A Catholic priest known for his pro-life activism has written a letter to House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., charging it's impossible for her to be a faithful Catholic and promote abortion.
"You stated at [a] press briefing on June 13, 'As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this. I don't think it should have anything to do with politics,'" wrote Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life.
Pelosi was responding to a question about convicted late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell just as the House was voting on a bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks.
The question was, "What is the moral difference between what Dr. Gosnell did to a baby born alive at 23 weeks and aborting her moments before birth?"
"With this statement," Pavone wrote, "you make a mockery of the Catholic faith and of the tens of millions of Americans who consider themselves 'practicing and respectful Catholics' and who find the killing of children – whether inside or outside the womb – reprehensible."
Pavone told Pelosi she spoke of Catholic faith "as if it is supposed to hide us from reality instead of lead us to face reality, as if it is supposed to confuse basic moral truths instead of clarify them, and as if it is supposed to help us escape the hard moral questions of life rather then help us confront them."
"Whatever Catholic faith you claim to respect and practice, it is not the faith that the Catholic Church teaches," the priest wrote. "And I speak for countless Catholics when I say that it's time for you to stop speaking as if it were."
Pavone wrote: "Mrs. Pelosi, for decades you have gotten away with betraying and misrepresenting the Catholic faith as well as the responsibilities of public office. We have had enough of it. Either exercise your duties as a public servant and a Catholic, or have the honesty to formally renounce them."
Priests for Life posted a statement from Pavone praising the support in the U.S. House for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
The bill would protect unborn children from the pain of abortion from the fetal age of 20 weeks and beyond.
"For years, Priests for Life has supported the passage of this type of bill on the state level, and we have strongly advocated for its passage on the federal level as well," Pavone said.
He also noted that President Obama, who has said he would veto the protections for unborn children, has "views on abortion [that] are extreme, dangerous to women as well as to their children, antithetical to the principles on which our nation was founded, and simply barbaric."
"Nobody with his views on such a fundamental issue belongs in public office," he said.
Meanwhile, Breitbart.com blogger Debra Heine noted that Vice President Joe Biden said it was "Christian" to hand out amnesty to illegal aliens who broke the law to enter the United States.
"Since Biden considers himself somewhat of an arbiter of what Christians should and shouldn't do, I wonder what he would say about Nancy Pelosi's comments characterizing late-term abortions as 'sacred ground,' which has drawn fire from a national organization of Catholic priests active in pro-life work," Heine wrote.
"Joe Biden of course agrees with Pelosi on abortion, so I guess he would say Father Pavone is not doing the 'Christian thing' in confronting Pelosi, this way. He's doing the 'judgmental thing,' which as you know, is always bad," she said.
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