Chicago to crown an abortion financier at its seminarians' gala

The Archdiocese of Chicago will present its “Nostra Aetate” award on 29 October to the financier Michael J. Sacks, chairman and chief executive of the investment firm GCM Grosvenor, at a fund-raising gala for the formation of the future priests of Mundelein Seminary. A report attributes to the same man a $600,000 gift to abortion-access initiatives in Illinois, which have supported organisations including Planned Parenthood of Illinois and the Chicago Abortion Fund.

The Church weighs this choice not by the conveniences of patronage, but by the fifth commandment. “Thou shalt not kill”: the Catechism of the Council of Trent places under this prohibition the killing of the child in its mother's womb, and teaches that whoever furnishes the counsel, the help or the means of a crime shares its guilt. Pius XI had said it without evasion: direct abortion is the killing of an innocent, forbidden by a divine law that no cause, however good, can set aside.

To honour publicly, and for the benefit of the sanctuary, the man whose money has served that work is scandal in the proper sense: the stone that makes men stumble, the act by which an authority gives ground to believe that the blood of the innocent can be reconciled with the service of the altar. The archdiocese has not set out the reasons for this choice. Last year a similar plan — to honour a senator for his work on behalf of immigrants — was withdrawn after several bishops objected. No decree has settled the present distinction: it stands announced, not defended. But the rule has long been settled. One does not crown, not even for a good cause, the hand that paid for the death of the little ones.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), exposition of the fifth commandment, on homicide and cooperation in crime. Exodus 20:13 (Vulgate / Douay-Rheims). Pius XI, encyclical Casti connubii (1930), on direct abortion and cooperation in evil.