There are no single issues.

About ten years ago there was a lot of talk in liberal Catholic circles about the dangers of a "single issue" mentality on abortion. I used to share this concern. Abortion is a great evil, yes, especially when the law of the land permits it on a virtually unrestricted basis. But it is far from being the only evil; to choose randomly from the list, we also have poverty, racism, and the national deficit.

Well, I've changed my mind (sort of). I still object to the one-issue mind, but in the last few years I've come to have a broader acquaintance with prolife activists and voters, and among the ones I've met almost none has anything like a single-issue mentality. Abortion is usually their number-one issue, true; but it is always part of a complex of interconnected issues. I may not always be pleased with their other issues, but they certainly do have them.

When you think about it for a moment, you realize it is virtually impossible for an anti-abortion person to have a single-issue mind. Regardless of whether you're prolife or prochoice, your position on abortion is logically (or at least psychologically) connected with a wide range of other questions--religion, marriage, family, childrearing, education, sexual conduct, personal autonomy, tolerance, community responsibility, etc. And while one should never underestimate the infinite resources of human stupidity, a prolife or prochoice person would have to be very stupid indeed not to see these connections. That's why we find every day that a person's position on the abortion issue is a reliable predictor of where he or she stands on a dozen other issues.

An anti-abortion position, then, is part of a series of positions. But here a difficulty arises, since it may be part of any number of different series. For John Ludd, it is just one more instance of his negative reaction to anything new. For Mary Prude, it is part of her disapproval of anything that smacks of sexual freedom. For Tom Chauvin, it is another step in his continuing battle to keep women in their place. For Susan Limbaugh, it is nothing more than an element in her generalized dislike of liberals and Democrats.

For Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, who formulated the theory of the "seamless garment" or "consistent ethic of life," love of God and neighbor will not permit abortion; nor will it permit indifference to the plight of those tempted to abortion; nor capital punishment; nor racism and sexism; nor indifference to poverty, illness, suffering, oppression; nor nuclear warfare; nor war itself except as a very last resort. But if there is no such thing as a single-issue anti-abortion mentality, why over the years have there been so many warnings about this mentality, especially in liberal Catholic circles?

One reason is that liberal Catholics are generally sympathetic to Democrats and political liberals, whom they see as the good guys on most issues other than abortion. They fear that if abortion becomes a high-profile issue for Catholic voters, Democrats and liberalism will suffer while Republicans and conservatism gain.

Other reasons are similar to this. There is a fear that prolife Catholics will situate their anti-abortionism in the wrong series, for example, the antiprogress series, the antiwoman series, the antisex series. So, since they may do the wrong thing if you stir up their anti-abortion sentiments, better not stir them up; better cool them down.

There is also a social class bias at work here. Liberal Catholics generally belong to the better-educated and more-privileged sections of society, and it is hard for them not to share the prejudices of their class. Among these is the notion that the typical prolife activist is more than a bit simple-minded. We patricians are intelligent enough not to become single-issue anti-abortionists, but can we trust the plebeians to do the same? Better dampen their enthusiasm by low-keying the abortion issue.

Then again, there is a widespread misunderstanding of the seamless garment theory. Many Catholics, including many members of the clergy, have understood the theory to call for reining in the prolife movement, so that the anti-abortion drive makes progress at the same rate as the drives to implement other elements of the consistent ethic agenda--but no faster. The image is that of an army advancing along a broad front; the prolife divisions should not thrust a hundred miles in advance of the general front.

Ironically, the long-term effects of these warnings against a single-issue mentality have been just the opposite of those intended. Hardcore Catholic prolifers have not remained in the Democratic party; overwhelmingly they have turned Republican. They do not see liberals as the good guys on everything but abortion; instead they see them as the bad guys on everything including abortion. They have not abstained from integrating anti-abortionism in a series of conservative causes; rather they have done precisely that. For the most part, they have not embraced the "consistent ethic of life" approach; instead, many have come to see that phrase as a code term for inaction, and they are more likely to look on Pat Robertson than on Cardinal Bernardin as their religious hero.

It may be said by the Catholic liberal, "Don't worry, these hard-core prolifers are only a minority of all Catholics." A minority, yes; but a big minority; and a bigger minority still when we consider them as a fraction of the people who really count in the church, namely the regular churchgoing and contributing Catholics. For the most part these hard-core prolifers are the most committed, the most intense of American Catholics. As they expand toward becoming a critical mass, others are drawn their way. Thus it will be no surprise if the future of American Catholicism lies with them.

The probability that the future will be theirs was significantly increased last month when Pope John Paul II issued his Gospel of Life encyclical, which goes a long way toward making the prolife position the defining mark of contemporary Catholicism.

In the early 1950s, some people used to ask, "How did we lose China?" It is not too early for Catholic liberals to ask, "How did we lose the prolifers?"