Not everything is equal. . .

There is a great temptation on the left to make all things equal.  The progressives judge everything from the rights of the various sexual persuasions to climate change to racism to income inequity to gun control the same.  Even some Christians have fallen victim to the equation of just about everything as the same -- the same morality, the same urgency, and the same priority.  On the other hand, there are those on the right who insist that while some things might be laudable and good causes in and of themselves, they are not all equal.  Other things are not salutary at all but simply a reflection of an indulgent world in which nothing is wrong except constraints upon desire.  There are, on the other hand, those things that define everything else -- they are not simply causes but the critical questions that either honor our humanity or betray it.

Abortion is that issue -- the defining issue -- that cannot simply be listed with other causes or equated as the same.  It is not, it cannot, and it will not be one among many ills and it does not matter if one is right on all the other things, to be wrong here is to be wrong on everything.  This is what Rome has forgotten in its public dalliance with politicians with whom Rome presumes come access and influence while overlooking the betrayal of abortion.  Sadly, most Roman Catholic bishops do not have the courage of the one Archbishop who said no. Most have remained silent and some of outright contradicted the bishop who drew the line in the sand.  Archbishop Cordileone deserves credit for finally speaking the truth to power and doing the only right thing in preventing Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving the Sacrament at home.

Those Roman Catholic politicians who have equated abortion with all kinds of other social ills they judge unacceptable have lived on the edge of a seamless tapestry of delusion created by some of the princes of the Roman Catholic Church.  It is and will be a test of backbone of Rome just as it has been a test of the backbone for liberal Lutherans, progressive evangelicals, and declining mainlines.  Most of them failed miserably.  They have found refuge in the lie of equating every evil as the same and the comfort that you only need to be on the right side of most of them.  That is the problem.  You can be on the right side of all of them and still fail simply by being wrong on the one single issue -- the issue of life.  

Those who stand on the right side of life must begin with the uncoupling of other things that may also be good (and other things parading as good) with the cause of life, the supreme good.  Some things are not simply good but that which balances all good.  Abortion is that cause.  But it will not be fought in the sacred halls of justice or in mighty legislative chambers.  It is battled in the hearts and minds of people.  As good and right as it could be to have a court decide that there is no legal right to murder the unborn, it is only a rule that has changed and rules can be changed again.  What Christians must show the world is that this is not simply one issue but the defining issue that either ennobles humanity or betrays it with finality so that no other good matters.  When that begins to happen, then the tide will change as people learn to have no stomach for being on the right side of any good when you are on the wrong side of the which defines good.