A lot of us would like to be proud of Nancy Pelosi right now. A prominent Catholic in public office; the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House; maybe she's out to pass some legislation you really like.
But a lot of us can't help noticing that she is stridently pro-abortion, despite being Catholic. Which means that on top of all the innocent life that the laws of the United States of America protect the "right" to take, there is a dreadful scandal in that thanks to her bad example, the public thinks that it is a-ok for Catholics to be pro-abortion, and that those who strive to inform their consciences according to the perennial teaching of the Church are pro-life for reasons of political convenience, or squeamishness, or meanness, or whatever reason they invent to account for what they observe.
It would be easy for me to use this space to express my consternation and dismay over this, but I expect you've heard that sort of thing before.
So instead I will talk about something that Catholics who have the benefit of being correctly taught about the Church may think about immediately. You may think it's hard to get through to someone who thinks the Catholic Church is wrong. What's hard is to get through to someone who already knows the Church is right, and thinks he knows what the Church says, but is wrong about that. Also, the Jesuits have a saying, "Give me the first seven years of a child's life and I will give you the rest." Keep that in mind as you read.
Nancy Pelosi apparently is under the impression that she is an integral Catholic following the teaching of the Church to the best of her knowledge.
Please read this SFGate article on Alexandra Pelosi, the Speaker's daughter, and observe what's going on. To begin with, her mother is genuinely upset and offended that she (Alexandra) has become a lapsed Catholic and considers it a failure on her part as a mother.
Learning about [Evangelical Protestants] was a shock to the woman who spent her childhood in progressive Catholic schools. "We were taught just to accept people, that was just a given," [Alexandra] Pelosi says. "I don't ever remember being told at Convent of the Sacred Heart that gay was wrong. They never even told us there was anything wrong with abortion. They were just choices. ...
"My mother, throughout her entire life, has been faithful to the church, even though the church has not been that faithful to her because of her politics. And I think that takes a lot of perseverance," she says. "And still, people protest her right to go to her own church."
What, do you think, is the likelihood that Nancy Pelosi understood what the Church requires well enough to knowingly reject it? Not that that solves our problems.
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