Politicians Who Want The Church To Stay Out Of Their Business Should Stay Out Of The Church's Business

A Fr. De Celles gave an interesting homily in the Washington DC area (story here), and directly referred to Pelosi:

With that background, he turned to Pelosi’s comments. In response to the notion that there is confusion about the issue of abortion in Catholic theology, Fr. De Celles explains:

From the first century teaching in the book called the Didache: “You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.” To the 20th century teaching of Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae: “by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his successors…. I declare that direct abortion … always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.”

Fr. De Celles also answered Pelosi’s distortion of Saint Augustine, who “like all the Fathers, condemned abortion from the first moment of conception.” Augustine’s musings on when the soul entered the unborn child had little to do with the abortion question, for he agreed that abortion was always morally wrong. And in speculating that it occurred at the “quickening,” Augustine was limited to Fourth Century science. Fr. De Celles has little doubt that Saint Augustine would accept today’s science that human life begins at conception.

Fr. De Celles, drawn into the theological debate by a self-professed Catholic politician, reminded Pelosi, and those Catholic politicians that agree with her, that “it is always a grave or mortal sin for a politician to support abortion.” To those that argue that a priest shouldn’t enter the political fray, he responded that “it was the Speaker of the House who started this; she, and other pro-abortion Catholic politicians, regularly cross over into teaching theology and doctrine. And it’s our job to try clean up their mess.”

Full homily text is here.