Denver archbishop slams Pelosi on Church teachings and abortion
I didn’t see this but apparently last Sunday on Meet the Press, Nancy Pelosi tried to portray herself as an amateur theologian and ardent student of the Catholic faith when asked about what the Catholic Church teaches about the beginning of life.
as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is 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. The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose.”
What a moron.
Anyway, Bishop Chaput will have none of it and comes out with a wonderful letter entitled The Separation of Sense and State!
Bishop Chaput has a great sense of sarcasm and wit in his letter and it is a sound and even fun document to read! Here are some of my favorite excepts!
Catholic public leaders inconvenienced by the abortion debate tend to take a hard line in talking about the “separation of Church and state.” But their idea of separation often seems to work one way.
I so love this bishop…
In fact, some officials also seem comfortable in the role of theologian. And that warrants some interest, not as a “political issue, but as a matter of accuracy and justice.
Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi is a gifted public servant of strong convictions and many professional skills. Regrettably, knowledge of Catholic history and teaching does not seem to be one of them.
OK, I first heard this being read by Dennis Prager on his radio show today as I went to go pick up my kids from practice. I was smiling so wide and pumping my fist in the air. Very few times during the year am I so delighted by anything I hear on the radio!
But there’s more! Bishop Chaput goes on!
Since Speaker Pelosi has, in her words, studied the issue “for a long time,” she must know very well one of the premier works on the subject, Jesuit John Connery’s Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Persective (Loyola, 1977). Here’s how Connery concludes his study:
” The Christian tradition from the earliest days reveals a firm antiabortion attitude… the Condemnation of abortion did not depend on and was not limited in any way by theories regarding the time of fetal animation. Even during the many centuries when Church penal and penitential practice was based on the theory of delayed animation, the condemnation of abortion was never affected by it. Whatever one would want to hold about the time of animation, or when the fetus became a human being in the strict sense of the term, abortion from the time of conception was considered wrong, and the time of animation was never looked on as a moral dividing line between permissible and impermissible abortion.”
And then he totally demolishes Pelosi:
Abortion kills an unborn, developing human life. It is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions employed to justify it. Catholics who make excuses for it- whether they’re famous or not – fool only themselves and abuse the fidelity of those Catholics who do sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and live their Catholic faith.
Some of Bishop Chaput’s brother bishops should ask him where he gets his testosterone supplements! The man clearly has the resources and the bravery to defend the faith and lead the faithful in the face of adversity! Well done!
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