Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on remarks made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today:
Last year, when Nancy Pelosi went to see the pope, she was denied the opportunity to exploit him: photographers were not invited into the room for the typical photo session. Instead, Pope Benedict XVI reminded her of the duties expected of public Catholics. But her determination to play the Catholic card—oh, so selectively—rebounded again when she informed the media that today is the feast of St. Joseph, a special day of prayer for workers, and especially Italians. She apparently stopped short of blessing herself, though she didn’t stop short of invoking St. Joseph’s name in support of the health care bill. Separation of church and state fanatics who suffered apoplexy whenever George W. Bush dropped the Lord’s name are not expected to take to the streets.
Then Pelosi lied. She said she is grateful for the support of 60 orders of nuns, not mentioning that the letter she received had a whopping total of 55 signatories. Worse, she had the gall to say that this represents “every order you can think of.” Wrong. In fact, there are 793 religious communities, which means she heard from seven-and-a-half percent of them. Moreover, since there are approximately 65,000 nuns in the U.S., that means she was contacted by .0008 percent of them.
In other words, not only are the bishops formally opposed to the bill she champions, it’s a lie to maintain that the nuns are on her side. Shameless is too kind a word to use to describe what Pelosi did today.
