Chicago Cardinal Slams Trump Over Refugee Ban, ‘Dark Moment in U.S. History’

Cardinal Blase Cupich
VINCENZO PINTO/AFP/Getty

The Archbishop of Chicago has blasted President Donald Trump over his executive order putting a moratorium on new refugees from terror-laden countries, calling it a “dark moment in U.S. history.”

In a lengthy statement released on Sunday, progressive Cardinal Blase Cupich said that the executive order “is contrary to both Catholic and American values” and called the President’s decision “rushed, chaotic, cruel and oblivious to the realities that will produce enduring security for the United States.”

The Cardinal called Trump’s prudential judgment on the refugee matter a repetition of “disastrous decisions of the past.”

Last June, in a statement on the massacre of 50 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando (FL), the Archbishop carefully sidestepped the ideology of radical Islam behind the shooting and pointed the finger instead to “easy access” to deadly weapons.

“Our prayers and hearts are with the victims of the mass shooting in Orlando, their families and our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters,” Cupich wrote in a Facebook post at the time.

Although the Archbishop proposed that Americans address the “causes” of the tragedy, in his superficial analysis of the sources underlying the heinous attack, Cupich only mentioned one: “easy access to deadly weapons,” despite the fact that the Islamic State had already claimed responsibility for the attack.

Earlier last week, Cupich wrote about citizens’ “moral obligation” to combat climate change, gushing over President Obama’s leadership in the issue. He also briefly addressed participants in the Chicago March for Life, telling them that if they are to be serious about building a culture of life, that means “adequate health care legislation,” “advocating for family leave policies in the work place,” and “enacting laws that keep families together even if some have no documents.”

Archbishop Cupich has a long history of dogmatic pronouncements on open, prudential questions coupled with ambiguous, halfhearted positions on decided moral issues such as abortion. By cozying up to the Democratic party during the election season, he rendered himself impotent to criticize Hillary Clinton despite her wholehearted support for Planned Parenthood and abortion on demand, the great social justice issue of the present age.

As bishop of Spokane, WA, Cupich discouraged priests and seminarians from praying outside Planned Parenthood abortion clinics, urging them to avoid confrontation that could contribute to a “polarizing” environment over the issue of abortion.

After the release of damning videos showing Planned Parenthood officials negotiating the sale of aborted baby parts, the Archbishop notoriously equated abortion with other social ills such as unemployment and the death penalty, suggesting that people should be just as appalled by a broken immigration system as they are by the gruesome ripping apart of unborn children and the sale of their organs.

For years Cupich kowtowed to the Obama administration, especially regarding Obamacare, and resisted the efforts of the U.S. Bishops to roll back the HHS mandate that bullied groups such as the Little Sisters of the Poor into providing reproductive services contrary to their Catholic faith.

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