Skip to main content

Pope Pelosi on Abortion

The entertaining Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is not yet running for Pope, but this has not prevent her from correcting Catholic theologians when they fall short of modern perceptions.

Most of the Catholic Church, minus Mrs. Pelosi, is unhappy with the slaughter of the innocents that has occurred in the Unites States since the US Supreme Court, in various opinions, struck down state laws forbidding abortion.

The Catholic Church’s doctrine on abortion began to take form in the first century. To be sure, doctrine, as Cardinal Henry Newman insists (see "On The Development of Christian Doctrine"), does admit of development; which is to say, the doctrine, as it encounters different obstacles in its course through history, does change somewhat to meet new contingencies.

But there is a world of difference between development and categorical change. During the birth cycle, developmental changes occur in the fetus, but there is no radical change – in the absence of an abortion – such that the human being that is the end product in the process changes, shall we say, into a fish or a head of lettuce.

Well, Christian doctrine is a little bit like that.

The Catholic Church did not started out with a rather firm prohibition in the first century on abortion only to end, in the 21st century, with a doctrine that repeals its first perception that abortion and infanticide, practiced by the Roman paterfamilias -- usually on unwanted female children -- are violations against the dignity of the human person.

Mrs. Pelosi, who is a Catholic, was questioned on the matter of her church’s opposition to abortion by Tom Brokaw in an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. In the course of the interrogatory, she said that “doctors of the church” have not been able to define when life begins and that "over the history of the church, this is an issue of controversy."

When Brocaw pointed out that the Catholic Church “at the moment, feels very strongly it begins at the point of conception,” Pelosi said, “I understand that. And this is like in 50 years or something like that,” implying that the Catholic Church’s present view is of recent origin.

The Catholic Church did not start out with a rather firm prohibition in the first century on abortion only to end, in the 21st century, with a doctrine that repeals its first perception that abortion and infanticide, practiced by the Roman paterfamilias -- usually on unwanted female children -- are violations against the dignity of the human person.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver and his auxiliary bishop, James Conley, rose to correct the Speaker.

“Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is a gifted public servant of strong convictions and many professional skills,” both said in a statement. “Regrettably, knowledge of Catholic history and teaching does not seem to be one of them.” Abortion, they affirmed, “is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions employed to justify it.”

The archbishop also wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press that Democratic vice presidential nominee-in-waiting Sen. Joseph Biden, like Mrs. Pelosi a Catholic, should refrain from receiving Communion because of his abortion stance.

NARAL has given Mrs Pelosi a perfect 100% score on her positions on abortion. The group has not rated the Pope. But, as many pro-abortionists will readily admit, neither the Pope nor Jesus -- "Suffer the children to come unto me" -- have many battalions in this contest, which is why, according to an exhaustive surveillance survey done by the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in 2003, about one in five pregnancies end in abortion.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Powell, the JI, And Economic literacy

Powell, Pesci Substack The Journal Inquirer (JI), one of the last independent newspapers in Connecticut, is now a part of the Hearst Media chain. Hearst has been growing by leaps and bounds in the state during the last decade. At the same time, many newspapers in Connecticut have shrunk in size, the result, some people seem to think, of ad revenue smaller newspapers have lost to internet sites and a declining newspaper reading public. Surviving papers are now seeking to recover the lost revenue by erecting “pay walls.” Like most besieged businesses, newspapers also are attempting to recoup lost revenue through staff reductions, reductions in the size of the product – both candy bars and newspapers are much smaller than they had been in the past – and sell-offs to larger chains that operate according to the social Darwinian principles of monopolistic “red in tooth and claw” giant corporations. The first principle of the successful mega-firm is: Buy out your predator before he swallows

Down The Rabbit Hole, A Book Review

Down the Rabbit Hole How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime by Brent McCall & Michael Liebowitz Available at Amazon Price: $12.95/softcover, 337 pages   “ Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime ,” a penological eye-opener, is written by two Connecticut prisoners, Brent McCall and Michael Liebowitz. Their book is an analytical work, not merely a page-turner prison drama, and it provides serious answers to the question: Why is reoffending a more likely outcome than rehabilitation in the wake of a prison sentence? The multiple answers to this central question are not at all obvious. Before picking up the book, the reader would be well advised to shed his preconceptions and also slough off the highly misleading claims of prison officials concerning the efficacy of programs developed by dusty old experts who have never had an honest discussion with a real convict. Some of the experts are more convincing cons than the cons, p