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.