God, the Right-Wing (and Left-Wing) Extremist
The Catechism lists four “sins that cry out to heaven” and it is a startling list if you think of it in terms of our political divisions. It is straight out of America’s culture wars: “right wingers” will read the list and see God condemning abortion and sexual immorality; “left-wingers” will read the list and see God condemning structural poverty and unfair labor practices. Here’s the list. First, the “blood of Abel” cries out to heaven. The Catechism explains by quoting Genesis 4:10 where the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground!” The sin here is murder — but St. John Paul makes the blood of Abel an icon of abortion in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, saying that too often “threats to life arise within the relationship between parents and children, such as happens in abortion or when, in the wider context of family or kinship, euthanasia is encouraged or practiced” (No. 8). So if you are a die-hard, uncomp