Father Pavone also tells Pelosi to renounce Catholicism, since she betrays it and misrepresents it.
Mrs. Pelosi, for decades you have gotten away with betraying and misrepresenting the Catholic faith as well as the responsibilities of public office. We have had enough of it. Either exercise your duties as a public servant and a Catholic, or have the honesty to formally renounce them.”
Read the entire letter below:
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Dear Mrs. Pelosi,
Last Thursday, June 13, you were asked a question in a press briefing that you declined to answer. The question was, "What is the moral difference between what Dr. Gosnell did to a baby born alive at 23 weeks and aborting her moments before birth?"
Given the fact that the Gosnell case has been national news for months now, and that Congress, where you serve as House Democratic Leader, was about to have a vote on banning abortion after 20 weeks fetal age, this was a legitimate question.
Instead of even attempting to answer the question, you resorted to judgmental ad hominem attacks on the reporter who asked it, saying, "You obviously have an agenda. You're not interested in having an answer."
Mrs. Pelosi, the problem is that you're not interested in giving an answer.
Your refusal to answer this question is consistent with your failure to provide an answer to a similar question from me and the members of my Priests for Life staff. Several years ago, we visited your office with the diagrams of dismemberment abortion at 23 weeks, and asked the simple question, "When you say the word 'abortion,' is this what you mean?" In response, nothing but silence has emanated from your office.
In what way is this refusal to address an issue of such national importance consistent with the leadership role you are supposed to be exercising? Public servants are supposed to be able to tell the difference between serving the public and killing the public. Apparently, you can't. Otherwise, you would have been able to explain the difference between a legal medical procedure that kills a baby inside the womb and an act of murder -- for which Dr. Gosnell is now serving life sentences -- for killing the same baby outside the womb.
Moreover, you stated at the press briefing on June 13, "As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this. I don't think it should have anything to do with politics."
With this statement, you make a mockery of the Catholic faith and of the tens of millions of Americans who consider themselves "practicing and respectful Catholics" and who find the killing of children -- whether inside or outside the womb -- reprehensible.
You speak here of Catholic faith as if it is supposed to hide us from reality instead of lead us to face reality, as if it is supposed to confuse basic moral truths instead of clarify them, and as if it is supposed to help us escape the hard moral questions of life rather than help us confront them.
Whatever Catholic faith you claim to respect and practice, it is not the faith that the Catholic Church teaches. And I speak for countless Catholics when I say that it's time for you to stop speaking as if it were.
Abortion is not sacred ground; it is sacrilegious ground. To imagine God giving the slightest approval to an act that dismembers a child he created is offensive to both faith and reason.
And to say that a question about the difference between a legal medical procedure and murder should not "have anything to do with politics" reveals a profound failure to understand your own political responsibilities, which start with the duty to secure the God-given right to life of every citizen.
Mrs. Pelosi, for decades you have gotten away with betraying and misrepresenting the Catholic faith as well as the responsibilities of public office. We have had enough of it. Either exercise your duties as a public servant and a Catholic, or have the honesty to formally renounce them.
Sincerely,
Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life
Watch the video of the press briefing
This is not the first time Pelosi has been taken to task by Catholic officials about her misrepresentation of the Catholic faith.
February 2009:
The much anticipated meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took place today at the Vatican. According to the Vatican, the pope not only took the opportunity to remind the speaker, who supports abortion rights, of the the church's opposition to abortion, but the pope also mentioned the church's teaching that Catholic politicians are obligated to oppose abortion. Here is the Vatican statement, via Catholic News Service:
"Following the General Audience the Holy Father briefly greeted Mrs Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives, together with her entourage. His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development."
In 2008, the Vatican publicly called Democrats the "party of death."
Burke, who was named prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature in June, told the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire that the U.S. Democratic Party risked “transforming itself definitively into a party of death for its decisions on bioethical issues.” He then attacked two of the party’s most high profile Catholics — vice presidential candidate Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — for misrepresenting Church teaching on abortion.In 2010, Pelosi was slammed for her position on abortion by her Archbishop:
Archbishop Niederauer countered in his January 13 column, “Embodied in that statement are some fundamental misconceptions about Catholic teaching on human freedom.” God gave human beings the capacity to choose between good and evil in order to give them the gift of freedom, even at the cost of many evil choices, the archbishop said.
But this gift of freedom, the freedom wrongly cited in justifying a woman’s right to choose, among other fallacies, does not justify the position that “all moral choices are good if they are free,” insisted Archbishop Niederauer, because “the exercise of freedom does not imply a right to say or do everything.”
Addressing those who advocate for “reproductive choice” while claiming to be Catholic, Archbishop Niederauer emphasized, “it is entirely incompatible with Catholic teaching to conclude that our freedom of will justifies choices that are radically contrary to the Gospel—racism, infidelity, abortion, theft. Freedom of will is the capacity to act with moral responsibility; it is not the ability to determine arbitrarily what constitutes moral right.”
The belief in the validity of arbitrarily determining right and wrong is widespread both in and outside of the Church, the archbishop noted.
Touching on the meaning of one's conscience, the San Francisco archbishop described it as “the judgment of reason whereby the human person, guided by God’s grace, recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act. In all we say and do, we are obliged to follow faithfully what we know to be just and right.”
“As participants in the life of the civil community,” Archbishop Niederauer wrote, “we Catholic citizens try to follow our consciences, guided, as described above, by reason and the grace of God. While we deeply respect the freedom of our fellow citizens, we nevertheless are profoundly convinced that free will cannot be cited as justification for society to allow moral choices that strike at the most fundamental rights of others. Such a choice is abortion, which constitutes the taking of innocent human life, and cannot be justified by any Catholic notion of freedom.”
Other examples from 2008 , more here and more.
Nancy Pelosi is entitled to her own opinion, but what she is not entitled to, is to use the Catholic religion as a guise to hide behind while misrepresenting and betraying what the religion stands for.
[Update] 2007- San Francisco Priest Tells Nancy Pelosi She is Pro-DEATH