Last week, Nancy Pelosi said it should be up to her own judgement whether she should receive communion despite her longstanding pro-abortion record. But a Catholic Archbishop is rebuking her today, saying she is “cooperating with evil” by supporting abortion.
As LifeNews.com reported last week, 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.
But today, her bishop, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, rebuked her, saying he’s glad she liked the letter from the Vatican because it calls on Catholic Church leaders like him to hold abortion advocates like Pelosi accountable:
I’m happy to know that Speaker Pelosi said she is pleased with the letter of Cardinal Ladaria, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to Archbishop Gómez, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, regarding the issue of Catholics prominent in public life who advocate for practices that are gravely evil. In that letter, Cardinal Ladaria advises the U.S. bishops to use as a guide in discerning how to address this situation the principles laid out in a private letter in 2004 from the then-Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the CDF at the time, to the bishops of the United States.
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Archbishop Cordileone made it clear that Ratzinger’s letter calls promoting and supporting abortion “cooperating with evil.”
In his letter, Ratzinger confirmed that consistently advocating for abortion and euthanasia constitutes formal cooperation in grave sin, and that bishops must dialogue with Catholics prominent in public life who do so in order to help them understand the grave evil they are helping to perpetrate and accompany them to a change of heart. He goes one to say in that letter that, if these dialogues prove to be fruitless, then, out of respect for the Catholic belief of what it means to receive Holy Communion, the bishop must declare that the individual is not be admitted to Communion. Speaker Pelosi’s positive reaction to Cardinal Ladaria’s letter, then, raises hope that progress can be made in this most serious matter.
Pelosi’s bishop then stressed the importance of abortion — noting that it has killed tens of millions of unborn babies.
“We must never lose sight of this fact: in the last 50 years, in the United States alone, 66,000,000 babies have been murdered in their mothers’ wombs. This is not a matter about which one can use judgment. It is a fact. 66,000,000 babies murdered in their mothers’ wombs. If we look around us and see what is happening in our society today, we will see that this fact once again demonstrates that violence begets violence. 66,000,000 babies murdered in their mothers’ wombs. The response to a woman in a crisis pregnancy is not violence, but love.”
Recently, 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.
