In an open letter to Nancy Pelosi published on the Priests for Life website and signed by Fr. Frank Pavone, the pro-life group says Pelosi is making a “mockery of the Catholic faith” and that she should formally renounce her Catholicism.
I could excerpt if for you but it’s pretty short and very powerful. Read it below.
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
June 20, 2013 at 6:12 pm
If the hierarchy will not excommunicate Pelosi for whatever reason e.g. blackmail, bribes et al. then perhaps the laity can fulfill this duty by excommunicate her ourselves. It is like "sensus fidelis". And if they see her in church, telling her that she is in violation of so many canons and that she must get the bishop's absolution first before she can step inside the church and worse receive Holy Communion.
June 20, 2013 at 7:16 pm
Yay! Thank You, Jesus
Looks like Fr. Pavone/John the Baptist acted where the USCCB/Sanhedrin wouldn't. It's more than disgusting to see this, this, Botox…, oh never mind. It's more than disgusting see this person wrap herself in Roman Catholicism to mask her obstinate disobedience.
Please, G-d, protect Fr. Pavone and all your faithful priests. Please give us more like them.
June 20, 2013 at 7:55 pm
It would have been nice to have seen this come from the bishops.
June 20, 2013 at 8:12 pm
Hopefully Fr. Pavone cc'd her bishop. Kathleen Sibelius and Joe Biden also need to get this letter.
June 20, 2013 at 8:56 pm
Priests for Life will lose in this confrontation with Pelosi. She will come out unscathed, without regrets, and probably with an affirmation by some Cardinal or other that she is, in fact, a "Catholic in good standing."
And Priests for Life will have embarrassed themselves.
That's not to say this is what should happen, only my confident prediction of what will happen.
June 20, 2013 at 10:06 pm
Soooo disagree!,
Pelosi, you sorry piece of work, proven gutless, scandalous wonder, liar and theif!
As a native Californian, I'm DEMANDING you either stand with the Catholic Church, by publicly renouncing your apostasy and heresy!
Or, SHHHUUUT UUUP! Don't say anything regarding the Church, anytime, any place, any where! Stop invoking an "authority" to speak, when in reality, you don't! You don't speak for me! All your doing is condemning yourself and those like you, to hell!
By your own undoing, you have "jacked" California so far up, it is beyond recovery!
What a "swamp leech"!
June 20, 2013 at 10:07 pm
@Paul:
The Priests for Life cannot and will not ever be embarrassed by writing such a letter. They stood up for truth, exposed and evil and confronted it. There is no embarrassment in that. Well done Father Pavone et al.
June 21, 2013 at 12:03 am
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June 21, 2013 at 12:04 am
Five gets you ten there will be zero coverage of this by the MSM.
June 21, 2013 at 1:16 am
Father Pavone is doing the work Mrs. Pelosi's bishop won't.
And Father Pavone will be savaged by the operatives.
June 21, 2013 at 1:30 am
Doesn't matter,
The truth "bleeds" out eventually!
Took awhile for the rest of the world to catch on to nazi concentration camps too!
Nevertheless thought I'd be thanking that maggot, gosnell, but he literally, blew the "happy" face off of pp and abortion. With all the mental pathologies him and his staff had! Pelosi and her abortion platform take this for normal. Business as usual. That's how far gone and whacked out they are! She ain't lookin' so good right now.
That's why pelosi wouldn't answer the question. Her response was just plain stupid. That was a new one for her, finding religion all of a sudden.
nuff said, for now.
June 21, 2013 at 1:05 pm
The buck stops not midway but at the top. Popes for over twenty years have let this group grow from Cuomo and Ferraro to hundreds in politics. Do they furtively believe that laws protecting abortion do protect against illegal abortion mill atrocities. I don't know. But we are administratively dysfunctional in that three Popes in a row now have been known to be weak in administrative skills….errr but the job is not author or homilist-savant. It's administrative. Until you get a Pope who loves administration four days a week minimum for 8 hours a day, Pelosi is safe. You can blame the bishops in the beginning but once their failure perdures several years, a Pope should have preempted their level by now….about twenty years ago.
June 21, 2013 at 6:14 pm
In the state of California, I still hold that broomstick flying witch, pelosi, personally responsible for leading the satan's minions in government! Talk about not having her "Catholic" head not screwed on straight!
Trust me, it is personal! Many of us are "highly" offended by her hexes, potions and sacrilegeous incantations and rants to satan!
She and those of her unrepentant ilk, are a living curse!
Must be drinking too much of her own brew at her "vineyard"!
June 21, 2013 at 8:07 pm
Way to go Fr. Frank!!
Now where is her Bishop??
June 22, 2013 at 1:07 am
Beloved peers,
It is Archbishop Cordileone.
You know, the one that lead the defense of prop 8, the defense of marriage act to the state of California. He was also virulently attacked by a pro choice, "sea hag" for defending life at a prolife rally.
Pelosi just hates him! That's good enough for me!…;)!
June 23, 2013 at 12:18 am
Outstanding, Father Pavone. Your letter says what millions of Catholics would like to tell Mrs.Pelosi. As House Democratic Leader, her refusal to answer questions about serious moral issues is an embarrassment to the Church and the government she represents. I don't know how she can live with herself or sleep at night, given her diabolical voting record on the key life issues.
Calling herself a Catholic is absurd beyond words. If she has any honor or integrity, she will renounce any claim that she is a Catholic. Thank you.
June 23, 2013 at 2:05 am
I agree with Bill Bannon. There needs to be a part of the church who sniffs out and exposes these false catholics for the frauds and heretics they are. Too many say " oh the church works slowly and that's good because X,Y and Z." Or that popes are protected from bad information from their staff etc. I can see A pope being protected but not the ones that follow.
In this age of instant information, decisions expositions and expulsions should not take but a few months. The church needs to protect herself from scandal.