Nancy Pelosi gets lesson from the pope

After a morning audience with Pope Benedict XVI, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi attempted to put a positive spin on her February 18 meeting with the leader of a church of which, she has said, she is an “ardent” supporter. In her statement, said Speaker Pelosi – also an ardent supporter of abortion rights “It is with great joy that my husband, Paul, and I met with His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, today. In our conversation, I had the opportunity to praise the Church’s leadership in fighting poverty, hunger, and global warming, as well as the Holy Father’s dedication to religious freedom and his upcoming trip and message to Israel. I was proud to show His Holiness a photograph of my family’s papal visit in the 1950s, as well as a recent picture of our children and grandchildren.”

Breaking with the usual protocol for such meetings with prominent politicians, there were no photographers from independent media allowed to record the visit. The Holy See released its own statement following the meeting speaking “of the requirements of the natural moral law” and also “the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception until natural death, which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists, and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of development.”

According to George Weigel – a chronicler of the life of Pope John Paul II and Catholic columnist – the pope was thus telling Pelosi “politely but unmistakably” that her pro-abortion support puts “her in serious difficulties as a Catholic, which was his obligation as a pastor.” Some would hold that this message was also being telegraphed to other prominent Catholics holding political positions in the United States, such as Vice President Joseph Biden, Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Governor Jennifer Granholm, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Senator John Kerry, and Senator Ted Kennedy that their Church’s stance on abortion is rooted in a sense of justice and the worth of every human being.

“It is a ‘requirement of the natural moral law’,” says Weigel in the National Review, “that is, the moral truths we can know by thinking about what is right and what is wrong — to defend the inviolability of innocent human life. You don’t have to believe in papal primacy to know that; you don’t have do believe in seven sacraments, or the episcopal structure of the Church, or the divinity of Christ, to know that. You don’t even have to believe in God to know that. You only have to be a morally serious human being, willing to work through a moral argument — which, of course, means being the kind of person who understands that moral truth cannot be reduced to questions of feminist political correctness or partisan political advantage.”

While Pelosi appears to be “deeply confused about what her church teaches on the morality of abortion,” Weigel continues, she “has now been informed, and by a world-class intellectual who happens to be the universal pastor of the Catholic Church, that she is, in fact, confused, and that both her spiritual life and her public service are in jeopardy because of that.” Weigel added that President Obama can expect to get the same message, even though he is not Catholic, that every person is worthy of life.

Pelosi, the product of a Catholic education and an Italian-American political family from Maryland, has been criticized by Catholic bishops such as Bishop Charles Chaput of Denver, Colorado, who question her knowledge of Catholic teaching as well the appearance of stepping out of a political role and into one of seeking to justify her position on abortion by utilizing the teaching of the “doctors of the church” – as she said in a televised August 2008 interview on “Meet the Press.”