will be taken at the bishops’ meeting next November.

Bishop James Malone of Youngstown, Ohio, president of the U.S. bishops, announced Thursday that he would set up a committee to see if conditions outlined in a key passage of a pastoral letter approved in 1983 are being met.

Six bishops known for their anti-war activism had asked the conference Monday to re-examine the letter on war and peace. It says that moral acceptance of efforts to prevent war through nuclear deterrence is “strictly conditioned” on working toward disarmament and reducing nuclear stockpiles.

Checking on Nuclear Powers

Malone said that the new committee will review whether the nuclear powers have violated the “strict conditions” for deterrence; if so, the bishops may issue a follow-up statement.

On Monday, the six bishops, led by Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, had asked the conference to publicly recognize that “the evidence strongly suggests that our nation’s policies are taking us far beyond a ‘minimum’ deterrence” as well as away from “progressive disarmament.”