EDITORIAL: In a recent interview, the former speaker of the House spoke about her strained relationship with her bishop, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.
The days are drawing nigh on the end of the political careers of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, once the two most powerful Catholic politicians in the world.
Given the scandal they’ve caused over the years by repeatedly distorting and openly defying some of the fundamental principles of their common faith, one might say the days can’t draw nigh soon enough.
If cafeteria Catholicism were a real denomination, Biden and Pelosi would already be on a path to canonization. The highly selective catechesis they promulgate anytime they’re asked about their faith often bears a hazy resemblance to actual Catholicism, but it’s rarely the genuine article.
The latest contribution to the duo’s “greatest misses” album came courtesy of Pelosi, who in a recent interview spoke about her strained relationship with her bishop, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.
For decades now, the now-former speaker of the House has obstinately persisted in her ardent support of abortion, in defiance of the Church’s clear teaching against it. In doing so, not only is Pelosi complicit in the sanctioning of the killing of innocent life, but she is also placing her soul in mortal danger.
She is very smart. And the mother of five. She knows what abortion is and can certainly grasp why the Church condemns it, even though on multiple occasions she has cited her Catholicism while defending her abortion stance.
But there is always the chance that, perhaps because she realizes she was ill-informed or hadn’t thought things through fully, she might one day have a change of heart.
That’s where Archbishop Cordileone comes in. He understands that by receiving Communion in a state of mortal sin, Pelosi is only compounding her culpability and public scandal. That’s why, in 2022, after years of trying to reason with her, even going so far as to shower her with Rosaries and roses, Archbishop Cordileone exercised his episcopal authority by banning her from receiving Communion in her home diocese, until she repents.
She has not done so.
And, as Pelosi revealed in the interview, she has continued to receive Communion.
“I received Communion anyway. That’s his problem, not mine,” she said of Archbishop Cordileone.
“My Catholic faith is, Christ is my savior,” she added. “It has nothing to do with the bishops.”
There’s lots to unpack there.
First, Pelosi is half right: The state of her soul is very much a problem for her bishop, especially since, had he chosen not to try to convince her to repent — a real temptation, since keeping quiet would have spared him the heaps of public scorn he’s received for instituting the Communion ban — the Lord would have held him to account.
Archbishop Cordileone sought to remind Pelosi of that fact in a statement responding to her recent comments. “As a pastor of souls, my overriding concern and chief responsibility is the salvation of souls,” he noted. “And as Ezekiel reminds us,” he added, citing Ezekiel 3:20-22, “for a pastor to fulfill his calling, he has the duty not only to teach, console, heal and forgive, but also, when necessary, to correct, admonish and call to conversion.”
Half-truths about Catholicism are Pelosi’s specialty, so it’s not surprising that her next comment offers up yet another one: Christ is her Savior. Yes! But that same Savior is the one who entrusted the faith to the apostles and their successors, the bishops.
The exasperating irony is that in the same interview, speaking critically of the controversial Vatican-China accord, Pelosi made the following comment:
“Let me say it this way, ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.’ Every bishop has sprung from that rock. And now, the Chinese government?” she said, referring to China’s practice of pre-selecting suitable candidates for the Chinese episcopacy.
But if all bishops have “sprung from that rock” …? In the words of President Biden, “Anyway.”
Speaking of the president, he’ll be taking his confounding Catholic malaprops back to Delaware soon, leaving Nancy Pelosi to soldier on without him, cafeteria catechism ever at her side.
