House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s photo-op with Pope Benedict XVI turned sour when the Pontiff used the 15-minute meeting to reaffirm the teachings of the Catholic Church on the right to life and the duty to protect the unborn. No photo of Nancy Pelosi and the Pope will be forthcoming, since the meeting was closed to reporters and photographers. The two met in a small room in the Vatican just after the Pope’s weekly public audience…
“His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in co-operation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.”
I wonder what Nancy will be thinking tonight, as she says her prayers and beds down in her Italian B&B, after having been schooled by the Pope himself. I pray that she and her husband Paul rediscover their faith, a faith that reverences human life as the building block of all culture. What a force for good they could be!!
I don’t often get political in this blog for two reasons; 1. I don’t follow politics, and 2. When I do, it seems like endless repetition without any fruition (like Ecclesiastes). But yesterday, a friend pointed out to me a little video clip of Nancy Pelosi, first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives, giving her answer to the question “When does life begin?” (Please take 3 minutes and 23 seconds to view the video clip above).
In watching this clip, I was stunned at the ignorance displayed and at the completely distorted picture of Catholic theology she offered. I actually laughed out loud once, but not a happy laugh. I don’t want to attack this woman, or belittle, or throw sarcastic remarks around like little daggers. She is a daughter of the Father and loved deeply by Jesus. I just need to say that this is NOT what the Catholic Church teaches…. at all….. ever, never, past, present, future.
Nancy, before this interview, you should have skimmed through the Bible (Jeremiah 1:5), the Catechism, and the real Doctors of the Church (not the spin doctors). And you should formerly apologize to St. Augustine too, for misrepresentin’.
Our own Cardinal Rigali (here in Philadelphia) has posted a statement on the US Bishops website, and there are links to other Catholic teachings on the issue of the sanctity of life in the womb.
I pray this is ignorance on Nancy’s part, but her words tell me something else. That she is a tool. Rebecca thinks that Madame Speaker was dragged in and asked to throw her “Catholic” face behind Obama in light of his recent and equally foggy “answer” to the question of life’s origins. He claimed that knowing when human life begins is “above his pay grade.” What does that mean anyway? If someone gives you more money, you’ll give us a more adequate answer?
Madame Speaker claims to be an “ardent, practicing Catholic” in this interview with Tom Brokaw, and she says that this is an issue she has “studied for a long time.”
I can’t believe it.
She said in the interview: “What I know is that over the centuries, the Doctors of the Church have not been able to make that definition…. St. Augustine said at three months… We don’t know.”
“You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child.” – Didache 2:1-2
And let me quote St. Augustine, who by the way, did not have the chance to live in the 21st century, where 4D ultrasound and MRIs have given us an unprecedented window into the womb. He lived 1600 years ago…. they had candles, and sliced bread, and it was really dark when the sun went down. They made the best judgements they could on the mystery of life’s origins (while always defaulting to respect for life and a clear stance that abortion was always a grave evil).
“And therefore the following question may be very carefully inquired into and discussed by learned men, though I do not know whether it is in man’s power to resolve it (now it clearly is, thanks technology!): At what time the infant begins to live in the womb: whether life exists in a latent form before it manifests itself in the motions of the living being. To deny that the young who are cut out limb by limb from the womb, lest if they were left there dead the mother should die too, have never been alive, seems too audacious. – Enchiridion 23.86, St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
Therefore brothers, you see how perverse they are and hastening wickedness, who are immature, they seek abortion of the conception before the birth; they are those who tell us, “I do not see that which you say must be believed.” – Sermon 126
Clearly, Augustine believed it.
Tertullian, aka the Father of the Latin Church (who lived c. 155 – 222 AD), is as clear as crystal on this issue as well:
“In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed” – Apology 9:8, A.D. 197
_________________________________ ADDITION: Please consider taking two minutes to sign in and send a signed petition to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Bioethics Defense Fund website by clicking here. The statement is ready and only needs your click to send a message of LIFE.
From Catholic News Agency, Vatican City
The Heart of Things 