Speaker Pelosi Once Again Corrected By Archbishop
In a recent interview with Eleanor Clift in Newsweek magazine (Dec. 21, 2009), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about her disagreements with the United States Catholic bishops concerning Church teaching. Speaker Pelosi replied, in part: “I practically mourn this difference of opinion because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that we are all endowed with a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And that women should have the opportunity to exercise their free will.”
Once again the Archbishop of San Francisco had to correct Speaker Pelosi on her faith: (emphasis mine)
Catholic teaching on free will recognizes that God has given men and women the capacity to choose good or evil in their lives. The bishops at the Second Vatican Council declared that the human person, endowed with freedom, is “an outstanding manifestation of the divine image.” (Gaudium et Spes, No. 17) As the parable of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, makes so beautifully clear, God did not want humanity to be mere automatons, but to have the dignity of freedom, even recognizing that with that freedom comes the cost of many evil choices.
However, human freedom does not legitimate bad moral choices, nor does it justify a stance that all moral choices are good if they are free: “The exercise of freedom does not imply a right to say or do everything.” (The Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1740) Christian belief in human freedom recognizes that we are called but not compelled by God to choose constantly the values of the Gospel—faith, hope, love, mercy, justice, forgiveness, integrity and compassion.
It is entirely incompatible with Catholic teaching to conclude that our freedom of will justifies choices that are radically contrary to the Gospel—racism, infidelity, abortion, theft. Freedom of will is the capacity to act with moral responsibility; it is not the ability to determine arbitrarily what constitutes moral right.
...........While we deeply respect the freedom of our fellow citizens, we nevertheless are profoundly convinced that free will cannot be cited as justification for society to allow moral choices that strike at the most fundamental rights of others. Such a choice is abortion, which constitutes the taking of innocent human life, and cannot be justified by any Catholic notion of freedom.
Kudos to the Archbishop for not letting a leader who professes to be Catholic distort the Catholic faith. Pelosi is free to believe in the "the church of Pelosi" and cite that all she wishes, but leave the Catholic faith out of it. It's clear she was raised with little understanding of it.
just as a note, I am amazed how many American people haven't heard and/or read the many famous European writers (Voltaire, Goethe, Balzac etc)....my English teacher(she's American) never even heard of Dostoevsky, let alone read him ( he is my favorite author, by the way). Also many Europeans have never read Edgar Allan Poe's poems and that is very sad.
Anyways, speaking of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, one of the characters says at one time something like " If God exists, He is responsible of all my acts.If God doesn't exist then I am free to do whatever I want"..aproximate translation. Morals change with the times we live in, but also with the culture we live in. For Indians, it is imoral to slaughter cows yet the rest of the world eats them. For some cultures, it is moral to abort a female fetus, yet illegal and imoral to abort a male fetus and so on.
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Angie, as an engineer I am amazed at how many liberal arts majors can not do even the simplest math. No one should be allowed to graduate college without delving into calculus. Dostoevsky is fine, but what do you know about Newton, Leibniz and Bernoulli (Daniel not Jakob)?
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I agree with you MikeC. This is why the American public struggles with critical thinking skills. All college majors should include math up to at least CalcI & a hard lab science or 2.
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I fully agree with the need to learn math and other sciences. They bring a mental discipline that is useful in all endeavours. I did quit math after 13 hours of calculus and a four hour course in Diff E. Math wasn't to become my specialty but the mental calisthenics help me in my lne of chemistry. They have also helped me as a writer in unrelated subjects.
I am semi-retired now and write articles on travel and history for newspapers and magazines as well as the occasional book review. They say crime doesn't pay and writers fare little better.
Math and science prepared me to ask difficult and often unpopular questions in historical articles. They often created a great deal of negative comment. My only solace was that I had documentary evidence of what I said while my adversaries relied on raw emotion. Facts are indeed troublesome things.
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I studied Socrate,Aristotel, Plato, Leibniz etc in highschool. My favorite philosopher is Nietzsche by far.
I had to have physics from the 6th grade until the 12 grade, chemistry from the 7th grade to the 12 grade, mathematics from the 1st grade to the 12 grade.Calculus was mandatory in the 12 grade.Each day of school was 6 hours, 5 days per week (actually, when the communists were in power, we had to go to school on Saturdays too but only for 4 hours). Each week of high school was 5 hours math, 5 hours physics, 4 hours chemistry, some history,geography,biology, foreign languages, 1 hour of philosophy per week in the 12th grade only etc. In elementary school we also had music, drawing classes but we always did math or physics instead. My nieces now have mandatory physics starting with the 5th grade and mandatory chemistry starting with the 6th grade and of course math, from the 1st-12th grade.
Well, let me tell you that that much science is not good either..believe it or not. It surely helped me to ace my science classes here in the United States but I just struggle with everything that is "Fine Arts" classes and which I am required to take! Writting essays for English 110 was the hardest class I ever dealt with..while for the American kids it seemed so easy. You know why? Because here in America kids are encouraged to "think", to be creative. There is no creativity involed with math..with one formula you solve a thousand problems.
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"There is no creativity involed with math." Not true, it is used everyday by engineers to create all the things around you.
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IDIOT !
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As a product of 12 years of Catholic School, I could have refuted that argument in 3rd or 4th grade. She is either deceitful or stupid. I think the latter.
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As usual Botox Peeloshi thinks the bible and Catholic teachings says what she wants it to say, not what it says.
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She is not even Catholic. I pray that she is not being permitted to take Holy Communion.
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Pro abortion rights politicians like Pelosi only claim to be Catholic to keep their family out of public schools.
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Pelosi has little understanding of anything that is moral.
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Angie ionizes the world view of non-absolutes - nothing is wrong and nothing is right. The goal of liberalism, progressivism, marxism, socialism, communism is to take the moral authoritive out of the argument - "remove God" and His absolutes - if this can be accomplished then it all conclusions are derived from whatever is most emotionally gratifying. The winner is he or she who "feels" the best to those who strive to live a boundriless life; a life free of the bounds that an absolute morality would impose. "Guilt" is God's gift to guide one from the destruction of peace in both their own life and the life's of those who love them. The liberal and progressive want guilt removed - too short sighted to see that the ultimate end of "relative right and wrong" deteriorates into either anarchy or state control - because individuals left to "do what I want to do" will ultimately begin to get in the way of each other.
The further we go from the necessities of life - the closer we come to our own regressive existance as a society.
Life - is to be sanctioned. The one who will destroy it in the womb will destroy it at any age if it becomes a burden or requires what they deem to be a "non-deserved" inconvieniance or sacrifice. If the absence of brain waves proves death - then the presence of brain waves proves life - but don't expect scientific law or logic to influence the ideologies of those who want to do what they want to do without the pesty presence of guilt.
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I may be wrong in my asumption, but I assume that everything you know about communism, marxism, socialism is from the books.I lived in a communist/socialist/marxist country. Communists hated religion and yes they tried to remove God out of people's life..but do you think they managed to do that? Oh, and did you know that under communism abortion was illegal in my contry and punished with many years in prison? Women who had abortions and got caught were interogated, beaten really bad to reveal the name of the doctor/person who performed the abortion and thrown in prison. Believe it or not, but the communist believed that abortion was extremely immoral!
As far as "remove God and His absolutes"... Kathleen has said a few times that her father was not religious yet he was very moral. I NEVER go to church, yet I feel guilty when I tell a lie. I feel guilty when I get flamed up in an argument and say words I don't mean and can't take them back. I feel guilty when I throw leftovers in the garbage when a kid must be going to bed hungry in some other part of the world.I feel guilty when I don't feel any guilt i.e. when a serial killer is executed.
Nobody will ever be able to remove God from one's heart.Even the most fiercely atheist believes in God (they just don't know it) and the proof is that they are still alive to say that they're atheist. A person who just realized that God does not exist beyond the smallest doubt would just kill himself/herself. But Dostoevsky explains it better than me...
There are very rare cases when a person didn't have brain waves yet was "alive". Animals have brain waves too so there must be something else that defines us as human beings and separates us from the rest of the living creatures who have brain waves.
I am a liberal in some ways and a conservative in other ways. I don't know how many liberals are in the Unites States, but the portray you try to paint here that these liberals are some Godless guilt-free boundriless imoral people is really scary.If that is true, then what does make the Unites States the greatest country in the world?
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Not sure what your point is about abortion and communism. Just because they did wrong and beat women somehow diminishes the horror of abortion?
My father was a Christian. He lived a Christian life. It's true that he didn't particularly like the formal aspect of church, but I'm convinced that if he had been exposed to the Catholic faith, he would have found a home there as I did. The problems he had with certain aspects of church had to do with the rules and teachings being different for every church. I think he would have appreciated that the teachings and doctrine and the mass of the Catholic faith are the same in Jackson Mississippi as it is in Paris France.
I have never portrayed liberals as Godless guiltless immoral people. I have only said they are wrong.
What makes us the greatest country in the world? One word. Freedom.
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Kathleen,
My response about liberals as Godless etc was addressed to wesP.
WesP portrays liberals as these horrible guiltless immoral people in his post. I think liberals form a good chunk of this country somewhere around what..30-40%? And I was asking him sarcastically how can America be considered the greatest country in the world when one of its own citizens thinks that 30-40% of his fellow citizens are this horrible creatures? If you as an American citizen don't believe that you and your fellow citizens (ALL of them..liberals, conservatives, independents etc) are the greatest in the world, how can others believe that? It is a little like Obama...if "he' doesn't see that America is the greatest, how can others see that? You can't say "Hey, half of my fellows citizens are horrible people (the liberals) but we are the greatest country in the whole world".I'm not sure if I make myself understood.
And about communism and abortion my point was that even an evil thing such as communism recognized that abortion is a horror and that proves to wesP that even communism had moral boundaries.
Ugh, my poor English impedes me to make myself understood.
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Actually only 22% of Americans identify themselves as liberal. 40% identify themselves as conservative and 35% identify themselves as moderate. So the vast majority of Americans are not liberal in the least. Maybe that's how we stay so great.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/conservatives-single-largest-ideological-group.aspx
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there you have it!Maybe that's the answer
I think what it makes a country great is its citizens...freedom doesn't come by itself and knocks at you door asking you if you want it. It is the people of that country who understand that freedom is maybe the ultimate goal and are willing to make any sacrifice to obtain it
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I am not a Catholic or even Christian. That said,I am surprised that the Catholic Church has not excommunicated such so-called Catholics. That would be the simplest way to make the disagreement perfectly clear.
As an aside: I am a scientist by profession. On my own, I read Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Montaigne, Voltaire and many other writers. It was simply a matter of curiosity which is the blessing or curse of all scientists.
In my profession, a person who exercised "free will" in choosing whether or not to believe the indirect evidence we have of the existence of electrons would not be accepted. There is no process for excommunication in my line of work but ridicule works equally well. Sadly, such ridicule is not reserved to patently stupid ideas but is often applied to those who have legitimate questions. I believe it was Einstein who said, "All that is necessary to refute a theory is a single proof to the contrary". I may have slightly misremembered the quote but the scientific "heretic" of today may be the genius of tomorrow.
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Angie sure is proud of her old book reports, apparently, but still uses the invented word filler "anyways"??
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If enough of the Church's hierarchy in America would deny the Sacraments to evil politicians, it might have an impact. It must be across the board though - 100%.
"Free will" is a test to see if we can make the right choices - the moral ones. Sadly, Pelosi and her ilk in Congress make immoral choices on a daily basis.
~(Ä)~
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Good post. I'd never have heard of this elsewhere. Yet another snapshot of the moral vacuum that our Speaker has. Something of the cult of moral greyness here.
We are, after all, discussing a person who views murder of children as free will but refuses to target muslim extremists with the stated goal of our destruction in the name of diversity. With such skewed priorities I wonder what her basic premises are? What is her "ideal?"
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What?!? Nancy Pelosi a moral idiot? Well who would've ever known? Except for every sentient being on the planet with the exception of Ms. Pelosi and possibly her enlightened and progressive constituency. It seems they're the ones who keep returning this insult to humanity to Congress.
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Actually, Ms. Pelosi, being without Christ as her Lord and Saviour, is only doing what comes naturally. With her in-bred sin (Adamic) nature, and without the transforming power of the Holy Spirit living in her, she is only trumpeting her core belief--one that's shared by millions of like minded "free willed" proponents throughout the USA.
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Angie,
You quote Dostoyevsky, but I'm not sure you understand him. The theme you refer to is one of the central evils against which the author argues. It is first espoused by Ivan, then acted upon by Smerdyakov. Dostoyevsky certainly never intended for anyone to take that idea as a justification for abandoning any consistent moral code. He was illustrating how such an amoral idea leads to evil results.
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"The theme you refer to is one of the central evils against which the author argues"
I know that!!
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I have been disappointed repeatedly at the education my children received in public school. One of my daughter's math assignments in 8th grade was to measure the length of our sofa. (In 8th grade I had algebra.) One of my kid's friends was visiting and we used the word "acclimate." She was a college graduate and did not know what the word meant. Our kids rarely argue using logic anymore, but base their conclusions upon their feelings.
As for what we were taught in Church and Sunday School, it bordered on the kind of lessons George Carlin used to joke about. Our teachers meant well but were not equipped to explain very much. Consequently far too many truths came across to us as being groundless. It took me many years to push past this and learn the truth for myself. Of course, I guess that's always been true for all humankind.
I'm saddened but not surprised that Nancy Pelosi does not see the error of her statements concerning Roman Catholic teachings. More saddening to me is my conviction (acknowledging that my conviction may turn out to be unfounded) that Speaker Pelosi will not be open to correction by the archbishop's explanation. As a nation and a society we will seek professional help to solve medical, legal or financial problems, but we insist on solving issues of faith individually, explicitly denying that clergy are indeed authorities on the subject, bearing in mind that not all of them are terribly articulate themselves. (Maybe that's part of the problem.) My hunch is that Speaker Pelosi will read the archbishop's response and say to herself, in effect, "Sez you."
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"Freedom of will is the capacity to act with moral responsibility; it is not the ability to determine arbitrarily what constitutes moral right."
The Archbishop of SF nails it.
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Pelosi is an old school Alinsky politician educated in Rules for Radicals and firmly believes the means justifies the end. She very generously twists lies, distortion of facts-figures into her communications and very conveniently ignores any uproar as a result.
Part of being an old-school politician is believing the general public is ignorant and sheep-like. The will believe anything they are told and vote for ay candidate if part of the right political party (ie Illinois recent Lt Gov candidate that just resigned). Alinsky did not foresee the masses having so much information, for fact-checking, at their fingertips -- the internet -- and that is why the internet is such a target for the Left.
Pelosi is a travesty to the founding principles of our country and some of her games/lies border on treason.
She should be fired from her speaker position and sent home to San Francisco permanently.
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I am a Catholic theologian and college professor. I'm use to hearing from my students misunderstandings about Catholic faith. Hopefully, education increases one's ability to think critically and to be able to give reasoned and well informed arguments for one's positions. Pelosi has shown repeatedly that she is unfamiliar with Catholic tradition (despite having been raised Catholic) and should either be quiet about it or become more informed before speaking. My guess though is that she will do neither. I see this kind of obstinate immaturity in some of my students. It is sad to see it in an elected official.
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Why doesn't the Archbishop do his job and push for Pelosi's excommunication?
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It's a bit complicated. First and foremost, Pelosi has excommunicated herself. It's a done deal. In our faith if you promote abortion then you have excommunicated yourself. To have a formal acknowlegment is more difficult. The Bishops and priests do not want to give the impression that we reject sinners. We would rather bring the sinners back into the fold. So it's hard for them.
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It is not an impression that they do not want to give, rather it is an opportunity they know will never be offered outside the Church. If we excommunicate people publicly and with the force of canon law, where will they go for the 'cure'? To the secular community? To the liberal protestant denominations? What chance do they have of ever understanding and coming to an acceptance of the truth? If the Church is a hospital for sinners, who do we turn out? It does not mean, watering down the truth but rather speaking it often, clearly and boldly...medicine for their sickness...vaccination for us. But then, who of us never sins?
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This is an excellent commentary. Many Catholics who are pro-choice should read this and learn from it.
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Too bad that Pelosi doesn't subscribe to our use of free will to determine other more common issues in life, like our purchase (or not) of health insurance! Imagine, jail time possible for a decision that should be individual. But then, progressives are against individual choices except abortion.
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