Chapter 4: The Seamless Garment
My thinking was shaped by
Vatican II, so I embrace the immense value of consistency. I am a peace
activist who became a pro-life activist. I think the “seamless garment” idea is
obvious, fundamental, necessary.
It’s appalling that
pro-lifers still oppose the idea, still repeating the same mindless nonsense:
not all struggles have the same importance. Sure, good—but so what? If I agree
not to be a mass murderer, is it okay to be a serial rapist? What kind of
monstrous “thinking” is that?
Perhaps I can persuade some
pro-lifers to listen, to respond to the real thing and not to their own oft-echoed
caricature.
Chapter 4: The Seamless Garment
six brief insights
Seamless garment: context clarifies (#31) 79
Peace activists denounce Berrigan (#32) 81
Gordon Zahn’s insight (#33) 83
Lessons from Juli Loesch (#34) 85
“Querida Amazonia!” (#35) 87
The Bomb (#36) 89
Seamless garment: context clarifies (#31)
Context explains. Is
abortion like war, or like sex? Don’t listen to what people say to answer this
question directly; listen when they aren’t answering directly, but drop hints.
In his immense love, God
gave me the opportunity to teach English literature for a dozen years. It was a
joy, getting up mornings NOT trying to figure out how to transform the world,
but just planning how to bring together two of the joys of my life – great
literature and wacky teenagers. During those happy years, there was a detail
that proved delightful year after year. When I taught students how to read
Shakespeare, I used material from the Folger Shakespeare Library, including a
method for examining how a great writer adds meaning to a word. I had my
students collect every use of some particularly pregnant word in a play, and
note how the word grew in meaning and impact from one use to the next. In Macbeth,
for example, Shakespeare uses the word “blood” to refer to the work of a
warrior but also of a murderer, to nobility but also to guilt, to life but also
death, to kinship but also treachery, to cruelty but also love, and so on.
Shakespeare, like reality, is full of complexity. Human speech, like human
life, is almost never simple. To understand anything that matters, you must
wrestle with apparent contradictions. You must learn to be comfortable with
paradox. And to grasp meaning confidently, you need to scrutinize context.
Context explains. To
understand what someone means, listen and listen – but also watch.
Pro-lifers say that
abortion is about taking life. It is the destruction of an innocent person.
Pro-choicers say that
abortion is about sex. Some sexual transactions go awry, and you need to be
able to back away from mistakes.
So there’s a difference
about the meaning of the word, and about the meaning of the act.
Do pro-lifers mean what
they say? Watch attentively! Many pro-lifers, perhaps most, insist that
abortion is about life, not about sex. But then they talk a little more, and it
turns out they care about abortion and birth control, abortion and sexual sins,
abortion and sodomy, abortion and sexual purity. Context reveals: regardless of
their claim to the contrary, many pro-lifers talk about abortion and sex,
not about abortion and death.
In fact, in recent years,
many pro-lifers have made an odd link. Many pro-lifers hate abortion – and
demand access to guns. They are not fanatically opposed to violence.
There are important
exceptions. For generations, the leadership of the Catholic Church has opposed
abortion, but not the same way as other mainstream pro-life leaders. When they
talk about abortion – in Vatican II or social justice documents, or in Pope St.
John Paul II’s encyclical The Gospel of Life – they also talk about war
and capital punishment and torture.
Many pro-life leaders
denounce this “seamless garment” approach. “Not all issues are the same,” they
fuss. “There are priorities.” But the seamless garment approach has many
advantages. For one thing, people understand the bishops: they’re talking about
abortion and death, not abortion and sex.
Context clarifies.
Peace activists denounce Berrigan (#32)
In the 1970s, when I was
finding my way in the pro-life movement, I was involved in some nonviolent
action in Connecticut. I did some cross-fertilization: I was arrested at
Electric Boat, protesting against nuclear weapons, and I was arrested a few
miles away, at Norwich Planned Parenthood, acting against abortion.
When I was organizing the
pro-life sit-in, we had several meetings for prayer and meditation at the home
of an engineer at Electric Boat. We were aware of each other’s views, but
worked together without difficulty, with mutual respect. My friend was later
unemployed for a time, and then offered a new job, building nuclear weapons
platforms again, and he called me to talk about the moral issues involved in
his job. He disagreed with me, and he took the job; but he did want to
understand my view.
When I was in the
anti-nuke sit-in, there were 16 of us arrested at the entrance to Electric
Boat. Of the 16 peace activists, 14 were pro-life with some involvement in the
charismatic renewal.
There was tension between
peace activists and pro-life activists, for sure. But it wasn’t anywhere near
as sharp and bitter then as it is today.
Still, in 1978 or 1979,
the New England Catholic Peace Fellowship had a meeting in Amherst. It was an
uproarious event. Charlie McCarthy was there, wild-eyed, urging that we meet to
pray and plan at 3 AM, when people are more open to spiritual insights, because
all the mental cues are different in the dead of night. Cool idea.
I made a presentation on
pro-life nonviolence – not a couple of outsiders whispering at the edge of a
room, but a regular scheduled workshop. Imagine.
Dan Berrigan gave the
keynote address, entitled “War is abortion and abortion is war.” One of the
points he made was that the abortion struggle might wake us up. The threat of
nuclear weapon was often so cerebral – except for the Japanese. But abortion was
immediate, right in front of us –it might get into our hearts and change
something in us “because it’s so personally maiming.”
At lunch, a number of
women came in to confront us. They lined up along a wall and chanted pro-choice
slogans. It was strange kind of a sit-in, peace activists protesting against
Berrigan. They respected him, but they were shocked that he would participate
in an event like this – especially since I was there recruiting for “anti-choice”
activity. I knew one of them; she had been at the demonstration at Electric
Boat. They came in angry, looking for a confrontation, but there were so many
warm friendships tying people together that the anger couldn’t get traction; it
just dissolved slowly.
Berrigan had his head
back a little, eyebrows way up and his eyes wide, mouth shut: he was in
listening mode. It can’t have been fun being attacked by friends, but he just
looked like a student absorbing a complicated lesson. As far as I could tell,
everyone in that room had some degree of respect for everyone else. Everyone in
that room was committed to listening, to learning, to welcoming, to loving.
In 1976, the pro-life
movement in Massachusetts was congenial to leftie liberal Democrats. Ellen
McCormack, a lifelong Democrat and a pro-life activist. Dr. Mildred Jefferson,
the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School was president of
National Right to Life Committee, and she lived on Beacon Hill in Boston. I
think she was a Republican, but she worked comfortably with anyone who enjoyed
dancing. In Cambridge, the most visible pro-life activist was Ignatius
O’Connor, from the Catholic Worker House. The leader of the proudly diverse
pro-life movement in the commonwealth was Dr. Joseph Stanton. Stanton was
trained at Yale Medical School, but that’s okay – his father went to Harvard.
And when he found an anti-war activist from Harvard stumbling around the edges
of the movement, his eyes lit up. He had a book that I had to read, right away.
It was written by his friend Gordon Zahn, a professor of sociology at the
University of Massachusetts (Boston), who had been a conscientious objector
during World War II. So I read In Solitary Witness: the Life and Death of
Franz Jagerstatter.
Jagerstatter was beheaded
in Berlin on August 9, 1943, for refusing induction into the Army of the Third
Reich. He had discussed his decision to refuse with his parish priest and his
bishop; they counseled moderation – that is, cooperation. But he refused, and
paid the price. Zahn wrote his story, trying to understand the roots of this
courage. What he found was that Jagerstatter fathered a child, and did not
marry the mother, but did support the child for the rest of his life. This
personal confrontation with responsibility transformed a rough-and-tumble
troublemaker into a devout Catholic, utterly opposed to abortion and Nazism.
Zahn’s book had a huge
impact on me, and so I was deeply flattered when he sought me out in the
mid-1980s to talk about a book he was planning. He wanted to write about three
peace activists whose choice of life rather than abortion had been
transformative: Franz Jagerstatter, Dorothy Day, and John Leary.
Dorothy Day is well
known; John Leary is not. John was a Harvard graduate, a few years behind me.
He and my sister Lucy were arrested together in pro-life nonviolent actions a
number of times. He was a co-founder of the Prolife Nonviolent Action Project,
which sparked sit-ins at abortion clinics in all 50 states in the late 1970s.
He lived with the Catholic Worker community in Boston, and was a recognized
peace activist. He was a devout Catholic, joyful and easy to approach but never
shy about his desire to pray. He was quiet and calm, but deeply inspiring.
Example: although he died young with no obvious accomplishments, when the
Catholic Student Center at Harvard expanded, Jana Kiely (wife of the Master of
Adams House) urged that the new building be named for him. (Didn’t happen.) And
Zahn was among his admirers.
That’s a slice of the
pro-life movement. Times have changed, but that part of our history matters. We
should recover it.
Lessons from Juli Loesch (#34)
Juli Loesch (Wiley), the
founder of Prolifers for Survival and a pioneer of the seamless garment
approach, had a huge impact on me.
“Birds fly better with
two wings, a right wing and a left wing”: that’s a clear and catchy phrase,
fundamental to my thinking for years – and it’s stolen from Juli Loesch.
Sometimes, I don’t remember where her thought ends and my own thought begins.
“Bridges and walls are
similar, both made of bricks, at boundaries. When you build a bridge, you
collect the bricks that other people might use to build walls, or to throw at
you.” This insight is a permanent challenge in my life – and it’s from Juli.
I find a deep joy in it
when people quote me without knowing it, using my own words to challenge me: I
learned that from Juli Loesch.
My kitchen used to have a
small room or large pantry attached; we made it a prayer room, then a bedroom for
Juli Loesch for some months. It remains a door to joy.
She spoke about peace,
against nukes – but listened enough that she realized that pro-lifers were
using the same texts from Scripture to make their arguments.
She and I drifted apart
some years ago, and I don’t pretend to understand her thinking now, but I owe
her a great deal.
Juli Loesch founded
Prolifers for Survival in 1979, and built a national network of people who were
pro-life and pro-peace – anti-abortion and anti-war. Cardinal Bernardin’s
“seamless garment” speech was in 1983, four years after she started building
her network. It baffles me that people talking about the seamless garment idea
don’t refer to her work. She traveled across the country – by humble grimy bus,
speaking to people in church halls and living rooms, a dozen at a time, or even
one at a time – building a network, making connections between the left and
right, between peace activists and pro-life activists.
Dan Berrigan got arrested
sitting in the door of an abortion clinic – at the end of a conference
organized by Juli Loesch and her ragtag bunch of followers; it was Juli’s Prolifers
for Survival that provided Dan with the opportunity to act publicly against
abortion.
I met Juli at the March
for Life, probably in 1979; she was leafletting about peace and life links, and
I was recruiting for nonviolent action. We hit it off, and cooperated for the
next decade. I was the editor of her newsletter, P.S., for a couple of
years.
From my perspective, the
greatest treasure in her work was her deep abiding joy. The topics she
addressed were grim – slaughter in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, slaughter in
abortion clinics. She was alone a lot, collecting the bricks for bridges one by
one. But she prayed a lot, read Scripture, stuck with the Rosary – and radiated
joy. She was fun, funny, unpredictable, unquenchable, humble, tenacious – a
living joyful mystery.
I learned from the best.
“Querida Amazonia!” (#35)
Pope Francis organized an
international meeting and then wrote a fascinating letter about the transformation
of the Amazon Basin, the core of South America, “the beloved region of the
Amazon.” He says the region enriches the world, and that we should cherish it.
Consider with me what the
Pope wrote about, and notice when pro-lifers sit up and pay attention. Tell me
if this is fair.
The Amazon Basin includes
a vast region that wasn’t much developed – meaning, made to produce cash – until
recently. But now the region is being transformed by loggers and planters. This
rape of the land enriches a few investors, not including the people who have
lived there for centuries. It’s barbaric orc-work.
The rape of the land
threatens to obliterate over 300 cultures, societies with their own ways of
life, and their own languages, living quietly by themselves deep in the jungle.
What happens when you
wipe out a culture?
Many of the people die,
but not all. Some are driven into cities, uprooted and homeless and desperate.
In this social devastation, some become beggars, driven into drug addiction and
prostitution.
And then some seek
abortion.
But some pro-lifers
ignore the Latin American Pope’s concerns, and question his priorities. They say
…
The ecological assault is
not a pro-life concern.
The destruction of the
rain forest is not a pro-life concern.
The loss of
oxygen-producing plants is not a pro-life concern.
The loss of species is
not a pro-life concern.
The greed of the
developers is not a pro-life concern.
The threat of genocide is
not a pro-life concern.
The extinction of
cultures is not a pro-life concern.
The displacement of
people into cities – a new life, without preparation – is not a pro-life
concern.
Beggars are not a
pro-life concern.
Drug addiction is not a
pro-life concern.
Pushing desperate women
into prostitution: pro-lifers start to rumble unhappily, but this still isn’t a
pro-life concern.
Women trapped in prostitution
show up at abortion clinics. What a shock. And finally, pro-lifers sit up and
take notice.
The President of Brazil,
Jair Bolsonaro, supports the rape of the Amazon including genocide, but he
opposes abortion, and many pro-lifers in the United States applaud his stand.
But abortion has roots.
If you feed the roots, but fuss about the fruit, that’s not smart. And it’s not
pro-life.
If you don’t care when
people are driven out of the forest into the cities, what do you have to offer
them? Where were you when their cultures were obliterated, their homes
destroyed, the land stolen?
Pope Francis wrote about
this, in Querida Amazonia. Pro-life leaders didn’t notice when the Pope
talked about genocide; instead, they fussed about the possibility of women
deacons. They didn’t pretend to care when the fragile cultures of the area were
demeaned; in fact, they applauded when a neo-Nazi threw an Amazon artifact into
a river. They sided with the rich who destroyed the land for profit. And then
they demand self-righteously that people sit up and listen to their words of
praise for Bolsonaro, the “pro-life” president of Brazil. What is wrong with
you?
Genocide isn’t brand new.
Thomas Malthus wrote his murderous essay about population control in 1798, reacting
to the Highlanders who were driven off their land in the Scottish mountains and
then showed up in English cities. Their skills – their whole proud way of life
– was tied to the rough mountains, and was not good preparation for city life;
they were despised as ignorant beggars, producing ignorant beggar babies. So
the genocide in Scottish Highlands led to Malthusian despair for generations. And
the rape of the Amazon is another chapter in the Malthusian story.
Me: I oppose abortion,
and its roots. And its roots! The fruit and the root are inseparable,
like a seamless garment.
I stand with Francis.
The fundamental assertion
of the pro-life movement is that unborn children are members of the human
family. If you accept that idea, then abortion in the past five decades or so
has been the deadliest assault on humanity in history. About a quarter or even
a third of the people conceived since 1968 have died of abortion. Starvation,
disease, warfare – nothing compares to the abortion rate. The only thing that
could take more lives would be a world war with nukes.
I understand clearly that
most people do not consider unborn children to be fully human, members of the
human family, entitled to all the protections that everyone else claims as a
right. I understand clearly that women made pregnant without their planning
such an event often feel trapped, and that uncountable millions of people are
convinced that protecting women from abuse and entrapment requires access to
abortion. I understand that, and I respect the people who hold this view. But
that’s not my view; I think unborn children are my brothers and sisters. And I
accept the idea that the only thing that could be bloodier is nuclear war.
This perception of
abortion drives many pro-lifers to accept just about any craziness erupting
from President Trump. Fix the worst, first. I understand that too. But I reject
it, for a list of reasons – including that Trump is open to the only violence
that could be worse. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, every American president has
expressed horror about nuclear warfare, and has taken steps to make sure The
Bomb is never used again – every president until Trump.
The first time Trump
spoke at the United Nations in New York, he threatened to use nukes
(9/19/2017).
He threatened to bomb
North Korea, with nukes. (9/19/2017 was one time among several).
He threatened to bomb
Iran, with nukes (6/23/2019).
When he was a candidate,
he said that the military would do what he told them to do, even if they
considered his orders to be immoral. He was talking about talking about torture
when he said that, but it also applies to bombing civilians, or bombing nations
that do not pose a threat to our existence.
He recommended that more
nations join the club, get their own nukes. If North Korea has nukes, Japan
should get some too (4/3/2016).
One fundamental problem
with nukes is that they kill civilians. But Trump said that fighting terrorists
requires killing family members (12/2/2015).
For a couple of years,
Trump had serious and thoughtful people advising him, making sure he didn’t
make silly little mistakes like starting a nuclear war. But those people are
gone, and now he’s surrounded with toadies. He could use a nuke tomorrow.
“Use a nuke.” Does that
mean press the button and destroy a city, or does it include threats? If
someone backs off because you pulled out a gun, did you “use” that gun? Of
course you used it. Trump has already used nukes, just not completely.
In my view, there’s only
one thing more destructive than abortion. And Trump does it. And most
pro-lifers don’t even notice.
