Catholic Bishop: Speaker Nancy Pelosi Can't be Catholic and Pro-Abortion

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A Catholic bishop in Oregon has written an article in the church's newspaper saying that anyone who wants to remain faithful to Catholic Church teaching can't justify having a pro-abortion view. The newspaper article doesn't mention her specifically but is an indirect commentary on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Bishop Robert Vasa of the Baker, Oregon diocese, says a person can't call himself a Catholic and believe that there should be a choice to destroy human life via abortion.

“The direct, intentional taking of the life of an innocent human being is inhumane and unjust. It is not just a choice,” the bishop wrote in the March 1 edition of the Catholic Sentinel.

In his article, Bishop Vasa discussed an interview Pelosi, the nation's leading Democratic elected official, gave to Newsweek magazine in November 2006.

but this in no way means that the hundreds of Catholic bishops in the U.S. are for illegal immigration.

Not true - the USCCB (Conference of Catholic Bishops) and many of the local CCs (like the Maryland Conference) have come out wholeheartedly in support of illegal immigrants and violently opposing any attempt to stop them. Last Sunday in most dioceses the scheduled sermon topic was changed by these bishops to address instead the need to approve and cater to the illegal aliens.

But "chumming it up" at some event by itself doesn't mean they agree with those politicians.

Sorry, but when you glad hand people who are publicly working against the canons you are enforcing on your flock you are not socializing, you are scandalizing. It doesn't matter if you disagree with them. By socializing with them you are sending out the message that these people, and what they advocate, are OK, even if they advocate what Catholic theology would consider mortal sins.

You are in greater danger of being excommunicated if you are an average Catholic who goes to an old rite Latin Mass than if you are Ted Kennedy advocating partial birth abortion, drive-by drownings, and multiple marriages. You probably couldn't get an appointment with your bishop, but Teddy and John Kerry will be joking with him at the St Patricks Day banquet and receiving communion from him the next Sunday.

Pelosi, Kennedy and Kerry are Catholics.
I don't know if Giuliani professes to be one or not.

Some Catholics, including some bishops, think that they shouldn't be, because these folks don't follow various and sundry Church teachings, just like some folks thought that Bill Clinton ought not to have been President because he didn't follow various and sundry laws.

But Clinton was sworn into the office, and he WAS President unless removed. The Senate didn't remove him so he was President, and what he did reflected on his party and on the USA as a whole.

And Pelosi, Kennedy and Kerry were baptized and confirmed, and they remain Catholics until and unless excommunicated. They have not been excommunicated, so when they say "Catholics can believe this..." and "Catholics can believe that...", although there are Catholics who vehemently disagree, the complete lack of any disciplinary action against them whatever by the actual authorities of the Catholic Church are proof that, in fact, Catholics CAN believe and profess those things Pelosi, Kennedy and Kerry believe and profess.

It's not really debatable.
Until the Church excommunicates these people, which is quite unlikely, the Church is saying that their stance is in fact within the Catholic fold, disfavored though it may be.

Likewise, Clinton demonstrated that sexual harrassment and lying under oath are, in fact, within his prerogative as President. He did it, he was called to task for it, he did not repent, and he was not removed from office. Ergo, Presidents CAN in fact do those things, so long as at least 34 Senators are in their camp.

"Should" is a different thing. A mere opinion, really.

It’s an open question in magisterial circles whether politicians who vote for legal abortion, support public funding for abortion, and/or otherwise help make abortion available, should be considered “accomplices” and hence excommunicated. Johnstone said that most moral theologians believe such votes may be morally wrong, but they do not constitute sufficiently direct involvement in an individual abortion to trigger excommunication.

Bishop Elio Sgreccia, vice president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and a frequent Vatican spokesman on bioethics, nevertheless told NCR in a mid-October interview that it is his “personal opinion” that politicians who support permissive abortion laws are subject to the canonical penalties for accomplices.

One exception is identified in Pope John Paul’s 1995 encyclical on bioethics, Evangelium Vitae. When outlawing abortion is politically impossible, the pope held, a politician could vote for a law that permits some abortions, if it’s the most restrictive result feasible and the alternative would be a more liberal standard.
National Catholic Reporter, January 17, 2003

Here is the decree (Source: http://www.traditionalmass.org/articles/article.php?id=1&catname=2)

The Holy Office decree in question (Acta Apostolicae Sedis xxxxv, 100) reads as follows:

Decree

The Priest Leonard Feeneyis Declared Excommunicated

Since the priest Leonard Feeney, a resident of Boston (Saint Benedict Center), who for a long time has been suspended a divinis for grave disobedience toward church authority, has not, despite repeated warnings and threats of incurring excommunication ipso facto, come to his senses, the Most Eminent and Reverend Fathers, charged with safeguarding matters of faith and morals, have, in a Plenary Session held on Wednesday 4 February 1953, declared him excommunicated with all the effects of the law.

On Thursday, 12 February 1953, our Most Holy Lord Pius XII, by Divine Providence Pope, approved and confirmed the decree of the Most Eminent Fathers, and ordered that it be made a matter of public law.

Given at Rome, at the headquarters of the Holy Office, 13 February 1953.

"It’s an open question in magisterial circles whether politicians who vote for legal abortion, support public funding for abortion, and/or otherwise help make abortion available, should be considered “accomplices” and hence excommunicated. Johnstone said that most moral theologians believe such votes may be morally wrong, but they do not constitute sufficiently direct involvement in an individual abortion to trigger excommunication.
Bishop Elio Sgreccia, vice president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and a frequent Vatican spokesman on bioethics, nevertheless told NCR in a mid-October interview that it is his “personal opinion” that politicians who support permissive abortion laws are subject to the canonical penalties for accomplices."

Perhaps it's a open question in magesterial circles, but it's not an open question in public life. Pelosi, Kennedy and Kerry openly support abortion-on-demand, gay marriage, on-demand divorce, licit non-marital sex, public funding for birth control and fetal stem cell research and, to an extent, euthanasia. They publicly profess Catholicism and publicly take communion. The priests delivering communion to them know who they are, and do not withhold it. They are NOT excommunicated.

Perhaps they SHOULD be excommunicated, in the opinions of some, but in the actual, public practice of the Catholic Church, they are NOT. It is acceptable, therefore, for a Catholic to go on the public record in open support for abortion-on-demand, gay marriage, on-demand divorce, licit non-marital sex, public funding for birth control and fetal stem cell research and euthanasia. It is acceptable, because Catholics do it, the Church knows it, SOME Churchmen grouse, but nobody with any authority in the Church takes any of the steps to exercise any canonical penalties whatever. Ever. It is quite consistent, in fact, that Catholics - at least Catholics in public life - are NEVER disciplined for their stances on these subjects. Never. Rome NEVER acts. Rome will act against PRIESTS who teach this sort of thing, but never (ever) against public figures in the developed world who do. It has become, in fact, a Catholic tradition, of sorts, to have very fierce theoretical laws, but have quasi-universal non-enforcement of them on important people. I suppose a known divorcee in the local parish might be denied communion, but John Kerry, et al, are never denied communion for being divorced. There are multiple tiers to the applicability of canon law, and they depend on the location of the offense and the relative importance of the offender.

The problem with all of this is very simple and very obvious: the Catholic Church talks a good game, but does not have the courage of its convictions. In the end, keeping the the well-connected political authorities in America within the Catholic fold is more important to the hierarchs of the Catholic Church than enforcement of various rules. Some nobody Priest like this Feeny fellow can be disciplined and excommunicated, but Pelosi or Kennedy, Kerry or de la Madrid: these are men of POWER, and the Catholic Church is not going to get on their wrong side.

Some folks like that Bishop Elio Sgreccia you mentioned will give their PERSONAL opinion that these powerful Catholic's open work in opposition to the formal teachings of the Church ought to be subject to penalties, but it's the OFFICIAL position of the Church, from Rome on down, that powerful Catholic political figures in the First World are NEVER punished.

So, the Catholic Church is really of two minds on the subject. Some hold fast to the rules. Others think the rules are wrong and say so. Both positions are perfectly acceptable within the Church, as proven by the fact that the Church's formal rules are openly flouted on a daily basis by all important US and European left-leaning Catholic political figures, and not one is EVER punished.

It is acceptable to be an openly pro-choice Catholic. Pelosi, Kerry, the Kennedies and Chirac all prove it.

One thing that this article fails to mention is that Nancy Peloser is an American by birth only.

In all other areas Peloser is a Cut and Run apologetic multiculturalism whose first love is for those who want to Hate, Destroy or Blame America First.

Those who support Peloser and her crowd are mostly naiveté, one agenda voters.

Except for that inept Jimmie Goober Carter’s malaise years, these naiveté voters have had 60 long years of prosperity.

During this prosperity, many voters and the children of these voters have grown lazy in protecting what made America great.

I thought that 9-11 would be the defining moment in which Americans stood up and realized that they really did live in the greatest country ever produced on Gods green earth.

Instead, about 50% of the country (mostly Democrats) soon forgot that some in the world want to kill Americans and soon reverted back to their old form of business as usual, anything America bad, any other country good.

This 50%, Cut and Run, Can’t We All Just Get Along, One Agenda Voters crowd became more concerned with whether Hugo, Fidel, Amanutjob, Kim Jong, Osama or some other despot muck-diving human piece of garbage despised Americas greatness.

Naiveté Left wing nut jobs love to accuse Conservatives of not knowing as much as those of the San France-cisco Enlightened.

However, there is one thing that we do know and it is a certainty.

Nancy, Harry, and their crowd of supporters with San Francisco Values are hell bent to prove that America can be reduced to competing on an uneven third world playing field with terms acceptable only to those with a Dark Ages mentality.

In my estimation, it is time for more than just the Catholic Church to stand up and say it is my way or the highway for baby killing abortionists.

Where is all the outrage from Conservatives and Moderates grown LAZY about the direction in which the Democrats and their leadership will take this country?

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