I'm sure most of you heard Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's desperate attempt to defend her pro-abortion position as a Catholic Christian.  Unfortunately, the immediate and forceful Church rebuttals from New York to Denver received much less publicity... of course.  I find it hard to believe that Pelosi is really that ignorant on the issue.  She must be concocting up some kind of tricky self-deception in order to justify a position that contradicts her claim to being Catholic.  In any event, in case anyone was confused by this so-called "ardent, practicing Catholic," I'll do my part to publicize how the bishops set her straight...

In a Meet the Press interview on August 24, Pelosi responded to a question from Tom Brokaw about when human life begins, saying “as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition."

For one example, Cardinal Eagen of New York issued this statement tailor-made for a sound-bite world:

“Like many other citizens of this nation, I was shocked to learn that the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America would make the kind of statements that were made to Mr. Tom Brokaw of NBC-TV on Sunday, August 24, 2008.  What the Speaker had to say about theologians and their positions regarding abortion was not only misinformed; it was also, and especially, utterly incredible in this day and age.

The crystal-clear photographs and films that give people the ability to see babies in their pregnant mothers’ wombs make it impossible for anyone with the slightest measure of integrity or honor to fail to know what these marvelous beings manifestly, clearly, and obviously are, as they smile and wave into the world outside the womb.

In simplest terms, they are human beings with an inalienable right to live, a right that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is bound to defend at all costs for the most basic of ethical reasons. They are not parts of their mothers, and what they are depends not at all upon the opinions of theologians of any faith.

Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being ‘chooses’ to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name."

Where did Pelosi come up with this?  Church documents going back to the first century make it very clear that life begins at conception, and science has backed this up. 

Our Archbishop Chaput here in Denver put it best, "ardent, practicing Catholics will quickly learn from the historical record that from apostolic times, the Christian tradition overwhelmingly held that abortion was grievously evil.”