Nancy Pelosi: I Should Receive Communion Even Though I’m Pro-Abortion

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 13, 2021   |   6:59PM   |   Washington, DC

Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she should be able to get communion even though she is a pro-abortion Catholic. The ardent abortion advocate insists she can use her own judgment on whether or not she is eligible to receive the sacrament despite winning pro-abortion awards and blocking a bill to stop infanticide.

“I think I can use my own judgment on that,” Pelosi said of receiving Holy Communion.

Pelosi also said she appreciated a letter from the Vatican that swatted down efforts by some of America’s Catholic bishops to cast a vote on whether or not its appropriate for pro-abortion Catholic politicians like her and Joe Biden to receive communion.

As the Catholic News Agency reports:

Pelosi added that she was “pleased with what the Vatican put out on that subject” of Communion for pro-abortion Catholic politicians, claiming that the Vatican’s statement “basically said ‘don’t be divisive on the subject’.”

Click here to sign up for pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com

Regarding denial of Holy Communion, Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law states that Catholics who are “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.”

In a 2004 memo to U.S. bishops, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote that a Catholic politician who is “consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws” is engaging in “formal cooperation” in grave sin, cooperation that is “manifest.”

These Catholics should not present themselves for Communion, and if they persist in their errors despite the admonition of their pastor, they must be denied Communion, he wrote.

Recently, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone warned pro-abortion Catholic public figures not to receive communion at Mass if they find that they “are unwilling or unable to abandon” their “advocacy for abortion.”

In a lengthy document titled “Before I Formed You In The Womb, I Knew You,” the archbishop examined the implications of high profile Catholics who publicly support abortion. Cordileone did not mention House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Joe Biden, or any other pro-abortion Catholics by name, but the document made clear that priests should deny communion to those Catholics who publicly support abortion.

“If you find that you are unwilling or unable to abandon your advocacy for abortion, you should not come forward to receive Holy Communion,” the archbishop told Catholic public figures. “To publicly affirm the Catholic faith while at the same time publicly rejecting one of its most fundamental teachings is simply dishonest.”

“If their participation in the evil of abortion is not addressed forthrightly by their pastors, this can lead Catholics (and others) to assume that the moral teaching of the Catholic Church on the inviolate sanctity of human life is not seriously held,” Cordileone wrote. “The constant teaching of the Catholic Church from her very beginning, the repeated exhortations of every Pope in recent times up to and including Pope Francis, the frequent statements by the bishops of the United States, all make it clear what the teaching of the Catholic Church is in regard to abortion.”

Pastors have a responsibility to Catholic public figures to “call them to conversion and to warn them that if they do not amend their lives they must answer before the tribunal of God for the innocent blood that has been shed,” Cordileone said.