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Pelosi and Pretend Catholics

During her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill earlier today, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had the following exchange with an unidentified reporter:

Q: “Is an unborn baby with a human heart and a human liver a human being?”

Pelosi: “Why don’t you take your ideological questions…I don’t…”

Q: “If it’s not a human being, what species is it?”

Pelosi: “Listen, I’m going to say something to you. I don’t know who you are and you are welcome to be here in freedom of this press. I am a devout, practicing Catholic. I’m a mother of five children. When my baby was born, my fifth child, my oldest was six. I think I know more about this subject than you, with all due respect.

Source: Washington Post

Ofcourse this isn’t the first time that Ms. Pelosi has attempted to defend her untenable and unconscionable positions by invoking her Catholic faith.

Most interesting, however, is that this comes just days after the Holy Father’s inflight press conference following his visit to the U.S. In response to a question about Ignazio Marino, the leftist mayor of Rome who supports euthanasia and gay marriage, and who showed up uninvited to the World Meeting of Families, Pope Francis is reported by Agence France-Presse to have said:

“He pretends to be Catholic, it came on him all of a sudden…It doesn’t happen like that.”

“I didn’t invite the mayor. Is that clear?”

While the Vatican does not always weigh in on local politicians, it is important to remember that the Pope is also the Bishop of Rome.

Just last week during his papal visit, Francis had urged American bishops to avoid “harsh and divisive” language, saying it does not befit the tongue of a pastor. With his strong rebuke of Mayor Marino of Rome, however, the Holy Father has shown that public figures, particularly those entrusted with authority, can be held to a higher standard.

Unfortunately, we should not expect the same treatment for Ms. Pelosi and other congressional Catholics who for years have persisted in their public support for abortion. One could only hope that Cardinal Wuerl, like Pope Francis, would ask these “pro-choice” politicians in Washington to stop pretending to be Catholic.

8 thoughts on “Pelosi and Pretend Catholics”

  1. I’ve never before been one to defend Ms. Pelosi, but she immediately jumped to her motherly experience of birthing 5 children in 6 years. We can all do a better job of applauding this sort of heroic parenting (and there are many parents who go far beyond 5) and perhaps if she had received more support from her parish and priests, more praise for 5 and encouragement to continue (if legitimately possible and if God permitted) we’d have a very different Nancy Pelosi.

    Again, I don’t want to speculate too much on the intimate details (if someone knows more from a biography or something please say so) but certainly we can say in general that there are too many priests who don’t care to support and encourage parishioners to be open to life because quite frankly they don’t think it’s necessary for sanctity and salvation. Folks hit 5 and burn out without a strong network and a holy priest offering Mass for them (and prayers and whatever else support may be needed).

    This is no defense of her positions in any way shape or form but just a reminder that the Church has not always met the ideal in past decades and that we’d do well to do what we can to not create more Nancy Pelosis in the future even as we call for her repentance today.

    Update: Mr Williams you have 5! I didn’t realize that until I finished writing. My use of “5 kids” is not directed towards you good sir. God bless you and your family.

    Reply
    • We all have free will, I get tired of people trying to find some possible reason why we commit sin. Or as many other leaders in the Church today, who put the onus on faithful Catholic as not being welcoming enough towards others. It is not the fault of the Church or faithful Catholics for our own personal choices which lead to our sin. When we take full responsibility for our sinful ways, we are finally on the path of repentance which is required by Jesus Christ.

      Reply
  2. This the most convaluted and disjointed article I’ve read in a while. The sifting of the Pope’s words to try and find something Catholic in them is getting old. Francis clearly missed the opportunity to uphold Church teaching on abortion during his U.S. visit and therefore by his silence has encouraged and perpetuated the lie that the pro-abort politicians live in thinking that they are devout, practicing Cathoilics. I’m afraid Mr. Williams is grasping at straws, at this point. I’ve come to expect more from this blog.

    Reply
  3. “Look! A tree!” “Um, didn’t you notice that we’re in a forest?”

    Just like the papal toe-kissers cling fiercely to the tale that Francis was a terrific opponent of Liberation Theology back in Argentina, they wave around this momentary manhandling of Mayor Marino as proof of his “orthodox” bona fides. In both cases, he’s doing the right thing for the wrong reason, and it’s the same reason in both cases. All Francis cares about is showing that he’s in charge. Liberation Theology was an affront to HIS authority to run the show on his own turf, so he opposed it, not because he cared in the least about its obnoxious Marxist tenets. Similarly, Marino is upstaging him and running his own game, right in Francis’s front yard! He tells you himself what this is all about: “I didn’t invite the mayor. Is that clear?”

    Reply
  4. So Pope Francis tells the bishops not to be so harsh or divisive. This strategy of keeping silent on sin is not working. It does not convert hearts. We have to be confronted in our sin, which will hopefully lead us to repentance. The greatest evangelizer of all time, St. Paul, could say some harsh thing which may divide us. Plus, “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.” (Matthew 10:34-35) The Douay-Rheims commentary on verse 35 states the following: I came to set a man at variance: Not that this was the end or design of the coming of our Saviour; but that his coming and his doctrine would have this effect, by reason of the obstinate resistance that many would make, and of their persecuting all such as should adhere to him.

    Reply
  5. Imagine this scenario. One of Jorge Bergoglio’s students at a Catholic school in Argentina, Alejandro, comes to live in America. He arrives a good Catholic, but soon falls in with the wrong crowd here. In Va. he meets people from Aryan Nation, the neo-Nazi group that spoils considerably the American political landscape. These racists welcome him — he’s from Argentina, after all, and we all know the checkered history of that land when it comes to old Nazis — and they help him establish himself in his new land. Before long, he joins the Nation and attends its meetings; he even buys one of their uniforms and appears at some of their demonstrations against Blacks and Jews.

    Then one day, his old teacher Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, comes to the Washington, DC area and invites Alejandro to meet with him before he leaves for Italy. The meeting takes place and photographers get a chance to snap pictures of the pope not just with his erstwhile student, but with Alejandro in uniform accompanied by his local commander, also in full Aryan Nation regalia. We see the pope smiling and chatting happily with the two committed racists and, before they part ways, the pope is caught on camera kissing the fellows on the cheek, a Latin custom familiar to all who speak Spanish.

    How likely is the above scenario? You’re probably saying, “Not really likely at all ! The pope would avoid Alejandro for (legitimate) fear of giving serious scandal.” And I agree with you, but it begs a question: Is racism a more serious, more scandalous offence against God than public promotion of sodomy?

    Pope Francis didn’t hesitate to meet in the US with a former student, once a Catholic now a self-proclaimed atheist. The pope didn’t let the fact the young man was accompanied by his publicly acknowledged “partner” in egregious sexual sin stand in the way of the encounter; in fact he fulsomely greeted both men. Nor did he order cameras turned off. There was on the pope’s part simply no hint of worry about giving public scandal.

    Is the subtle message in all this that sodomy is somehow less a sin than racism? Do we now need to interpret the Epistle of Jude in a new way when we read there, ” ‘…just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire’.”

    The Vatican was quick to “correct” any “scandal” given sodomites and their political allies by his encounter with Kim Davis. But the far more serious scandal given a much wider audience by his fulsome welcome for the Argentinian atheist sodomite and his “husband” flew pretty much under the Vatican radar. Perhaps if Ms. Davis had been born in Buenos Aires….

    Reply

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