False prophet Fr. Frank Pavone advocates ends-justifies-means heresy.

avone, who spends a great deal of time con­grat­u­lat­ing him­self, the bet­ter so that we may con­grat­u­late him too, wrote on Twit­ter: “Would any­one who com­plained about what peo­ple like me did dur­ing the 2016 elec­tions care to let the rest of us know which of Hillary‘s choic­es for Supreme Court you would have liked to see sit­ting on the bench or going through the con­fir­ma­tion process now?”

He does not tell us what actions he has in mind when says “what peo­ple like me did.” May we assume that he includes among them his despi­ca­ble, canon­i­cal­ly illic­it act of putting a dead fetus on a Catholic altar and film­ing a cam­paign com­mer­cial for Trump? Cer­tain­ly Pavone thinks this some­thing he did, for which we ought to be grate­ful, result­ed in Trump’s elec­tion and, in con­se­quence, his nom­i­nee for the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh, the best nom­i­nee ever, the best.

What­ev­er he has in mind, what Pavone is say­ing here is that the ends jus­ti­fy the means. See, we have this won­der­ful SCOTUS nominee—the best nom­i­nee ever, the best—who is going to vote to over­turn Roe. Pinky swear with a fetus on top. If Crooked Hillary had won, we’d have very very bad nominees—the worst nom­i­nees ever, the worst—and they’d ensure that Roe would be around even unto the hun­dredth genera­tion. So if I had to do some shady things, it’s all for the good of the babies.

But no. This is called Con­se­quen­tial­ism, and the Church con­demns it. Here is CCC 1753:

A good inten­tion (for exam­ple, that of help­ing one’s neigh­bor) does not make behav­ior that is intrin­si­cal­ly dis­or­dered, such as lying and calum­ny, good or just. The end does not jus­ti­fy the means.

And the desire to stop abor­tions does not jus­ti­fy vio­lat­ing canon 1239, which says that “An altar, whether fixed or mov­able, is to be reserved for divine wor­ship alone, to the exclu­sion of any sec­u­lar usage.”

Do you think that putting a dead baby on the altar and film­ing a cam­paign com­mercial for Trump is a “sec­u­lar usage”? I do. I think it’s also a repug­nant and sacri­ligeous use of a dead body.

Pope St. John Paul II also con­demns Con­se­quen­tial­ism in Ver­i­tatis Splen­dor. Con­se­quen­tial­ism, he says (§76), is “not faith­ful to the Church’s teach­ing.” That’s a nice way of say­ing it’s a heresy. It “can­not claim to be ground­ed in the Catholic moral tra­di­tion.” “A good inten­tion,” he says lat­er (78), “is not itself suf­fi­cient. A cor­rect choice of actions is also need­ed.”

That’s a high stan­dard, but it’s God’s stan­dard and Catholics are called to it. Even if we fail some­times, we are not to snub our noses at it or flout it from Twit­ter’s rooftops. And St. John Paul II would not be impressed with Fr. Pavone, or his insis­tence that “what peo­ple like me did” was all good because it got us Brett Kavanaugh.

Look, I hate abor­tion too. But pro-life Catholics can do bet­ter than to keep lis­ten­ing to this self-serv­ing apol­o­gist for Cae­sar, for polit­i­cal advan­tage; but not for Christ or his com­mands. The soon­er we are abhorred by what Fr. Pavone is will­ing to do and wash our hands of him and stop mak­ing him some pro-life folk hero, the bet­ter. As Dick­ens wrote, “Any good end can be achieved by good means. Those that can­not are evil and come from the father of evil.”