Editing Consistent life ethic (section)

==Criticisms==
One criticism made of the consistent life ethic position is that it inadvertently helped provide "cover" or support for politicians who supported legalized abortion or wanted to minimize this issue, a circumstance that Bernardin himself both recognized and deplored.<ref>{{cite news|first=Ronald N.|last=Neff|url=http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050816.shtml |title=The "Seamless Garment" Revisited |work=Sobran's |date=16 August 2005 |access-date=2 February 2017}}</ref><ref name=Gregg /> A critic of [[Joseph Bernardin]], [[George Weigel]] rejected the claims that the consistent life ethic had been created to cover up for abortion rights, saying that Bernardin was "a committed pro-lifer". He still criticized the concept as a legacy of what he considers to be Bernardin's "culturally accommodating Catholicism".<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Weigel |first=George |url=https://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/02/the-end-of-the-bernardin-era |title=The End of the Bernardin Era: The rise, dominance, and decline of a culturally accommodating Catholicism |magazine=First Things |date=February 2011 |access-date=25 July 2017}}</ref>

The concept of a consistent life ethic is often rejected in the United States and abroad by those who prefer to use the concept of a [[culture of life]] as was promoted by [[Pope John Paul II]] and [[Pope Benedict XVI]] in their encyclicals. Archbishop [[José Horacio Gómez|José Gómez]] of Los Angeles dismissed the "seamless garment" approach in 2016 because in his view it results in "a mistaken idea that all issues are morally equivalent".<ref>{{cite news | author=Staff Reporter | title=Archbishop Gomez: The Root Violence in Our Society Is the Violence Against the Most Vulnerable | work=National Catholic Register | date=4 February 2016 | url=http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/archbishop-gomez-the-root-violence-in-our-society-is-the-violence-against-t | access-date=2 February 2017}}</ref> The "seamless garment" approach was also criticized by then-[[Pope Benedict XVI|Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger]] while he was serving as Prefect of the [[Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith]]. In a July 2004 letter written to now former-[[Theodore McCarrick|Cardinal Theodore McCarrick]] and to the United States Bishops as a whole, Cardinal Ratzinger makes it clear that the church does not treat capital punishment with the same moral weight that it does abortion and euthanasia: "Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father [the Pope] on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion...There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia."<ref>{{Cite web|title=Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles {{!}} EWTN|url=https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/worthiness-to-receive-holy-communion-general-principles-2153|access-date=2020-10-19|website=EWTN Global Catholic Television Network|language=en}}</ref>

Jesuit magazine ''[[America (magazine)|America]]'' stated in an article published on 6 December 2023 that the consistent life ethic, generally speaking, has been a failure, writing: "Depressingly, 40 years since Cardinal Bernardin first proposed the consistent ethic of life, the ethic remains mired in the same senseless, polarized partisanship that Bernardin proposed the ethic to overcome."<ref>[https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2023/12/06/bernardin-anniversary-consistent-ethic-246654?fbclid=IwAR1Plhre36hn3qQDiZF9y5OfqqQEexCLXhnzb-ibkvKtNDWF7UaGY18xbi4 Cardinal Bernardin's 'Consistent ethic of life' still divides Catholics 40 years later, America, 6 December 2023]</ref>