Irony: Response to Michael

My friend Michael contends, below, that it is "seriously misleading" to say that "according to the magisterium:  (1) abortion is intrinsically immoral and there is no room for a difference in prudential judgments about the morality of abortion, but (2) capital punishment is not intrinsically immoral and there is room for a difference in prudential judgments about whether government may rely on a system of capital punishment." 

Maybe so.  That is, I am inclined to agree with Michael that statements like this could be misleading, if they were not expanded to include the "practically non-existent" idea (which Michael discusses), set out in Sec. 2267 of the Catechism.  (I continue to think the Catechism's statements on capital punishment are confused, but . . ..) 

I'm not at all confident, though, that Cardinal Martini's statements -- which are, it is fair to say, the statements of a learned churchman, but not (necessarily) the teaching of the Church -- do anything to change the fact that there is (quoting Michael) "no room for a difference in prudential judgment about the morality of the [abortion-related legal regime] in . . . the United States," or about the morality of the legal regime that Roe and Casey mandate, or -- since Michael raised the matter of political parties -- about the morality of the legal regime to which the Democratic Party is unswervingly committed.