desire to care for the unborn child in the womb, the elderly person in danger of euthanasia, the refugee starving on the border, the L.G.B.T. youth tempted to suicide and the inmate being readied for execution on death row". Martin stated that to that list, sacred lives also include "the woman standing in line at the grocery store checkout counter, the elderly man seated in a church pew or the office worker who has just stepped aboard public transportation." Because masks prevent contagion, the act of wearing a mask in Martin's view is being "pro-life". Criticisms One criticism made of the consistent life ethic position is that it inadvertently helped provide "cover" or support for politicians who supported legalized abortion or wanted to minimize this issue, a circumstance that Bernardin himself both recognized and deplored. A critic of Joseph Bernardin, George Weigel rejected the claims that the consistent life ethic had been created to cover up for abortion rights, saying that Bernardin was "a committed pro-lifer". Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles criticized the "seamless garment" approach in 2016 because in his view it results in "a mistaken idea that all issues are morally equivalent." The "seamless garment" approach was also criticized by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger while he was serving as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In a July 2004 letter written to now former-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and to the United States Bishops as a whole, Cardinal Ratzinger makes it clear that the church does not treat capital punishment with the same moral weight that it does abortion and euthanasia: "Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father [the Pope] on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion...There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia." See also Ahimsa Christian pacifism Anti-abortion feminism Catholic social teaching Sins that cry to heaven References Sources Byrnes, Timothy A. "The politics of the American Catholic hierarchy". Political Science Quarterly 108 (3): 497. 1993. McClintock, Jamie S., and Perl, Paul. "The Catholic 'Consistent Life Ethic' and Attitudes Toward Capital Punishment