The Scandalous Case of Cardinal Cupich and Senator Durbin

Last week, the Archdiocese of Chicago announced that it will be honoring Senator Durbin with a lifetime achievement award.

Senator Durbin is a long-time Democratic United States Senator from Illinois who served in leadership for his party and was a prominent voice on all the national issues, including his aggressive support for abortion rights and “same-sex marriage”. He also supported policies that violated the Church’s religious liberty while himself being a Catholic.

Senator Durbin was also a strong supporter of immigrants and immigration laws that shielded undocumented aliens from prosecution. It is this latter issue for which he is being honored by the archdiocese.

The event will be hosted by His Eminence, Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Archbishop of Chicago (and member of the important Dicastery for Bishops in Rome), and held at the Jesuit prep school, Saint Ignatius College Prep.

For those of us with some familiarity with Cardinal Cupich, it does not come as a surprise that he would honor Senator Durbin in this way. His Eminence likes to involve himself in local and national politics, most often with a highly partisan flavor in favor of the left side of the aisle. That is not necessarily a criticism. He prioritizes issues that fall on the politically liberal side of the chamber. That is simply an obvious observation.

What is a problem and a genuine scandal is His Eminence’s honoring a public official who clearly and unapologetically supports abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and violations of religious liberty, all of which are profound attacks on the dignity of the human person, people of faith, and the Catholic Church.

It is also in obvious violation of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) own statement on political life, which maintains:

The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions. (Emphasis added)

And yet this does not matter to His Eminence.

This is being done when it is known that Senator Durbin has been prohibited from receiving Communion in his own diocese by multiple bishops. The denial of Communion is not a punishment but a call to conversion and repentance. Formally honoring the senator sends the opposite message and endangers his soul.

It also undermines the voice and witness of the bishops with Catholic politicians. They know there is at least one bishop, a cardinal no less, who will praise them even when they hold positions directly opposed to the Church. This sort of division among the bishops plays right into the hands of political powers.

Cardinal Cupich is his own man, and he has proven many times that he is willing to go his own way, or the way of a small minority of bishops, and create division. Perhaps he has the smell of the sheep, but his sheep tend to huddle in the far-left corner of the yard.

I do not know Cardinal Cupich personally, but I have been around him enough to have a sense of the man. He was my rector at the seminary for first-year theology, and even then, in 1995, he went his own way. I remember one evening he cancelled all classes and pastoral activities for a special convocation, something unprecedented for the seminary. He called us together to announce he had been made a monsignor. I felt bad for him then because I thought about how isolated he must be to believe that any of us cared.

He also imposed on the seminary a liturgical sensibility that was out of touch with the seminarians: Mass in the round (actually, it was a square), rubrics ignored, Adoration offered once a month in a far corner of the seminary that had a sense of marginalization, and open conflict with admired faculty members, among other things. None of us at the time imagined he would ever rise in the ranks. Monsignor Cupich would, however, find his way to the top.

When I worked at the USCCB, he did not hold any significant leadership positions. He could not get elected due to how unpopular he was (and remains), and yet he frequently muscled his way around with staff. He created a climate of fear, so familiar during the Francis pontificate, that impacted the daily work of lay staff.

His move to Chicago was a sign from Pope Francis that the Pope wanted a disrupter among the U.S. bishops. For reasons unknown, Pope Francis did not like the American bishops, and moving Blase Cupich to Chicago and elevating him to the rank of cardinal was an attack on the collegiality forged by the post-Bernandin Conference. Cardinal Cupich seemed to relish the role.

He was the voice of the Vatican when the USCCB planned to take decisive action in the wake of the McCarrick affair. Cardinal Cupich delivered the message that the Holy See would take a different approach, and the USCCB must stand down. Unfortunately, the USCCB leadership capitulated, and Cardinal Cupich had another Pope Francis feather in his zucchetto.

There are plenty of other examples of Cardinal Cupich’s willingness to reject the wisdom of his brother bishops and create division, but this latest act of honoring a well-known advocate for abortion should catch the attention of the new Holy Father. How he responds may indicate how he will relate to U.S. bishops.

Pope Leo XIV does not have to publicly admonish Cupich to signal his displeasure. Cardinal Cupich is beyond retirement age. The Holy Father can easily accept his resignation and replace him with someone who might be an effective leader among U.S. Catholics–helping them to embrace the Holy Father’s vision of orthodox synodality, love for the poor, and decisive evangelization, and foster unity among his brother bishops. For the pope’s hometown, he should have a man he can trust. Blase Cupich is not that man.