House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) often boasts of being a “prayerful” person with a deep Catholic faith, yet she consistently promotes and advocates what is clearly taught by the Church to be a moral evil — abortion.
On Monday, the archbishop of San Francisco, Rev. Salvatore J. Cordileone, released a letter condemning this sort of hypocrisy and contending that Catholic public figures who promote abortion should not receive the Holy Communion, The Hill reported.
“Those who reject the teaching of the Church on the sanctity of human life and those who do not seek to live in accordance with that teaching should not receive the Eucharist,” Cordileone wrote.
“Persistent rejection of Catholic teaching”
“Abortion is the axe laid to the roots of the tree of human rights,” he continued, noting that “when our culture encourages the violation of life at its youngest and most vulnerable condition, other ethical norms cannot stand for long.”
“The Church’s teaching and discipline on worthiness to receive Holy Communion has been consistent throughout her history, going back to the very beginning,” he added.
Although Cordileone acknowledged that the decision regarding whether or not to receive Holy Communion is typically a “private matter,” there are exceptions including “occasions when those in public life violate the boundaries of justifiable cooperation.”
“In the case of public figures who profess to be Catholic and promote abortion, we are not dealing with a sin committed in human weakness or a moral lapse: this is a matter of persistent, obdurate, and public rejection of Catholic teaching,” he wrote.
The Hill pointed out that Cordileone did not single out the House speaker by name and the archbishop added an addendum to his statement clarifying that it was not aimed at “specific individuals.”
Pelosi: Abortion is “sacred ground”
Pelosi has made a number of statements over the years that fly in the face of Church teaching regarding abortion.
During a news conference in 2013, she told reporters that “as a practicing and respectful Catholic” she considered legal abortion to be “sacred ground.”
More recently, Pelosi disparaged Catholics who voted for Donald Trump because of his pro-life stance, telling former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that they were “willing to sell the whole democracy down the river for that one issue.”
Those remarks brought a sharp rebuke from Cordileone, who said Pelosi was speaking “in direct contradiction to a fundamental human right that Catholic teaching has consistently championed for 2,000 years.”
The post Archbishop of San Francisco condemns Catholic public figures who promote abortion first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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