One Paul Moses, here in Commonweal:
[Bishop Murphy] thus subordinated many other concerns of Catholic social teaching—and signaled to Catholic voters in the two suburban counties on Long Island to do the same. (Murphy was not available for comment in a phone call to his residence.) It was no small matter, given that Catholics are a majority within the diocese’s borders, that polling shows nearly nine in ten of them say religion is “very important” in their lives, and that many are the sort of moderate suburban voters who swing close elections in New York state.
In his apostolic exhortation Rejoice and be glad, Pope Francis warns against elevating any single social issue, including abortion, above all others. He includes this in a passage that assails two “ideologies striking at the heart of the Gospel.” The first is seen in those who elevate the quest for social justice over faith, over openness to grace. The second is found in those who see social engagement as “superficial, worldly, secular, materialist, communist or populist,” he wrote. “Or they relativize it, as if there are other more important matters, or the only thing that counts is one particular ethical issue or cause that they themselves defend.”
Single issue voting is hardly the same thing as "ideology". That is quite simply a terrible simplification of ideology.
What marks out ideological thinking from mere single issue voting is the overarching, undergirding character of an ideology's flight from reality, indeed, its denial of reality, over against those who accept the features of reality which happen to be the impediments to the ideology's realization.
In the case of abortion, the denial of reality is all on the side of its advocates, not its opponents. Its advocates say that the unborn child isn't a child, merely a fetus. And therefore when one terminates a pregnancy one isn't committing murder. To which the opponents reply, If it isn't really alive why do you have to kill it? The hoops one must jump through to deny the evidence plainly in view are self-evident. It's the abortion advocates who are the ideologues, not the advocates for life.
The case is similar with illegal immigration, the real subject of Paul Moses' advocacy. The ideologues deny the reality and legitimacy of nation states, their borders and the rule of law, and redefine the transgressors of same as "migrants" or "strangers" instead of what they really are, "illegals".
One suspects that this attack on single issue voting as ideology is not just another example of the penchant for projection characteristic of human nature when caught in a fault, but of contemporary liberalism generally. Frustrated with an ever intractable reality, the representatives of reality must be marginalized, maligned and disarmed if the liberal agenda is to have any hope of advancement.
Catholics used to be smarter than to fall for this sort of thing.
