Jimmy Akin describes the basic claim of the “seamless garment” philosophy and explains its strengths and its weaknesses in the realm of Catholic social justice.
Host: We’ll go now to Cindy in Winter Springs, Florida, listening on the phone platform at Ave Maria Radio. Cindy, you’re on with Jimmy Akin.
Caller: Hi gentlemen, I’d like to know if you know what the seamless garment doctrine is?
Jimmy: Okay. It’s not so much a doctrine, I’m not aware of any Magisterial document that phrases it in those terms; but there is a kind of “seamless-garment view” that was proposed by, among others, the late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, in which he suggested that there are a cluster of issues, all of them related to life in one way or another, that in Catholic moral and social teaching fit together as if they were a seamless garment. And this would include, in his view, things like being anti-abortion, being pro-life, and being anti-death-penalty, being pro-poverty-relief-efforts, and a variety of other things.
And he connected, and others have connected, all of those together to the broader issue of life. That’s why I mentioned anti-abortion, because you have to, if all of these are being treated as aspects of the life issue, you have to kind of specify which aspect you’re talking about. And in his mind, these all fit together as a kind of package.
That has, certainly, an element of truth, because all of these are related to life in one way or another, but people have also been critical of this idea because it’s had a tendency to flatten certain important distinctions–or various individuals, at least, have used it to flatten certain distinctions.
For example: abortion, as the killing of an innocent human being, is always intrinsically wrong, and can never be justified. However, the death penalty is not always the killing of an innocent person. It is meant to be the killing of a guilty person who has inflicted grave harm on others, such as having taken the life of another person, and consequently the death penalty is not intrinsically wrong. Abortion is; the death penalty is not. And as Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out–before he was Pope Benedict–there can be a legitimate diversity of opinion among Catholics on when the death penalty is appropriate, but that’s not the case with regard to abortion. So that’s one distinction that has, at times, been flattened by the use of “seamless-garment” language.
Another distinction is it can make all of these issues seem as if they’re on an equal footing. And that’s not always the case, because here in the United States we have, let’s say, a million children being killed every year by abortion. And to ignore that fact in order to promote some other good of a lesser order–like, let’s say, helping immigrants find a better life–well we don’t have a million immigrants dying in this country every year, and so whatever you think about the best way to help immigrants, it’s not on the same plane as a million children being killed under cover of law.
So whereas there’s an element of truth to the “seamless-garment” idea, it can be used in a way that causes people to ignore certain distinctions that also need to be made.