Rep. Nancy Pelosi does not simply reject the Catholic Church’s teachings on marriage, abortion, and contraception—she is a rabid foe of the Church’s positions. Recently, she went beyond her usual stance by lecturing her archbishop on the folly of marriage, properly understood.
On June 19, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone spoke at a Washington rally that was organized by the National Organization for Marriage. Pelosi urged him to cancel his plans because the event was not supported by her homosexual friends. Her unmitigated arrogance was on full display when she invoked a remark by Pope Francis. “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will,” the Holy Father said, “then who am I to judge him?”
The pope’s comment had absolutely nothing to do with the institution of marriage; he was addressing homosexual individuals. Moreover, he said nothing that any of his predecessors would have found disagreeable. Here is what he has said about marriage: “The image of God is the married couple: the man and the woman; not only the man, not only the woman, but both of them together.” Someone ought to read that to Pelosi. The pope did not say that the image of God is the married couple of a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. That’s because such unions have been denied by nature, and by nature’s God, of creating a family.
When gays go naked in the streets of San Francisco, and mock Catholicism in patently obscene ways, Pelosi is never offended. What offends her is her archbishop’s public defense of the Church’s teachings on marriage. Nice to know what her moral compass looks like.
What is astonishing about Pelosi’s remarks is that she crossed the one line she reveres as sacred: the line separating church and state. For her, it is okay for an agent of government to tell a bishop what to do, but a bishop should not be allowed to even speak about a public issue.
