Sunday, December 4, 2011

Her Holiness Holds Forth

This is the day which the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. "Good Catholic" Nancy Pelosi has been very busy recently correcting the Papal stance on issues involving faith and morals. In her discussions with the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Pelosi has divined that abortion is a good thing, and ought to be paid for by the federal government.

Since her word on faith and morals is both infallible and superior to that of the Pope, she regularly damns opponents to eternal purgatory for exercising the independent thought that abortion might actually be wrong under most circumstances. She reserves some of her best vitriol for those who believe that no public money should be spent on abortion even if lawmakers and courts have decided that a baby doesn't become a human until the beginning of the second trimester of pregnancy.

Obamacare, pushed through the House in the middle of the night by Pelosi and the Democrat Curia, left the issue of how private insurers would be treated when it comes to paying for abortion procedures. That brought the public payment and private payment issues for abortions to the forefront. The 2700 page (plus or minus) Obamacare law doesn't expressly require that private insurers cover abortions, but it doesn't leave private insurers the option not to cover them either. That omission didn't deter the Department of Health and Human Services. The Department announced without any quibble that private insurers must cover abortions, birth control devices and medications, and abortifacients (essentially, the "morning after" pill).

This is a direct assault on the "conscience clause" which was instituted in health care legislation starting after the horrendous Roe v. Wade decision and continuing through the Bush administration. The conscience clause exempts doctors, nurses, and hospitals which have deep religious opposition to abortion from having to perform abortions or prescribe birth control medication. The lack of any such conscience clause in the Obamacare bill was not an oversight.

Given the HHS decision and the Obamacare mandate that all citizens purchase health insurance, it quickly became apparent that insurance companies would have to cover abortion and insurance agents religiously opposed to abortion would have to sell policies covering abortion. Without a conscience clause, opponents of abortion including traditional Catholics and a large number of Evangelicals and old church Protestants would be selling and/or paying for something they deeply despise.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops quickly came forward with a statement that such a mandate offends the conscience of practicing Catholics (with or without the conscience clause) and violates the First Amendment right of freedom of religion. Her Primateness Pelosi had spent years trying to squelch the conscience clause in any health care legislation which even tangentially touched on abortion (euphemistically known as "a woman's right to choose"). Until she finally succeeded with Obamacare and the back door HHS rulling, her efforts had gone unrewarded.

In order to clear up the vagueness and ambiguity of the Obamacare bill and to quash the HHS decision, in October of 2011 Republicans proposed HR 358, known as "The Protect Life Act." It is basically a reiteration of the conscience clause, applying it to health care providers and insurance companies specifically facing the Obamacare law. Pelosi jumped to the fore, skewing Catholic doctrine and mocking "the Catholic conscience thing."

The Conference of Bishops had said: "Indeed, such nationwide government coercion of religious people and groups to sell, broker, or purchase 'services' to which they have a moral or religious objection represents an unprecedented attack on religious liberty." They further cited the conscience clause inserted into all previous Congressional health care legislation: "Public officials may not require individuals or entities who receive certain public funds to perform abortion or sterilization procedures or to make facilities or personnel available for the performance of such procedures if such performance would be contrary to the individual or entity's religious belief or moral convictions."

If you can't attack the principle, attack the persons advocating the principle. Pelosi is no stranger to that kind of attack. This past Thursday, unable to find any Catholic doctrine to support her views, Pelosi simply called the Conference of Catholic Bishops "lobbyists in Washington DC." So much for the efficacy of Church discipline, doctrine, dogma, and Papal authority. Her Catholicness speaks, and the Bishops should just shut up. In a masterpiece of illogic, bad grammar, and un-Catholic thought, Pelosi said: "I am a devout Catholic. As a devout Catholic (second time, in case you didn't get it the first time), I have great respect for our bishops when they are my pastor. As lobbyists in Washington DC, we have some areas of disagreement."

Pelosi is simply an idiot. I understand Church decisions and Papal authority better than she. And I'm Lutheran. It's OK, even expected, that as a Protestant I will have differences of religious opinion with Papal decisions on faith and morals and am free, perhaps even obligated to dispute those decisions publicly when they offend my personal conscience and reading of scripture. That's not how it's supposed to be under Catholic apostolic succession doctrine. Pelosi is determined to flout the doctrine of her own Church, while at the same time forcing millions of non-Catholics to support abortion with their tax dollars and eventually to buy insurance that covers abortion.

If that's being a devout Catholic, I'm the Archbishop of Canterbury.

18 comments:

patti said...

"If that's being a devout Catholic, I'm the Archbishop of Canterbury." Careful now, in this day and time, just saying words makes them true, your Archbishopness.

(as a catholic, pelosi gives me the heaves)

AndrewPrice said...

I often wonder if Pelosi is just this stupid or if she's just this cynical or both? Probably both. I don't think she even knows what a Catholic is except something she needs to pretend to be to hide her heinous views.

tryanmax said...

I can see why Pelosi champions abortion so much: what she did to the English language is nothing short.

LawHawk, you know what's funny, also being a Lutheran in a largely Catholic area, I find all too frequently that Lutherans are more current on Papal decisions than are the Catholics. That might actually explain quite a bit.

Unknown said...

Patti: Too true. I've mentioned this story before. But shortly after Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, she had to appoint a new Archbishop of Canterbury. In a bit of ironic and probably unintentional humor, the London Times headline read "Queen appoints Christian as head of the English Church." Given his proclivities, I'm not so sure the same could be said of the future King Charles.

Unknown said...

Andrew: My opinion is that she is the not-too-bright limousine liberal tool of the left. She has been in office so long, and has been told what to say for so long, that she's actually come to believe that what she says is actually true. Most insane people don't know they're living in an alternate world.

Unknown said...

tryanmax: I think you may be right. Another story from my past. When the Catholic Church first allowed masses in English, my best friend and I were freshmen at Cal. By virtue of another new ruling from the Vatican, he could now attend services with me (so long as he went to mass first). When the mass began, he was astounded to discover that I pretty much knew the entire Order by heart. He had no idea that we had been doing the same service in English for centuries as he had been listening to in Latin.

tryanmax said...

LOLZ! My Catholic ex-wife had a similar reaction when I took her to my church for the first time. I think she was expecting rock guitars and speaking in tongues. Instead, she got what she was used to. (Well, my pastor does like to use PowerPoint. That was a little too modern for her.)

T-Rav said...

I wonder if anyone (besides herself) takes Nancy Pelosi seriously anymore. I strongly suspect even her fellow House Democrats are mocking her behind her back.

StanH said...

Somehow, thinking of Pelosi saying she is a devout Catholic strikes me as funny. When she slips into sanctimony there needs to be crowd nearby too point and laugh.

BevfromNYC said...

First of all, she's just lying. She cannot be a "devout Catholic" and hold beliefs contrary to Catholic doctrine.

She may have been born into a Catholic family and baptized in the Catholic Church, and she may even take Communion (though I doubt there is a true believing Priest who would allow it) and confess her sins every day(except I don't believe she thinks that she sins) but she is not "devout" at anything except secular dogma.

Unknown said...

tryanmax: The Lutheran Church we attended in Simi Valley had three services. When I was new in town, I showed up early for the first service. It was a "folk service." One of the ushers recognized that I might be a bit more traditional, so he suggested the later services, which I attended after that. I later joked with him that I thought the services had been replaced with a hootenanny.

Unknown said...

T-Rav: For her fellow lefties, Pelosi is a useful idiot--literally.

Unknown said...

Stan: She wouldn't see the ironic humor in the whole thing. She hasn't risen above laughing when someone slips on a banana peel (which happens frequently on the filthy streets of San Francisco).

Unknown said...

Bev: She learned her Catholic doctrine from Ted Kennedy. LOL

CrisD said...

LawHawk-
She is a useful idiot alright. And since I was born Catholic, I know many of these Democrap Catholics (cafeteria Catholics). They especially like it when their Parish priest is married or gay--anything the official church does not sanction.
When Pope B. met with her in 2009 I believe he blessed a pic of her children and grands and told her she could not be for abortion but I am pretty sure she can easily find a church that will give her communion.
Joe Biden and Sebelius, two more pro-abortion Catholics...

Unknown said...

Cris: Pelosi has no problem finding a church that will give her communion in San Francisco. The priests still largely subscribe to the liberation theology that then-cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, admonished the South American bishops about. I can see the Pope as a benevolent, caring, godly man. As a "devout Catholic," Pelosi is supposed to see him as the final arbiter of all decisions affecting faith and morals. Somehow, I think I show him more respect than she does.

Individualist said...

Lawhawk

Is not the Archbishop of Catebury part of the Church of England.....

Oh well I guess when you are as holy and knowledgeable as Pelosio you speak for them as well....

Unknown said...

Indi: Yep. He's the supreme prelate of the Church of England (Anglican/Episcopalian). Only the queen herself outranks him. That was part of the joke about my being the Archbishop of Canterbury. I'm neither English nor Episcopalian. And the London Times headline should have been redundant, but people already had begun to wonder about the theology of the Archbishop of Canterbury even then. That's why the headline was ironically humorous.

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