Washington D.C., Mar 24, 2023 / 16:12 pm (CNA).
Speaking at a panel discussion at Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice on Thursday, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi criticized the U.S. Catholic bishops over their opposition to abortion and transgender treatments for children.
“They [the bishops] are willing to abandon the bulk of [Catholic social teaching] because of one thing [abortion],” Pelosi said. “And that’s the fight that we have.”
As an outspoken abortion advocate as well as a supporter of the LGBTQ+ movement, Pelosi regularly cites her Catholic faith as the reason behind her policy positions.
During her time as speaker of the House, first in 2007–2011 and then again in 2019–2023, Pelosi backed legislation opposed by the U.S. bishops, including the Affordable Care Act and the Respect for Marriage Act.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has called abortion a “grave evil” and LGBTQ+ legislation “deeply concerning.”
In May 2022, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, the city Pelosi represents, announced in an open letter that he would begin forbidding the priests in his diocese from distributing holy Communion to Pelosi because of her stance on abortion.
On Thursday, Pelosi said, “I figure that’s his problem, not mine.”
“He made it very clear, maybe we’re not all God’s children. Maybe we do not have a free will,” Pelosi said of Cordileone, whom she also criticized for opposing LGBTQ+ ideology.
“We have had very negative, anti-LGBTQ stuff coming from our archbishop and others,” Pelosi said, criticizing in particular the bishops’ stance against transgender surgeries on children.
“Right now our challenge is trans kids, that in certain states they will arrest you if you try to meet the health needs of your trans child. They will call that child abuse. So, yeah some of it is stirred up by some of the more conservative leaders in the Church. It’s sad to say — not His Holiness.”
When it comes to her pro-abortion stance, Pelosi said she considers herself pro-life because she had five children in just over six years and because she cares about children.
“I was raised in a family that you would describe probably as ‘pro-life,’ although I think I’m pro-life because I care about children,” Pelosi said. “Because I had five children in six years and one week … so I keep saying to my members, you got five kids in six years? You want to talk about this subject?”
According to Pelosi, she and the bishops are “pretty much in sync” with most Catholic social teaching except for the abortion issue.
Pelosi also touted her role in passing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, in 2010.
The USCCB opposed Obamacare on the grounds that it would result in taxpayer dollars being used to pay for abortions as well as force employers to cover abortions and include contraceptives in their employees’ health insurance plans. Congress eventually passed the legislation by overcoming opposition from pro-life Democrats with the inclusion of restrictions to abortion in ACA insurance plans.
Pelosi claimed that the U.S. bishops “were mischaracterizing what was in that bill,” adding that she believes that “their purpose was to destroy Roe v. Wade, right in that bill.”
“Today is the 13th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, something that I’m very, very proud of,” Pelosi said. “But all I can say about how we passed that is, thank God for the nuns, thank God for the nuns because they offset the bishops.”
Though the USCCB opposed the Affordable Care Act, the bill was endorsed by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The Vatican has investigated the organization and censured it for embracing a political agenda in contrast with the teaching of the Church.
Jim Wallis, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice, also chimed in, saying that “Catholic women religious were central” in passing Obamacare, “because they thought the Affordable Care Act was pro-life.”
Wallis called this a “consistent ethic of life” based on Catholic social teaching that is “not just focus[ed] on one issue.”
Instead, she asserted that “because we had the nuns, we were able to prevail … So, when we pushed open that gate, the nuns were right there with us, pushing open the gate.”
According to Pelosi, her style of faith and politics is something she shares with President Joe Biden.
“Justice is something that means a great deal to President Biden, in his Catholicism, justice in how we meet the needs of the people, justice in listening to how they want their needs,” she said. “When you’re in [politics], you have to be prepared to take a punch, and you have to be prepared to throw a punch, for the children, always for the children.”
“My ‘why’ is one in five children lives in poverty, goes to sleep hungry at night,” Pelosi added. “That’s what took me from the kitchen to the Congress, from housewife to House speaker.”
During the discussion at the Jesuit Catholic university, Pelosi also called for the Church to start allowing women to become priests, saying that her mother had wanted her to be a nun, but she would have preferred to be a priest.
“Every day [priests] have the power … of turning bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, that is real power, now we’re talking power, and that’s why I was more attracted to that than being a nun,” Pelosi said. “On the other hand, maybe women will be able to do that as well, that’s something to think about, something I was hoping the pope would do.”
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Pelosi. What a charmer. Thinks she knows more about Catholicism than an Archbishop?? Really??? That would be hysterical if it were not so offensive. She wants the church to approve abortion and transgender activity?? Women priests? Says she is pro-life but evidently only for babies who are not first aborted. If Pelosi stands by these non-catholic liberal positions, there are a number of Protestant denominations I could recommend to her where she would be comfortable. In fact, there appears to be a new denomination opening in Germany right now. Clearly she identifies as Democrat, not Catholic. For now, bravo to the Archbishop for holding the line.
Who’s Nancy Pelosi?
She’s pro-life because she cares about children. She makes sure that they are killed before they become a “problem.” I sometimes wonder what ever happened to this old thing they called . . . excommunication?
Georgetown University is no longer a Catholic Institution. Housespeaker Pelosi found a sure welcome there. Zero chance of rebuke. If Nancy Pelosi’s radical feminist beliefs are antithetical to Catholicism she does find wider support, “So, yeah some of it is stirred up by some of the more conservative leaders in the Church. It’s sad to say – not His Holiness”.
Ironically it’s faux Catholics who are among the more severe critics of the Catholic faith, those in Congress who pose a great danger to its practice. Although Pelosi perceives herself as a fighter for the rights of the marginalized, for ‘kids who go to bed hungry’, she anomalously holds they be allowed to have their bodies transsexually mutilated.
She and Pres Biden deserve excommunication for reasons of their adamant apostasy, and for the enormously ill effect upon the Church at large who see in this approval by Rome, tacit or otherwise. It’s insufficient for the USCCB to announce they’re ‘troubled’ by Pelosi’s support of LGBT. Whether there isn’t unanimity, Bishops, faithful bishops still have obligation to be far tougher. Pope Francis has no jurisdiction to prevent bishops, or presbyters from upholding Apostolic tradition, and the commandments he directed them to teach the world. It’s about time they accept the reality that we’re in an unavoidable fight to protect the faith. And with greater conviction.
And I should add more positively, that we’re also in an unavoidable fight to witness to Christ.
I think that Speaker Pelosi’s life should serve as a cautionary tale for all Christians–before we become involved with any organization/church/club/charity/lodge/fraternity/sorority/collee/business, etc.–we need to “vet it”. Make SURE that it doesn’t promote actions that are not only counter to our faith, but actually are EVIL. I think Nancy Pelosi got caught up in the heady world of politics and power-seeking within that world, and found it easier to accept evil things like abortion and various sexual sins because her love for “politics” over-ruled her love for her Church. She stopped listening to legitimate Church authorities and started listening to those Catholic dissidents who “tickled her ears” and validated her involvement with the politics and the “pro-choice” “pro-gay” “pro-trans” movements. The more political power she gained, the harder it became for her to step back and carefully examine her views in the light of Holy Mother Church.
We were previously “One Nation Under God” but no longer. God said He knew us when He placed us in the womb. I am not a Biblical scholar but I have to wonder if what they are claiming as climate change is possibly God’s wrath upon world who has lost it’s way. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for their sins so you can imagine His feelings concerning the world which He created.
What is frightening is the thoughts and actions of our government and education systems. I have never seen so much crime and hatred as we have today. Satan is alive and well.
The word that jumped out at me in this article was in the last paragraph where… power. She wanted to be a priest instead of a nun because she said priests have more power, real power.No reference to the fact that priests are called to sacrifice and service and obedience to Church teaching in order to correctly practice the power of confecting the Eucharist. Pelosi got the meaning of the priesthood all wrong but in doing so she reveals her own deepest drive which is the lust for power, even to the point of rebellion against Church teaching.
If she truly believed the eucharist is the “body and blood of Christ” she would never take up these positions. Her Bishop is wise to give her an opportunity to reflect on what she is doing to her soul. She obviously doesn’t believe in the real presence of Christ in the eucharist for it would be reflected in her actions and disposition. She has no humility. Anybody who accepts Christ in the eucharist knows this. Poor woman. So lost she doesn’t even realize it. Thank God her Bishop is trying to help her. Calling out with love.
We read: “Pelosi claimed that the U.S. bishops ‘were mischaracterizing what was in that bill [the 2,000-page Affordable Care Act]…”
How soon we forget the machinations of the Pelosi fast-track sausage machine! Wasn’t Head Chef Pelosi the one who said “we have to pass the bill in order to find out what’s in it!”
Nancy Pelosi is delusional and also suffering from some dementia! She has had power here in SF Bay Area for so long she thinks she can be in charge of everything! God have mercy on her soul and change her heart !
To understand the enigmatic and faithiness Pelosi-Biden pontificate, we have to go back to 1991…This was the year of the Senate Confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas, and the year that Centesimus Annus was promulgated by the real pope (September).
Nevertheless (in October), bottom-of-his-class BIDEN grilled Thomas on (a) whether he placed the natural law above his oath of office (instead of part of it!), (b) whether natural law applied to individual behavior or was actually reducible to (subjective) “freedom,” (c) whether he viewed natural law as “a static set of unchanging” principles instead of “an evolving body of ideals” (the “tyranny of relativism”!) and (d) whether he would use natural law to limit government’s [!] ability to roll with new social challenges.
An “evolutionary” response to circumstances, what in the parallel Marxist-Soviet context was worded the “correlation of forces” (Nikita Khrushchev’s term)…
As for the Pelosi-Biden Rosary-fondling “Catholic” MINDSET: (a) “What else is socialism but Communism with the claws retracted” (Whittaker Chambers); (b) what else is the Pelosi-Biden orbit but the “slaughter of the innocents” but with six zeros added; (c) what else is the Pelosi-Biden mindset but the obtuse rejection of the non-demonstrable first principle on non-contradiction—whereby natural law prohibitions evolve into their opposite, under the clairvoyant enabling powers of the divinized State.
About which, St. John Paul II reminds us of the BOND between faith and morality: ““The relationship between faith and morality shines forth with all its brilliance in the UNCONDITIONAL RESPECT DUE TO THE INSISTENT DEMANDS OF THE PERSONAL DIGNITY OF EVERY MAN (italics), demands protected by those moral norms which prohibit WITHOUT EXCEPTION (Caps added) actions which are intrinsically evil” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 90).
And as for tuition-sucking Georgetown University—the “administration” of just moving things along! And, as part of the Academic-Banking Complex (the ABCs!), to confine the student minions to suckled moral stupidity, and to decades as indentured servants!…all the while, retrograde Georgetown imagining itself to be progressive…
From the deepest pits of hell, Herod snickers.
Tweak Centesimus Annus in (May).