Posted on 02/16/2009 4:59:12 PM PST by TaxachusettsMan
In news from another part of the Roman-American fray, it's been confirmed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will meet Pope Benedict following Wednesday's General Audience as part of her Italian tour: On Monday at noon in Rome, the Vatican’s Press Office confirmed to [Catholic News Agency] that Pope Benedict will be receiving U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in an audience at noon on Wednesday.
Pelosi, a self-proclaimed "ardent Catholic" who has sparked significant criticism from fellow Catholics in the U.S. for her pro-abortion views, arrived in Italy on Sunday for an eight-day official visit.... Although numerous reports have been published either confirming or denying that Pope Benedict would receive Pelosi in an audience, the Holy See’s Press Office confirmed to CNA on Monday at noon Rome time, that the Holy Father will receive the U.S. representative on Wednesday at midday.
The press office made clear that the Pope will meet with Pelosi in his capacity as a head of state since the Speaker of the House is the third in line to lead the U.S., should the president and vice president be unable to do so....
Over this past weekend pro-life activists and bloggers launched verbal salvos against the Vatican because they believe that the Holy See plans to present Nancy Pelosi with an award.
This is definitely not true, the Vatican’s press office told CNA. The idea that Pelosi would be awarded by the Vatican most likely is the result of activists confusing the visit to the Vatican with the Speaker of the House being awarded by a group of Italian legislators for being the first Italian American to reach such a high rank in the U.S. government.
Following August comments on Meet the Press attempting to reconcile her faith with her pro-choice stance, the California Democrat was criticized by a number of Stateside bishops and invited to a "conversation" with her ordinary, Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco.
Your statements remind me of the current attacks by left on the Pope and the Church and the Immorality Trials held by the Nazi's in the 1930s which were intended to undermine the moral authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church. I guess some people can never really get past their own anti-Catholic prejudices.
I know I have posted this several times, but I urge all of the faithful to send some correspondence to the Holy Father. It is my belief that as the pope of the church universal, he cannot and does not know everything that goes on everywhere. I also think that there are many who are not telling him all he needs to know in the curia. There are about 60 million catholics here, out of over 1 BILLION catholics worldwide. They get much of their money from the US, so if something is going to cause a stir here, the Pope may not be in the loop as much as we would hope. Remember, about 1/3 of the clergy is corrupt, or so it is assumed. Take the time to write his holiness, let him know. Anyone who want to use my letter to save time has my permission and thanks for taking the time to send our holy father a message. If writing your own, please remember who he is, and like when we write our politicians, bashing, hating, cursing won’t make us look good. Thank you!
Holy Father,
I am writing from the United States about a very serious issue. My heart is breaking for the unborn. We now have a president that believes a baby is punishment, yet he feels it is above his paygrade to know when life begins. Catholic teaching has not been what it should be in the last 50 years. We have a huge amount of nominal Catholics in the US, and they will only vote based on their feelings about issues, not fundamental truths.
In part, this is because of our many “catholic” politicians who are able to straddle both sides of the fence. They claim to be practicing Catholics, but they hold beliefs and condone and support practices that are completely incompatible with Catholic teaching. They then can go to Mass, receive communion, and claim the Church has not truly defined the issue on abortion, gay marriage, etc. This is patently false. They are lying and getting away with it. They claim because there has been no ex cathedra statement on abortion, there is still discussion about it.
We are unfortunately a very letter of the law people. While this is good when just laws are made and followed, it is also a loophole that politicians play with to pander for votes. Abortion is one of those rules. Coupled with a poorly catechised populace in the US, our legislators are able to straddle the abortion issue to garner votes, and yet still publically practice their faith. They have been able to do this without interference from the Holy See for far too long now.
While many bishops have begun to speak up against this issue, nothing would give them the support in the fight they need like a defined Papal pronouncement from the Chair of Peter. Seeing as this issue is definative already, it would clarify to millions of Catholics that it is binding on the Church Universal that abortion IS murder, it IS an excommunicable offense, and would publically call out our politicians like the Kennedy family, Joe Biden, our new Vice President, and Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, who has publically challenged the Church on its stand on abortion against her own bishop, who pander to nominal Catholics for votes by confusing them on this issue.
I beg you Holy Father, please crush the head of this snake. The devil has a great foothold in this area in the United States. The bishops are impotent against it because the majority stood silent for so long. Now they are doing much more, but their voices go unheeded until Our Holy Father declares the matter settled and binding on the whole Church.
Nancy Pelosi is travelling to Rome this week. It is said she is having a meeting with you. I pray that this is to inform her that this pronouncement is coming from you, so she had better prepare herself based on this. Money, power, tax exemptions for Churches should not be allowed to influence a decision on faith and morals, and we will stand with you and fight to the death under the banner of Christ. Please Holy Father, I implore you, declare this holocaust against the unborn, embryonic stem cell research, birth control, and human cloning as a matter binding on the whole Church. Christ will hold us accountable for this blood, not political wrangling. 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust is 6 million too many. The outcry for the recent events , while legitimate, just points to the fact that so many people are so woefully uneducated about a holocaust that has taken 9 times the lives of innocents over the last 30 years!
May God and the blood of the innocents be your only guide on your decision.
Email too: benedictxvi@vatican.va
Works for me.
Hardly. If it was not for the Church and the Pope in 1683 AD who made a pact with King Jan Sobeiski of Polad - Europe and probably America would be Islamic.
The current Pope understands the threat of Islam. The Church is one of the last bulwarks against Europe becoming a caliphate. I think the American Catholic Church stiunks in it’s support of ACORN, illegal aliens and failure to detect homosexual priests who infaltrated the church. Too many liberal bishops undermining the good people.
Pelosi is still a horrible woman. I have oither issues with 78% of American (liberal) Jews whoo voted for Hussein and sold Israel out. I do not like phony pastor Rick Warren or the prosperity evanghelicals or the real liberal Prostestants denominations that are headed toward oblivion.
Walk the walk. Meeting with baby killer Pelosi is not walking the walk. The woman is pure evil. She, O and Hairy Reid are on the Saudis payroll.
Well, I’m a Catholic too, and if the Pope soft-pedals his comments about Pelosi after meeting with her, I too will be greatly disappointed. Virtually NO ONE on the conservative side anywhere has the guts to stand up anymore. Virtually no one.
One big reason...follow the money.
You two are mental eunuchs.
Thank you. I thought there were rules against insulting people here.
The pope will do nothing. Didn’t he just void the excommunication of the Bishop who was a holocaust denier?
He could have made a huge statement there but he didn’t.
A lightning strike or falling construction debris would be ... symbolic.
Did I say that?
I’m Catholic. There’s only one right thing for the Holy Father to do here. I think he will. I’d be amazed and horrified if he didn’t.
You wrote:
“ANY photo-op that is NOT accompanied by news that the Pope has told her in no uncertain terms how scandalous her public support for the crime of abortion is will be deeply disappointing to faithful, pro-life Catholics,...”
Prepare to be disappointed. I think the pope will tell her behind closed doors, and we might hear little or nothing about it. Personally, part of me thinks he should just slap her right there in front of the cameras. Some how I don’t think that’s what will happen, however.
Oh, Benedict is a saintly pope, but sometimes I think I would take a less saintly Julius II just to get the idea across!
Renaissance guilty pleasure: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/lansing/classes/hist4b/materials/Week7.pdf
You wrote:
“The pope will do nothing. Didn’t he just void the excommunication of the Bishop who was a holocaust denier?”
Get serious! He lifted the excommunication to HELP the bishop’s thousands of followers not to reward the bishop.
“He could have made a huge statement there but he didn’t.”
Yeah, actually he did: 1) that he was willing to do the right thing even though ignorant people who know nothing about the case will pile on him anyway, 2) he used the ensuing controversy to condemn anti-semitism and holocaust denial.
Well said. I am pretty sure that the Papal suite of armor is still in the vatican, somewhere.
I expect her egoness to make a press release, good meeting, yada, yada...
And the Pope will wait a few days, and make some mention of the evils of abortion.
And we will never know what he said to her, really.
Although the idea of her melting when the Pope sprinkles her with Holy Water is sort of funny...
Isn’t she already excommunicated? That’s the drift I get on FR...
example:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2088484/posts
I well remember John Paul II lecturing (rudely, i thought) President Bush during his visit to Rome, during which visit the President awarded the Pope our Medal of Freedom, regarding the Iraq War. About that matter, a war and whether it meets the criteria for a just war, there can be legitimate disagreement. And the Pope had met with the Chaldean Catholic henchman of Saddam, Tariq Azziz, in the company of disgraced Melkite Archbishop and PLO gun-runner Hilarion Cappucci.
About abortion, however, there is NO room for compromise.
I can’t bring myself to believe that, just because the majority of US bishops are liberal Democrats, the Pope would refuse or even hesitate to be as directly confrontational with Pelosi about abortion as JP II was with Bush about the war.
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