Via CMR comes this truly scandalous piece.
On the House floor today Nancy Pelosi sank to a new low in criticizing pro-life Congressmen behind the Protect Life Act, which simply ensures that no funds from Obamacare may be used to pay for abortion or abortion coverage and also reinstates conscience protections for pro-life medical workers. Check out her despicable verbiage.
How disgusting is that? But that’s not even the worst part. Think about this. Pelosi is fighting to keep abortion funding in Obamacare after months of insisting that “there is no public funding of abortion.”
Horrible. Pray for her and that a bishop will act to correct the scandal.
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And this shocking piece of mendacious argumentation …
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The bishops’ behavior where the anti-life heretical actions of the public Catholics is concerned makes no sense at all.
Truthfully, with such behavior going on I am surprised that her Bishop has not publicly declared her a heretic and excommunicated– and make it public, in writing, so that no-one would be confused that her position on LIFE, held so publicly, might be legitimate for a Catholic who wants to remain in communion.
But then again, I have no clue why the Bishops continue to tolerate the behavior of these people. Sometimes the only charitable action is the anathema.
Let us pray that lay Catholics do what is *their* part to end the scandal: vote her out of office.
I wonder if most of the bishops are silent because they fear escalating the hostility of the Administration against the Church. There’s already a large percentage of the electorate that favors the Church losing her tax exempt status. We’ve also seen the Church lose government funding in its work with “undocumented workers” for not offering the “full range of reproductive health options” i.e. abortions.
This makes me both sad and angry. Why do people like this insist on calling themselves Catholic when, in reality, they hate the Church?
Will any of the leadership* of women’s religious communities in the U.S. who pushed for this awful nonsense now admit that they were wrong? Sadly, I’m sure they won’t because they most likely don’t see abortion as a problem. :(
*(notice I said leadership, not membership…a big difference between the two)
So concerned about women “dying on the floor” and never the babies dying on the floor, or in a bucket. None of this makes sense. The image of her marching with the giant gavel, drunk with power after passing this travesty into law, makes me think she must be possessed.
Sex education for girls and boys, and legislation for women’s hell-th.
She makes abortion a woman’s necessity for health; and by bullying Republicans for taking exception, she includes all Democrats in the brine. Tricky party politics at the high cost of humanity. Women dying on the floor?
She doesn’t seem to have a problem with babies dying on the floor — or in the soiled linen hamper — or in the dumpster.
This woman is despicable and giving scandal — with her visit to the Pope (although he refused to be co-opted in her evil schemes) and her constant proclamation that she’s a “faithful Catholic”. I do not understand why her bishop hasn’t given her at least a little “fraternal correction”.
There’s already a large percentage of the electorate that favors the Church losing her tax exempt status.
The people who favor that should be careful what they wish for. A taxpaying organization is presumably free to lobby, endorse, and campaign openly for or against specific candidates for office.
In this longer clip, Pelosi twice quotes the Catholic Health Association as proof that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act already excludes tax-payer funded abortion and provides adequate conscience protection…another ongoing scandal the bishops have yet to rectify.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtcLlwldLGg&feature=relmfu
I wish our bishops had the courage of the early Bishops like Sts. Athanasius and John Chrysostom (and many other Early Fathers of the Church) and like the Apostles themselves– speaking boldly regardless of the cost– and so that is what I ask for them in my prayers.
smooth talking and glad handing is not going to save souls– bold preaching does– because bold preaching makes clear the choice so that the people can make an educated decision for or against obedience to the call of Christ. When the Bishops fear giving people a clear choice it says they fear the results such as people using their free will to decide to obey Christ or reject Him.
Come Holy Spirit…….
The instant I read this post certain things sprung to mind but the first comment by KAS captured my thoughts.
Fr. Frank’s observations about the Neville Chamberlain approach to evil are probably right and we all know how that approach ends up. Silence and appeasement will not stop the encroachment by the state upon Holy Mother Church. In fact, the whole post Vatican II “dialogue with the world” which in effect has been a capitulation to the world is exactly what has brought us to this point.
Thank God we have the Holy Ghost. I can’t remember the name of the Cardinal who posited that if the Church were not Divine, the Council would have buried Her.
I concur with KAS. If after private consultation with Mrs. Pelosi it is clear that she is obstinate in her views and will not recant, the Bishop should publicly declare Mrs. Pelosi a heretic and excommunicate her.
But since I am not a Bishop all I can do is pray for her conversion and for her Bishop’s strength.
There should be no doubt that the Priest is the most important man on earth and his vocation should be supported with all vigor and prayer by us faithful.
At least Richard Rich had the courage to apostatize openly.
St. Ambrose of Milan, pray for us.
I think she should retire from politics and go into acting. Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard would be a good role for her.
Frankly Pelosi is about a good a Catholic as was Henry VIII. Why is this woman still receiving Communion? Something went haywire in the formation of her conscience.
Fr. Thompson makes an excellent point above. Pelosi isn’t in congress because the bishops
put her there, she’s there because she was voted in by folks who think she’s doing a great job.
If the Catholic laity of her district had properly formed consciences, she probably couldn’t
get elected dogcatcher.
That said, it’s been about forty years since Roe v. Wade was decided. You’d think that in those
forty years our bishops would have come up with a coherent, well-articulated and unified
response to pro-abortion politicians who claim to be ‘devout, practicing’ Catholics. I’ve read
articles questioning whether correction should come from a bishop of the politician’s home
district or from the bishop of the capitol where a politician works. Surely if our
bishops were serious about addressing this sort of public scandal such issues would have
been resolved decades ago.
“This makes me both sad and angry. Why do people like this insist on calling themselves Catholic when, in reality, they hate the Church?”
And yet she wouldn’t call herself a Democrat if she supported limited government and whatever else the Republicans support. If you are going to be something, be it all the way. Otherwise, you’re just a liar… even if it is just to yourself.
It’s all about Humanae Vitae, which separates the real Catholics from the false. I am in Malta, the so-called Catholic country, and I have met numerous Catholic families since I have been here-less than a week–and, unless there is so sort of physical problem with the populace, I can say this is a contracepting culture. All the families I have met, with moms from 40-75 have one or two children, max. I am very sad about this, but Nancy fits into the paradigm.
The bishops de facto lost their authority 40 years ago when they failed to use it at a time when it would have had an effect, on lay voters and on Catholic politicians. They possess it de jure as they always have but they do not have it de facto in the eyes of enough “Catholics” to make exercising it efficacious.
Nancy Pelosi would just looooooovvvvvvvvvveeeeee to have her bishop excommunicate her. The market share of the political pie she belongs to would treat her excommunication as a badge of honor. In their eyes, the bishops are just another block of political actors who don’t really speak for the Church because they are old fogeys, behind the times. The “true church,” in the eyes of these folks, is the vanguard of the laity, the progressives who see the grand future. The bishops haven’t caught up with the future yet. Eventually they will and then they’ll see that the Nancy Pelosi’s were true prophets and martyrs, persecuted by slow-witted, traditional-fossilized white male official Churchdom.
We are at the stage in the Protestant Reformation of about 1530-1535, where the dissenters were set enough in their ways, convinced enough that they were the true Catholics, that pronouncements from pope or emperor no longer really fazed them. They had, to their own satisfaction, persuaded themselves that the “institutional papal church” was apostate
and the future of Catholic faith rested with them.
Those to whom her excommunication would make a difference already know that she’s not a faithful Catholic. The rest are Catholics in name only who will see the bishops as the bad guys in all of this.
Having said that, I think she should be excommunicated as soon as possible, even if initially it will be non-effective or even bring blow-back.
They cannot regain de facto authority without exercising it decisively. It will take a generation to regain it even after it’s been exercised decisively. That decade will be filled with persecution. They’ll eventually regain it among those Catholics who believe strongly enough to enter the persecution with the bishops. The CINOs will simply drift away, following the Pied Piper Pelosis.
So, yes, I think she should be excommunicated, tout de suite. But I have no illusions about what will follow. The bishops will become the villains in the mainstream media. Pelosi will be totally unfazed by it, indeed, will use it to raise money, wear it as a badge of honor.
Are you all prepared for that? If so, then join the chorus urging excommunication. And pray as hard as you can that I’m proved to be a poor forecaster, that she is converted by being excommunicated. I’d rather be wrong about this. But I fear I may be right.
Dennis Martin is right. People like Nancy Pelosi would not be fazed by being excommunicated. They have already set themselves up as the “real” Catholics — and the ones who are recognized as “real” Catholics by their fellow government types (Democratic AND Republican). The folks in charge are all pretty much the same sort of people and hold the same view that religion can be an asset as long as it’s used as sort of an accessory, one that displays your personal taste but doesn’t have a different function than anyone else’s religion. It is in poor but barely acceptable taste to say that your religion causes you to believe something that all the right people also believe; it is in terrible taste to say that your religion (and by implication, other people’s religions) makes you believe something that all the right people agree on is WRONG. It seems to me that Catholics of this stripe are already doing their best to split the church in two, and they are waiting for someone else to do it for them officially so that they can be the blameless victims abandoned by their priests and bishops.
“I am very sad about this, but Nancy fits into the paradigm.”
Actually, Pelosi had 5 children in 6 years — a fact she sometimes trots out in what I’m guessing is either an attempt to gain Catholic/pro-life street cred (how could she possibly hate babies if she had so many of them?), or a subtle jab at those (allegedly) patriarchal, oppressive celibate men who wanted to keep women like her barefoot and pregnant.
If you think about it, Pelosi once had the potential to be a very powerful pro-life figure, but something went wrong along the way and there seems to be little that can be done about it now.
I do think that while public excommunication for her would be justified, the fact remains that it has the potential to backfire bigtime. For one thing it would probably make her MORE likely to get reelected since she could portray herself as a martyr and the Church as a bunch of old men sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong.
I want to be clear about what I mean by persecution. It will be insidiously nuanced. The tax code is so complex, other government regulations likewise (in Chicago you need a building permit just to change the washers in your faucets), that selective prosecution can go a long way to intimidate people on the fence. Bishops who go along to get along will remain untouched, stalwart defenders of the faith will be hit with nuisance lawsuits and prosecutions. We’ve seen this tactic used against Sarah Palin in Alaska. It’s routinely used by gays against businesses who stand up for marriage. It can be used in all sorts of ways against bishops and against lay Catholics who make too big a ruckus. How much this is the case with Bishop Finn, I don’t know.
And then there are simply the false allegations that don’t cost the persecutor even as much as actual litigation or prosecution. Just make the allegation and, in an environment where the Catholic Church stands alone on divorce and contraception, where even Protestant Evangelical collaborators against abortion may harbor latent suspicion of Catholics or at the very least, just don’t “get it” in regard to contraception lying at the heart of everything else (the same-sex revolution, divorce, fatherless children that result from divorce–all of these arise from the shift to widespread contraception in the early 1960s),
in that setting, all it takes is a false allegation to intimidate and bankrupt. And the allegers more often than not will be lapsed Catholics or dissenting Catholics of one stripe or another.
The persecutors/prosecutors will, in fact, appeals precisely to the dissenting “Spirit of Vatican II Catholic ” clergy and intellectuals and their books and articles to say the the unwitting and ignorant general public, “See, we aren ‘t going after the Catholic Church at all, no sirree Bob, we’re only going after those hidebound, authoritarian, eeeeeeeevvvvvvvvviiiiiiiilllllllllll stick–in-the-mud pseudo-Catholics who refuse to update to the obviously superior modern way of thinking and doing things. They have only themselves to blame. They chose to be anti-modern, backward-looking authoritarian goons. They are only getting what they deserve. ” And unjustly excommunicated Nancy Pelosi will serve as poster-child for “devout Catholicism” (that’s the way secular media see her–five children as proof) over against the eeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiillllllllllll Panzer-Pope and bishops.
Are we prepared for this?
She’s a heretic. Just like so many catholics, in politics, and elsewhere; heck, you might be sitting down with them for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner (or should I change that last to ” THE HOLIDAY”.
The bishops/cardinals have been useless for many years now; good livin’ will do that for ya.
She is one scary human being and makes all women look bad. My guess is she’s postabortive herself if she hasn’t already said that she is. It’s now a cliche – but abortion is not healthcare. My baby “died on the floor” along with pieces of me that I will never have back.
By paradigm, I was not referring to her number of children, and that was a mistake in syntax, but her obvious rejection of the Pro-Life message of Humanae Vitae. As long as Catholics chose to support the Democratic Party, which is dedicated to abortion and contraceptives (lgtb, as you can see on the website), we shall never get beyond this hypocrisy.
I wonder if she would have the audacity to give these same two commentaries with her Bishop standing next to her. Could she look him in the eye and exclaim many of those same statements and claim to be an ardent, practising Catholic ? Her Bishop is not there so it appears “out of sight, out of mind” comes into play here. If she cares for here soul she would immediately remove herself from the discussion.
“Are we prepared for this?” made me think of Gesthemane.
Publicly excommunicate the high profile, obstinate heretic as an attempt to shock her into sanity and even more importantly to stop scandalizing the faithful who watch this woman teaching her heresy and remain just fine and dandy with her Bishop.
The USCCB, her bishop, Biden’s bishop, Kerry’s bishop must take a public stand!!! Our Catholic children don’t know what to believe anymore and that responsibity is on the bishops! The USCCB appears to be so involved in ‘Social Justice’ & the funding for the CCHD and not offending the Democratic Party… that abortion, euthanasia and the ‘gay’ life-style are on a distant back burner. This woman’s soul (& other pro-abort politicians) is in danger…. or isn’t that important to her bishop?
Pelosi was rebuked twice by her bishop, in 2008 and 2010. Biden has been rebuked by two bishops, see below. If one wants an excommunication, she and he have done it to themselves. But, Pelosi and Biden, et al, should not be given Holy Communion, as I know they are in a Catholic Church in Washington on a regular basis.The problem is not their personal bishops, but the bishop of Washington, D.C. A friend of mine’s daughter was very recently a Congressional Page and a Catholic, and has been scandalized by the reception of Communion by those mentioned and other pro-abortion Catholics.
http://www.sfarchdiocese.org/about-us/archbishop/archbishops-column/ArchbishopColumn/Archbishops-Journal-Free-Will-Conscience-and-Moral-Choice-What-Catholics-believe-1975/
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/unrepentant_veep_gets_communion/
~ Banging-head against wall ~
…At least she has had five babies, which is a lot more than most men and women are willing to allow, traditional and non-traditional alike.
With that said, since she is a she, and still an icon of the Blessed Mother, however mangled and mothbitten the old hairshirt is, I will say nothing else.
I, too, am a sinner.
Would anyone like to join me in a perpetual Novena: The Divine Mercy Chaplet every day until our Bishops are granted the grace to use the mercy of their office to strengthen their flock?
Chris Garton-Zavesky, That is an excellent proposal and I will join you.
As to Cong. Pelosi and others who favor increased death pre-infancy, there is no convincing reason in this country and in this time for why we should be forced to pit children against mothers. It is not the mothers or the children, either or. Both count. Both do matter. The idea that the children’s lives lost must be considered by our government as unimportant, insignificant or nothing is incomprehensible to any woman.
Captain Peabody, in his comment above, invoked the aid of St. Ambrose of Milan.
An interesting story about St. Ambrose: in 390 AD a village in Thessalonica revolted against
Roman rule and several officers were slain. The emperor Theodosius ordered reprisals, and
during a festival in the town’s ampitheatre Roman soldiers sealed the exits and slaughtered
over 7000 people inside. News of the massacre soon reached Milan, where the emperor was
residing. The next time Theodosius attempted to enter Milan’s cathedral to attend Mass,
St. Ambrose publicly barred him, and forbade him to enter any church until he had made a
public penance for his scandalous sin. Mind you, this was a rebuke to a ruler who clearly
saw murdering 7000 people as a valid political option, so the bishop’s own physical safety
was very much in doubt when he crossed the emperor. As it was, Theodosius accepted the
bishop’s judgement and publicly did penance.
St. Ambrose of Milan– now there was a bishop who knew what it takes to address public scandal!
In the first clip, could she have been any less clear about what she was talking about? So many changes of direction and euphemism hunting that it was not really factually stated what she was getting at? (And it probably doesn’t come as a surprise!) At least that is my impression from that video.
So many of you also commented that she (and pro-abortion people in general) do not care about the babies who are torn apart in the womb or born alive after the “healthcare” is applied, and then left to die.
And our country has made this murder “legal” and continues to fight to keep it so, and those who are fighting for it try to call it “compassion” – may God have mercy on us all!
Chris, count me in too.
Pelosi’s little speech is a bunch of waffle.
Permission to rant?
Okay, first she is talking about ‘Clear Facts’, when she only reconizes the unborn child as a ‘blob of tissue’. but if you look in a medical book about prenatal development, you will clearly see that s/he is a Human Person! the unborn child has ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, a heart, and recordable brain waves! if you go ahead and pretend that’s not true, then you’re not getting the ‘Clear Facts’.
Second, she talks about ‘Women dying on the floor’, (why would a woman be lying on the hospital floor in the first place, anyway?). Yes, Pregnancies can be fatal for the mother, but abortion is way more dangerous than pregnancy. and when she talks about ‘doctors and nurses standing there and doing nothing to save [the woman]’s life’, don’t pretend that dosen’t happen in abortion clinics.
if a woman is injured during the procedure, then sometimes the doctor will not call an ambulance, rather, he’ll drive her in his own car, or send her home, anything so the clinic dosen’t get blamed.
Abortion is fatal in so many ways. for the woman and her child.
let’s start a novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe for a banishment of abortion from the world.
Nancy Pelosi is always and everywhere a direct temptation to uncharitableness for me.
@skjensen,
I suspect that a variant of the 1940 insight of Robert Heinlein
applies to Rep. Pelosi. This is to say that she is not likely possessed, but rather that she is self-servingly mendacious. She probably started out being only very slightly mendacious, but gradually, over the years and re-election campaigns she found it increasingly easy to simply be a little more mendacious each time.
All sins, mendacity included, are like that. One’s soul grows increasingly “calloused” from the repetition of a sin until arriving at the state where one no longer even recognizes it as a sin. It is quite evident from the ease, nay vigor, with which she repeats the sin and the denial of truth, that she no longer recognizes that she is engaging in mendacity. She has arrived at the state of being able successfully to lie to herself, not just to others. Why should it be necessary to postulate that she is possessed when ordinary mendacity much overused, for far too many years, is capable of explaining the observed phenomena?
Pax et bonum,
Keith Töpfer
Excommunication, done in appropriate circumstance, is the utmost act of charity.
And, I don’t care how much of a broken record we have to sound like, or how obvious it is, but
ABORTION IS NOT HEALTHCARE. DEAD BABIES ARE NOT HEALTHY.
WAKE UP, you who are supposed to keep watch over the sheep. PLEASE!