 |
| Pelosi and DeLauro |
The Catholic Church throughout the world is the body of the
faithful led by a faithful clergy. The satanic priests who sexually corrupted
young people, it should be noted, were not by any stretch of the imagination
faithful Catholics. The words “faithful” and “led” in the above definition are
necessary and decisive, for not everyone baptized a Catholic is faithful to the
teachings of the Church.
A masterful politician, Cardinal Richelieu of France was
also a faithful servant of the French court. When the Cardinal died, Pope Urban
VIII was asked for his assessment of Richelieu. He said, “If there is no God,
Richelieu will have lived a good life. And if there is a God, he will have much
to answer for.”
Richelieu, known during his day as “The Red Eminence”, was
consecrated as a bishop in 1607 and appointed Foreign Secretary in 1616. He
became a Cardinal in 1622 and Chief Minister to King Louis XIII of France in
1624, retaining office until his death in 1642.
Richelieu did not have a John F. Kennedy problem and was
able successfully to serve as both a servant of France and a servant of his God
and Church.
The French Revolution that put between the Church in France
and its new government a sword of sundering lay very much in the future. This
sword was a very bloody blade. During the revolution, the Catholic Church in
France was uprooted.
The French revolutionists established in France Le Culte de
la Raison, The Cult of Reason, based on the principles of the Enlightenment,
the first state-sponsored atheistic religion, and a roiling anti-clericalism.
Enlightenment scholars were not, shall we say, friendly to the body of the
faithful or its clergy.
“Every sensible man, every honorable man,” Voltaire wrote,
“must hold the Christian religion in horror.” Diderot was convinced that “Man will never be free until the
last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
The atheism of the French revolutionists was certainly
broadminded. The destruction in France of Christianity and religion in general,
not merely Catholicism, followed passage of La Constitution Civile
du Clergé, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, a 1790 law that resulted
in the immediate subordination of religious institutions in the country to the
French government.
Mass murderers generally do not keep precise figures in
their desk drawers, but the University of Chicago Encyclopedia Britannica puts
the number of detainees during a long reign of terror at more than 200,000.
Most never stood trial, although they languished in disease infested prisons
where 10,000 perished. Military and revolutionary tribunals gave death
sentences to another 17,000.
The United States avoided the extirpation of religion that
had occurred in France through a Bill of Rights that protected religious people
under the jurisdiction of state and national government. The First Amendment
prohibited the national government from establishing a national church, as was
the case in France and England. At the same time, it assured the broadest possible
liberty of religion by preventing the national government from
prohibiting its free exercise.
Both Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and her
good friend, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, support the repeal of the Hyde Amendment,
which prevent dollars taken in taxes from faithful Catholics from ending up in
the hands of abortionists.
“As a devout
Catholic and mother of five in six years,” Pelosi asserted in supporting the
repeal of the Hyde Amendment, “I feel that God blessed my husband and me with
our beautiful family–five children in six years, almost to the day. But it's
not up to me to dictate that that's what other people should do. And it's an
issue of fairness and justice for poor women in our country.”
Neither Pelosi nor DeLauro are Cardinal Richelieu or Pope
Urban VIII. Following Pelosi’s declaration that she is, despite approving of
extreme late term abortion, a devout Catholic, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone
of San Francisco, Pelosi’s home diocese, issued the following statement: “Let me
repeat: no one can claim to be a devout Catholic and condone the killing of
innocent human life, let alone have the government pay for it. The right to
life is a fundamental—the most fundamental—human right, and Catholics do not
oppose fundamental human rights.”
Bishop Cordileone’s reference to “the most fundamental human
right” harkens back to Thomas Jefferson’s words in the
Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Jefferson, a
minister to France who left the country before atheists in France began sending
priests and nuns to the guillotine, knew whereof he spoke.
But Pelosi and
DeLauro are, neither of them, Thomas Jefferson.
They are post-modern politicians wending their way through
polls and the latest enlightened editorial of the New York Times and a thicket
of special interest groups, among them Planned Parenthood, which stands to gain
financially through the repeal of the Hyde Amendment.
Both Pelosi and
DeLauro are professional politicians, each of whom has held office for more
than 30 years. But who would have thought, even 30 years ago, that post-modern
politics would make Catholics long for the wit and wisdom of Pope Urban VIII or
the political acuity of Richelieu and Jefferson?
Comments