Catholic Nancy Pelosi: Issue of late-term abortions is ‘sacred ground’
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 13, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In response to a question today from a reporter about a late-term abortion ban that is being proposed in Congress, Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that the issue of late-term abortion is “sacred ground” for her. [I have to ask… did she take off her shoes when she said that?!?]
“As a practicing and respectful Catholic, [GAH!] this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this,” Pelosi said. “This shouldn’t have anything to do with politics.” [See what she is doing? “Faith” is only private.]
A Weekly Standard reporter had pointed out that the bill was proposed by legislators in response to the horrific case of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who was found guilty of murder for “snipping” the spinal cords of three babies born alive.
“They argue that there really isn’t much of a moral difference between what someone like Dr. Gosnell did to infants born at 23, 24, 25 weeks into pregnancy, and what can happen [legally] at a clinic down the road in Maryland where a doctor says he’ll perform an elective abortions 28 weeks into pregnancy,” asked the reporter. “So, the question I have for you is what is the moral difference between what Dr. Gosnell did to a baby born alive at 23 weeks and aborting her moments before birth?”
Pelosi responded by saying that what Gosnell did was “reprehensible,” but then said that the bill is also “reprehensible,” suggesting that it shows “disrespect” to “a judgment a woman makes about her reproductive health.” [So late-term abortions are “sacred ground”.]
The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks based upon evidence that by that age the unborn child can feel the pain of the brutal procedure, which in some cases involves dismemberment while the baby is still alive.
The reporter continued to push Pelosi, asking her what the difference was between a 26 week abortion, and killing the baby after birth.
Pelosi responded that “this is not the issue” and suggested that the proposed bill would say that “there’s no abortion in our country.”
When the reporter tried once again to get Pelosi to answer the question, she shot back, “I’m not going to have this conversation with you, because you obviously have an agenda. You’re not interested in having an answer.”
That was when she also made the remark about the issue being “sacred ground.”
The Weekly Standard reporter complained: “It was a simple question. You didn’t answer.”
Pelosi, despite being one of the most pro-abortion legislators in Congress, has repeatedly said that she is a devout Catholic, and has defended her pro-abortion views in light of her faith.
Pelosi told Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift in 2010 that she had “some concerns” about the Catholic Church’s positions on abortion and homosexuality.
“I am a practicing Catholic, [GAH!] although they’re probably not too happy about that. But it is my faith,” said the former Speaker. “I practically mourn this difference of opinion because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that is that we are all endowed with, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And that women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will.”
The Congresswoman has been publicly rebuked by numerous Catholic bishops over her position on moral issues.
How long before Canon 915 is applied?
If Canon 915 exists for a reason, it exists for Nancy Pelosi.
How long?
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It’s the ‘right’ to have an abortion that she considers ‘sacred ground’. ;-(
Paging Salvatore Cordileone. An interdict and ferendae sententiae excommunication lie on your desk awaiting your signature.
She says: “I practically mourn this difference of opinion”
I mourn that she considers it only a difference of opinion. I tremble for her that she so blithely speaks of having “a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions,” when she is talking about defending free rein to kill a viable child because he or she has not been born yet. Who believes in a Final Judgment and yet talks about it in such a flippant manner? Has she become so used to her position of power that she thinks the coming requirement that she “answer” for the work of her lifetime will be so easy to put off as this reporter proved to be?
I wonder if we can get a whiz-kid canon lawyer in here to explain to us again why it’s impossible for the Church to do anything about this. I’m desperately in need of such analysis.
Yes, how long???
Oh yeah, I also need someone to explain to me why Pope Francis can’t just step up to a mic in Rome and say some magic words. He seems to say everything else that pops into his head. Someone needs to explain to me why he can’t talk to Pelosi.
You know, Ms. Pelosi might want to be a little bit more careful on promoting her brand of Catholicism. Yes, she has been reprimanded by US bishops, but she is sticking her neck out, daring the Bishop of Rome, who has a track record on this, to say something. Now, His Holiness won’t stoop to her level and play dueling sound bites, nor will he step on her own local bishop’s toes with respect to the discipline that he needs to lay down, but I would hope, as part of his daily preaching and teaching, he might send an unmistakable shot across her bow that crap like this won’t be tolerated. Oremus pro pontifice nostro Francisco…
This is an actual Blasphemy from her !!!
She should be excommunicated for Heresy and Apostasy ASAP
Blaaaaaa! Ugh. Seriously, this is really becoming more and more disheartening and scandalous. How can Canon 915 not be invoked? How? Also, how much longer can the Church continue like this before there is a massive implosion of sorts?
If we had a dollar for every “Catholic” politician who obstinately opposes the teachings of the Catholic Church, we’d all be rich. Pelosi, Cuomo, Biden, Kerry, Jerry Brown and just about every Democratic politician here in California, and the list goes on and on. But what are the bishops and priests saying about this? Hello, anyone? Hellooooooooo?
Dear Father,
I live near Bantry Bay in the County Cork, Ireland. Our Taoiseach, Endy Kenny, a Catholic, is pushing through a radical liberalization of our Irish law which heretofore forbad direct abortion. I empathize with the sentiments that Pelosi, Biden, Cuomo, etc. must have episcopal sanctions imposed on them both for the good of thier immortal souls and for the good of Holy Mother Church.
I hope you will forgive me if I include with this post of mine a poem from one of Ireland’s greatest poets and which I think is eerily prescient of these times we are in:
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
So canon law (751, 1364 and 915) says that the obstinate denial or doubt of a teaching to believed is heresy, that a heretic has automatically excommunicated themselves, and that such a person is not to receive Holy Communion.
In Evangelium Vitae (#62) when speaking on abortion Bl. John Paul II noted the unchanged and unchangeable teaching and footnoted the paragraph from Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium (#25) on infallibility.
Now your ordinary Catholic who probably doesn’t read canon law and papal encyclicals sees her on the television claiming to be a faithful Catholic, hears in a news story how she received Communion at Mass, or sees a photo of her in the newspaper receiving Communion and what are they to think? Contrary to what some Bishops have said, is not she (and others) politicizing the Eucharist?
Souls could be led astray, indeed the soul of Nancy Pelosi. What are our shepherds doing??? Surely for such a public sinner a public action is needed.
This is awful. Murder dressed up as good conscience and women’s rights (i.e. votes). No one has the right to commit murder of the unborn, not women, not men. Let someone cut off one of Pelosi’s limbs and see if she feels pain. Let someone kill her offspring and see if she is upset about it. Humans in the womb are not tumors, they are not diseases, they are not objects, they are people at a certain stage of human development, just like children, adults, old people and geriatric people who can no longer care for themselves. These are all equally deserving of respect and support. The condoning of intentional murder of the innocent unborn in the name of votes is disgusting. The complicity of the medical profession in abortion is disgusting. The lack of leadership from the bishops is even more disgusting.
[You put your finger on a good point. The pro-aborts and libs have successfully turned abortion into a “women’s rights” issue. It is NOT. It is a HUMAN RIGHTS issue. We must take the issue back as a matter of rights for humans… to be born.]
St. Alphonsus in “DIGNITY AND DUTIES OF THE PRIEST”, page 64, online-PDF:
The works in which a zealous priest should be employed are:
I. The correction of sinners. Priests who see insults offered to God and remain silent are called by Isaias mute dogs. 2 But to these mute dogs shall be imputed all the sins that they could have but have not prevented. “Do not be silent,” says Alcuin, “lest the sins of the people be ascribed to you.” 3 Some priests abstain from reproving sinners because they do not wish to disturb their peace of mind; but, says St. Gregory, for this peace that they desire, they shall miserably lose peace with God. 4 An animal falls, exclaims St. Bernard, and many are found to lift it; a souls falls, and no one is found to raise her up. 5 Yes, sinners are not converted, although, according to St. Gregory, priests are specially appointed by God to point out the path of virtue to those who go astray. 6 Hence St. Leo adds: ” The priest who does not withdraw another from error proves that he is himself involved in it.” 7 St. Gregory writes that we kill as many souls as we see committing sin without endeavoring to apply a remedy. 8
1 ” Concham te exhibebis, non canalem. Canales hodie in Ecclesia multos habemus, conchas vero perpaucas.” In Cant. s. 18.
2 ” Canes muti, non valentes latrare.” Is. Ivi. 10.
3 ” Nolite tacere, ne populi peccata vobis imputentur.” Epist. 28.
4 ” Dum pacem desiderant, pravos mores nequaquam redarguunt; et consentiendo perversis, ab Auctoris sui se pace disjungunt.” Past. p. 3, c. i, adm. 23.
5 ” Cadit asina, et est qui sublevet eam; perit anima, et nemo est qui reputet.” De Cons. 1. 4, c. 6.
6 ” Eligitur viam erranti demonstrate.” Epist. 1. 7, ind. 2, ep. no.
7″ Sacerdos qui alium ab errore non revocat, seipsum errare demonstrat.” Ep. ad Turrib. c. 15,
8 Nos qui Sacerdotes vocamur, tot occidimus, quot ad mortem ire quotidie tepide videmus. ” In Ezech. Hom.11.
Pelosi said this as well:”You’re probably enjoying that question a lot, I can see you savoring it.” Who “savors” talking about abortion, especially atrocities like Gosnell? And what’s up with members of the press corpse laughing at McCormack’s question(s)? Nope, no bias in the mainstream media.
Misappropriation of the word sacred has been used for a long time to seal hypocrisy.
Dear babies, any help you would have had from Pelosi is qorban.
A real, related issue here is which ‘peccatum’ (in fact) should also be a ‘delictum’ or ‘crimen’ in positive law.
For example, in England the Abortion Act 1967 did not ‘legalize’ abortion, it ‘decriminalized’ it (technically speaking: a real legal distinction with no practical advantage to the millions of victims killed to date).
In ‘professing’ “that we are all endowed with, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And that women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will”, Mrs. Pelosi seems to be briefly donning the cloak of a sort of radical ‘libertarianism’, which was addressed by Madison in The Federalist, 51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary” (unfallen angels, that is!).
That is not to say that she admits that embryonal- and fetal-homicide are ‘peccata’ or that the victims of such actual ‘homicidia’ are ‘homines’. She may be (willfully) reducing Church teaching (and any commonsensical natural reasoning about observable facts), without explanation, to unsettled ‘opinion’.
If so, she is clearly unwilling to give “a baby […] alive at 23 weeks […] moments before birth” any ‘benefit of doubt’.
Whether her ‘prudential’ approach is only to ‘crimen’ or to ‘peccatum’ and victim as well, it is a grievous pity that no one in a position of hierarchical responsibility exercises his ‘prudential’ powers to address her on it.
“I am a practicing Catholic, although they’re probably not too happy about that. But it is my faith,” said the former Speaker. “I practically mourn this difference of opinion because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that is that we are all endowed with, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And that women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will.”
Tragically, not all Catholics living under the Nazi regime resisted, either; many caved, and I’m sure many developed all kinds of creative little rationalization narratives (“The Fatherland!”; “helping to purify the bloodlines!”; “overcoming Bolshevism!”) to justify their rounding up Jews Monday through Saturday, and attending Mass and receiving Holy Communion on Sunday.
It’s amazing the lies we can tell to ourselves to justify going out and doing what we’ve decided to do anyway, to attain our own selfish ends. In La Pelosi’s case – status and power. In the German Catholic soldier’s case, a sense of belonging to what was sure to be the most powerful Reich in history.
This way of acting goes back all the way to Judas Iscariot. It’s so easy to find ourselves falling into these traps that Satan sooner or later traps for all of us, and requires much prayer and vigilance to avoid them. May Our Lady crush the serpent’s head in each of our path, before he is allowed to coil himself around our toe, then our ankle, then our entire leg, and pull us down into the pit. This, sadly is what has happened to Mrs. Pelosi. May God have mercy on her!
Pray for her soul
This is a human rights issue. The right to existence trumps women’s rights. It’s logic that seems to be lost in the minds of those who advocate murder as a given right.
Judas got 30 pieces of silver for one life. The abortion lobby’s deep pockets has that many times over, and their silver finances Mrs Pelosi’s campaigns.
Sorry…”There’s”
Pope Francis stressed that it was important for Catholics to have a voice in politics.
This issue is probably the most serious problem in the credibility of the Church when trying to speak in public matters. They do not create the impression of being neutral by pampering such obviously publicly wrong Catholics. they create the impression of being the Democratic Party’s personal state religion. Available to take a public stance favorable to them on nearly every occasion, while being virtually silent on all areas of disagreement. Their silence loses them credibility on the political Right, and the constant harping on Democrat desires has trained the left leaning Catholics to listen to the Party more than the Church.
Many thanks to “Bosco” for the poem. As it happens I know Bantry Bay very well. My wife hails from Union Hall (and that will mean nothing to 99.9% of you). I believe that you, Bosco, are responsible for calling your Taioseach “End-a Life Kenny”. I see that he has declared that he is not a Catholic Taioseach but a Taioseach who happens to be a Catholic. This was the line taken by J.F. Kennedy when he became America’s President and he showed that he was just as “good” a Catholic as your Nancy Pelosi and End-a Life Kenny. Here, in Australia, we have a Catholic Senator who is trying to restrict abortion by introducing a Bill which would outlaw “Gendercide” and we also have a “Catholic” Leader of the Opposition who will not support this Senator! I fear that when Catholics become politicians, their Catholicism goes out of the window!!!
Unfortunately, there are too many other politicians just like her voting for death. Political expediency trumps morality. Sad.
Dear @JabbaPapa,
no, no and no. No blasphemy, no apostasy, no heresy, nor (as Dr Peters repeatedly said) any canonical crime, but a can 915 case.
Still, I’d by personal inclination prefer to handle all such cases with the clarity of judgment and penalty. A revival of the old canon against “who frame laws against the Church”, to be extended to laws in favor of abortion and euthanasia, might be in place. Just saying. But before anything of the sort, the Church must, of course, re-learn to pronounce penalties, actual ones and half-ones (which can 915). It does not help to have a canon on the statute-book when it is not acted upon. (Which is why, contrary to Dr Peters, I’m for the automatic excommunications: they help that at least, here, penalty canons still have actual, if limited, effect).
Dear @Marion Ancilla Mariae,
in the German Catholic soldier’s case, an oath of loyalty, the prospect to be killed in case of desertion or subversion-of-strength, the bonds of comradeship, a very real sense of fighting for the Fatherland (giving up the questions of determining whether the war be just or not to the state authorities), a very real sense of fighting (though, here, in an unjust war) against Bolshevism (rather not realizing the similarities of Bolshevism and National Socialism), some propaganda to the effect that they had been attacked or on the verge of it, and the acquired habit of obedience.
They did not at this point have a sense of belonging to the most powerful empire in history. Some generals seem to have, until late (but in the last half of 1944, or later), thought the war could still be won or drawn to a stale-mate. For the average person, remembering what happened to Napoleon, the fate was sealed one Hitler dared attack Russia. They then only helped to get out of that again, or get their young relatives out of that again. Remember you need to have luck and a tremendous organization to make an insurgency; if you don’t have that, you’ll just see that you don’t participate as far as possible, keep your inner reservation as far as the rest, and get out of that somehow when all is over. One of these young relatives-of-someone found himself, for this reason, to be sprinkled with quite a lot of holy water… Luckily he did get out, and was later to be my grandfather.
Nor did they round up Jews from Monday till Saturday. They may have known (or dared not guess) that Jews were rounded up from Monday till Saturday, yet this is quite another thing. Troops of the regular Armed Forces may have occasionally got such orders, but primarily this was an SS thing, and the SS were taught to be irreligious.
Which is she saying is reprehensible: that Gosnell murdered those children; or that a woman’s decision to kill their child at any time before birth might be interfered with? I really couldn’t make up my mind which she was saying …
What makes these comments so much more infuriating than the garden-variety pro-abortion sentiments offered by so many other politicians is the speaker’s insistence that they are consistent with her “catholic” faith. If Rep. Pelosi wants to promote abortion, that’s bad enough – but PLEASE stop justifying it with reference to Catholicism. It just adds insult to injury and creates confusion in the minds of poorly catechized laypeople who will no doubt cling to this as an imprimatur for their own versions of cafeteria Catholicism. And the double standard is amazing- so religion is irrelevant to issues like the HHS mandate, but it can be invoked in defense of abortion?
We’ve been dealing with the menace of legalized abortion since 1973…bad enough as that is, the real problem here is the scandal that Rep. Pelosi’s comments have caused. If she wants to publically degrade the Faith of the Church in this manner, the Church has no choice but to publically respond. Hopefully sooner than later.
Another blogger asked this yesterday, and I think it’s a good point: if we’re not allowed to use relgion and ethics to make laws, then what is she using? It’s not science — biology, fetology, embryology etc. So why doesn’t she just admit it: this has nothing to do with Catholicism. This is just my party line, and I’m following it because that’s what I do.
Meanwhile she scolds the reporter for having “an agenda,” as if the reporter were the only one in the room who had an agenda.
I’d personally like an answer from her, though, to what we’re supposed to use to guide our law-making if not religion/ethics *or* science.
“If we had a dollar for every “Catholic” politician who obstinately opposes the teachings of the Catholic Church, we’d all be rich.”
Well, I suppose they do their part when the collection plate is passed, so I’d venture a guess you do have a dollar for each Catholic politician who disagrees with the Church’s dogma on abortion and other key points. In fact, I wonder whether it’s those dollars from politicians and from others who don’t buy the whole shebang, that prevents the bishops from pointing out the exits.
Hank Igitur says: “Humans in the womb… are people at a certain stage of human development, just like… old people and geriatric people who can no longer care for themselves”
Well, in uber-advanced Belgium and Holland they seem to have got over the “hurdle” of seeing old people as actual people as well, since they can now be slaughtered…ooops, sorry, euthanised, there, that’s better… as soon as they begin to become a burden… sorry, sorry, I mean as soon as their “life quality” is deemed to be unacceptable. Lebensunwertes Leben, and all that. Now where did we hear of that concept before?
Needless to remark, the population in these two bastions of liberality is below the replacement ratio, which is indicative of a population decreasing in size and growing older. Not that I, from Ireland, can afford to point the finger too much since our ratio is only just above the replacement rate. And we’ve now begun the gadarene rush towards joining the ranks of those advanced countries with death regimes…ooops, sorry again… “freedom of reproductive choice”. Since we seem to be so keen to prove our cutting-edge hipness to our EU masters and betters I’m sure our media-political complex is already thinking about “end-of-life care” or some such other euphemism. Or lie. It’s all the same to them.
@JayARay,
Indeed I know Union Hall well. Lovely little fishing village.
Apropos your remark about Enda Kenny’s drive to radically liberalize the abortion laws of Ireland, I offer for your edification a glowing piece from the Irish Independent wherein Mr. Kenny’s distancing himself from his Catholicism is breathlessly compared with John F. Kennedy’s disconnect from Catholicism.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/echoes-of-great-jfk-in-endas-triumphant-battle-cry-29341312.html
” suggesting that it shows “disrespect” to “a judgment a woman makes about her reproductive health”
It is well-established that lack of sufficient sleep can have a significant impact on one’s health.
If my work schedule requires that I sleep during the day and I have a neighbor that regularly makes sufficient noise to interfere with my sleep, should I be permitted to kill him because in doing so I am making a judgement about my health?
Archbishop Cordileone has been in place for awhile now, but nothing. Cardinal Wuerl has been in place for awhile now, but nothing. Pelosi have been in place for awhile now…
I think Pelosi should “practice” being Catholic some more before she says she is one.
I had hopes that if any bishop – anyone not named Raymond Leo Burke, that is – would apply 915 to Rep. Pelosi, Archbp. Cordileone would.
But we are still waiting.
It boggles the mind how deformed Nancy’s ideas about faith and politics are. She basically claims that Catholic public officials should not impose their beliefs on the public on ethical matters such as abortion, but that is exactly what public officials are elected to do! We vote them into office precisely in order to make laws that uphold the common good by banning certain abominable practices such as abortion, murder, rape, drunk driving, etc. Any reasonable person, Catholic or not, can see that abortion is a terrible abomination and the murder of an innocent person. Many Catholic politicians do not understand that banning abortion is not the same as legislating that all Americans must believe in Mary’s Immaculate Conception or the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. The real blame here falls on the bishops, though. They have failed for years to offer Pelosi a strong public rebuke and to apply Canon 915. It seems our bishops would rather please man than God in this situation. What other conclusion can be drawn?
With her line of reasoning, I find it difficult to think that Ms. Pelosi has the audacity to call the actions of Gosnell reprehensible. If she defends a “right” for baby murder disguised as “reproductive choice” to be a justified free will act of a woman, then how does she reserve the right to call Gosnell reprehensible? What, exactly, did she find reprehensible, and if, indeed, she thought any of his actions were reprehensible, wouldn’t it be her responsibility to encourage the investigation of abortion mills to make sure that his reprehensible actions are not repeated? There is an insurmountable mountain of evidence that suggests Gosnell is not the exception, but the norm. I wonder, in her own words, what exactly she found reprehensible about Kermit Gosnell? Didn’t the law-makers and health administrators in Philadelphia, themselves, consider Gosnell’s abortion mill, “sacred ground” which they were not to approach? Weren’t their own actions and inactions inspired by the same mentality towards abortion as Ms. Pelosi?
Yes, she’s right: “we are all endowed with a free will”
So was Satan/Lucifer when he said “Non Serviam”
I think conservatives should be careful in requesting the imposition of canon 915.
Almost the entirety of the modern Republican party and especially it’s “tea party” contingent advocate for a radical libertarianism that would directly oppose Catholic teaching on the just wage.
From Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII…”If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.”
Pelosi may not be an apostate, but I believe by her public disagreement with Catholic Church teachings on the sanctity of life she is a HERETIC and, as the Brazilian priest, Reverend Fr. Robert Francisco, was excommunicated under Canon 1364 by his bishop for heresy this past May for open dissent with Church teachings on homosexuality, so too should Pelosi be declared an excommunicant.
She is positing as Catholic faith something directly opposed to the Catholic faith. Almost a textbook definition of scandal.
How does Pelosi define “sacred”? In her lexicon does it bear any relation to the word as it is generally understood? Or is it, perhaps, another one of those terms that is to be re-defined as have, for example, “gay” or “marriage?
Yes, we should pray for her soul, though that is very hard to do I find.
re: late-term abortion as ‘sacred ground’:
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil,
who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness,
who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Isaiah 5:20
I just noticed something interesting on Facebook! The Archdiocese of San Francisco (Nancy’s home diocese) posts throughout the day, mostly with spiritually affirming quotes and pictures. Earlier today they reported an “action alert” suggesting people write to “urge your Representative to oppose all weakening amendments and to support H.R. the the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”
Someone pointed out the the Representative for San Francisco is…Nancy Pelosi.
Now the Archdiocese has posted copies of a couple of their tweets:
@ArchdioceseSF: (1/2) @NancyPelosi’s comments regarding the “sacred ground” of late term abortion in no way represents the position of the Catholic Church.
@ArchdioceseSF: (2/2) For Catholics, all life is sacred from conception to natural death. -George Wesolek Dir Of Com & Public Policy @NancyPelosi
Canon 915 is really important, but prayer for this poor woman’s soul is much more important.
I have been pro-life since 1978 at the age of 18 (as an “agnostic”), and have seen many publicly pro-abortion people repent. On a personal level, in my liberal Catholic family of 7 children, I think I saw the very-late-in-life repentance of an older relative who had (or so I was told by 2 older sisters) recommended to one of my parents (unfortunately a “pro-choice” individual) that me and my younger sibling be aborted (not the nicest thing for a 12-year-old to hear); that person was apparently unrepentant at the age of 80, but later on, I think, repented and actually twice apologized person to person (I say I think because it was hard to tell what he exactly meant by the specific words of his apology, and he did not know for certain that my sisters had said what they said, so there could be no specific apology – and I was not about to accuse him), somewhere between the ages of 85 and 92 (died at 92, I hope he is in heaven, just as I hope poor Nancy gets to heaven). Back to the congressional issue, looking at that clip, complete with Mrs. Pelosi’s guilty body language and horrible choice of words (nervously using the inappropriate word “savor” against an obvious defender of Gosnell’s innocent murder victims, and foolishly slipping into the word “sacred” to defend late-term abortions, of all things) I felt profoundly sorry for this “Congress-member”, who has no doubt been deluded by the gifts of fate (beauty when young, life-long cleverness, enough health to bear and raise five children, an important position in an urban machine political family, and illusory political power in her elderly years) but who is, after all, not very bright (can’t imagine her construing a simple page of Aquinas with any real accuracy). The poor bishops who have to deal with this problem need a lot of prayers too – even John Paul II made (by his own admission) a lot of mistakes dealing with pastoral issues, even when he was fairly old …I guess we all need each other’s prayers, we live in a cold world.
Fr. Z:
I am struck by this woman. Is this truely the face of evil, an actual damned soul? Deathbed confessions aside, are we truely looking at a demon-possessed individual? I do/will pray for her in all due Christian charity…but if she died at the microphone, she’d be in hell, no?
I said earlier, “Whether her ‘prudential’ approach is only to ‘crimen’ or to ‘peccatum’ and victim as well, it is a grievous pity that no one in a position of hierarchical responsibility exercises his ‘prudential’ powers to address her on it.”
It is good to learn (thanks to majuscule) that this is now occurring in some form and to a certain degree under hierachical auspices!
Perhaps it is obvious, but it has only now fully struck me that with “sacred ground” Mrs. Pelosi is presumably pretending to defend human and Christian freedoms against unjust state and judicial intrusion in the form of the H.R. working in the little space allowed by the bizarre constructions of Roe v. Wade with respect to ‘the third trimester of pregnancy’.
As such, it seems part of a general ‘line of attack’ also (recently) exemplified by Justice Ginsburg, who (according to Wikipedia, I think accurately representing what she said) “has criticized the Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade 410 U.S. 113 (1973) as terminating a nascent, democratic movement to liberalize abortion laws which might have built a more durable consensus in support of abortion rights. She discussed her views on abortion rights and sexual equality in a 2009 New York Times interview, in which she said regarding abortion that ‘[t]he basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman.’ ”
Such lines of attack seem to exemplify, and represent a political appeal to, certain forms of ‘libertarianism’.
So how is that pastoral approach working out?
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“I am a practicing Catholic, although they’re probably not too happy about that. But it is my faith…”
I have learned to be very leery of anyone who starts talking about MY faith, MY country, or MY God, because it almost always signals a defiance of the common understanding. It is how people try to re-define the situation to suit themselves.
If Nancy Pelosi ever starts practicing THE Faith as the Church actually teaches it, instead HER faith, the one she made up to suit herself, her own philosophy, and her own career goals, I think a great many people would be very happy about it, indeed. Let us not despair of her repentance. We’d want no less for ourselves, where the table is turned. (The measure we measure out with after all, is to be the measure used to measure out to us…)