(LifeSiteNews) — In recent months, Pope Leo XIV has repeatedly expressed support for life, generating widespread appreciation in the Catholic world.
On January 17, for example, Pope Leo XIV sent a message to participants in the March for Life in Washington D.C., stating that the protection of the right to life is the “essential foundation of every other human right” and encouraging young people to respect life “in all its stages.”
However, a closer reading shows that these positions can be placed within a specific moral framework, well known in North American Catholic debate since the 1980s. It has gone down in history under the name “Consistent Life Ethic” (CLE), often indicated by the evocative expression “seamless garment ethic,” which is sometimes invoked using slogans such as “defending life from womb to tomb.” It is based on the idea that all moral issues involving human life are equally serious and intrinsically connected.
Understanding this doctrine can be useful to explain some apparent inconsistencies in Leo XIV’s public discourse, especially in the eyes of a conservative Catholic audience close to the bioethical culture developed by John Paul II and defended by Benedict XVI.
For example, on January 31, the Pope cited Mother Teresa of Calcutta, describing abortion as “the greatest destroyer of peace,” but he placed this condemnation within a broader framework: poverty, exclusion, and treatment of refugees and the oppressed are also elements of the “war that humanity wages against itself.”
In this way, abortion is recognized as serious but treated as one of several social and political evils, consistent with the CLE approach. This fits well into Pope Leo’s continual pursuit of “dialogue” inside and outside the Church and his focus on issues of peace, social justice, and “inclusion” (which even motivated his choice of pontifical name).
In a well-known intervention on October 1, 2025, amid controversy in the United States over the decision of the Archdiocese of Chicago to confer a lifetime award for social commitment to the pro-abortion Senator Dick Durbin, Leo XIV reiterated his belief that we are required to oppose not only abortion but also capital punishment and what he defined as “inhumane treatments” of illegal immigrants.
This moral framework was systematized in the 1980s by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, a central figure of the progressive U.S. episcopate. The problem is that the Consistent Life Ethic entails a substantial equating of morally heterogeneous evils. Placing abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and immigration on the same level obscures fundamental moral distinctions rooted in Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church.
In particular, equating abortion and capital punishment represents a serious rupture with traditional teaching. The Church has always condemned abortion and euthanasia as intrinsic evils, that is, acts always and in every circumstance illicit. Capital punishment, by contrast, has for centuries been recognized in principle as morally licit, though to be applied prudently. Pope Francis modified the Catechism to state that capital punishment was “inadmissible,” but this was met with great confusion among theologians and the laity.
Numerous U.S. bishops have criticized Cardinal Bernardin’s “seamless garment” approach. In 2016, Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles stated that it “leads to a mistaken idea that all issues are morally equivalent” and emphasized that radical violence in society concerns primarily those who are not yet born and those at the end of their lives.
This distinction was already clearly affirmed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in a July 2004 letter to the bishops of the United States, addressed particularly to then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Ratzinger explained that “not all moral issues carry the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia” and that a legitimate diversity of opinions may exist among Catholics regarding war and even capital punishment, but not regarding abortion and euthanasia. A Catholic in disagreement with the Pope on immigration policy is not unworthy to receive Communion; what is decisive, rather, is formal and obstinate cooperation with permissive abortion and euthanasia laws.
One of Pope Leo’s main allies is a supporter of the “seamless garment” line of thinking. Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago and a central figure in the last conclave, has recently become the face of ecclesial opposition to the Trump administration, following a letter signed with ultra-progressive Cardinals Robert McElroy and Joseph Tobin, both close first to Francis and then to Leo XIV.
Cupich’s activism is not limited to American politics: he also intervenes in internal Church dynamics, as shown by his entirely superfluous commentary on Cardinal Arthur Roche’s speech in defense of Traditionis Custodes. Cupich today increasingly speaks as if he represents the entire Church in the U.S., relegating the bishops’ conference to a marginal role.
His ties with Leo are close: they share origins in the Archdiocese of Chicago and a common past in the Congregation for Bishops (since 2020). Leo XIV also secured Cupich’s position in Rome by appointing him a member of the Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City on October 15, 2025. It is striking that Cupich has not yet left his leadership of Chicago despite exceeding the canonical age provided for emeritus status.
As we see, the difference between defending the Consistent Life Ethic and defending the traditional, hierarchical view of moral values is not rhetorical. Rather, it produces serious consequences on the doctrinal, pastoral, and political levels.