| Address at Seattle University
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin
March 2, 1986
I wish to express my sincere appreciation to Seattle University, to its President Fr. William Sullivan, SJ., and to the Board of Trustees for the honor bestowed on me today. The relationship between centers of scholarship and learning and the episcopacy is one of the pre-eminent issues in the Church in the United States today. I accept your honorary degree with the pledge that I will do all I can to strengthen that relationship—to keep it based on standards of intellectual honesty, professional respect, and a shared concern for the welfare of the church and its witness in society.
It is the Church's witness to life that I wish to address this afternoon. It is now over two years since I first proposed consideration of a "consistent ethic of life" in the Gannon Lecture at Fordham University. Since that time there has been a sustained process of reflection and analysis in the Church about the multiple issues which come under the umbrella of the consistent ethic.
Last November, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted the consistent ethic theme in its revised Plan for Pro-Life Activities. Obviously, I find that step particularly significant, for it gives the consistent ethic the status of policy within the Episcopal Conference. Nevertheless, I believe the concept and consequences of the consistent ethic must be examined more deeply, its implications make clearer within the Church and in the wider civil society. So I am returning to the theme this afternoon at another Catholic university, seeking to press forward the dialogue of several disciplines in the quest for a comprehensive and consistent ethic of life.
During the past two years, as I have followed the commentary on the consistent ethic in journals and the media, and as I have carried on a wide ranging personal correspondence with many bishops, theologians, philosophers, and social scientists, three topics emerged about the theme which I wish to address: its theological foundation, its ethical logic, and its political consequences.
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