The Speaker And The Bishops

I can't avoid thinking that perhaps over the past year, the US Bishops came proactively to an agreement-to-disagree on how to handle the issue of barring Catholic politicians from communion if they advocate abortion -- I can't help but wonder if Abp Cordileone was implicitly referring to such a thing in this passage from his interview with America magazine:

I suppose there will be a variety of opinions, but I think as bishops, we respect each other’s decisions and matters like this. Each bishop has to decide in accordance with his conscience in these and other types of situations as well. And they’re usually very complex. There are a number of different values and priorities to weigh in taking an action or not taking an action. What good will it do? What evil will it avoid? What might be the side effects? All these things have to be weighed, and we can come to different prudential judgments, using our conscience.

I note that while a number of conservative bishops have supported Abp Cordileone's action, liberals like Cardinal Cupich have remained silent, while Cardinal Gregory of Washington, who permits Pelosi to receive communion there, has said nothing publicly, and the archdiocese has so far not answered inquries from the press. As a result, there have been no public squabbles, which I think is a positive development. On the other hand, Speaker Pelosi on Tuesday did make public statements about Abp Cordileone's action:

“This is not just about terminating a pregnancy,” Pelosi said. “These same people are against contraception, family planning, in vitro-fertilization. It’s a blanket thing. They use abortion as the front man for it while they try to undo so much. That’s what they tried to do in the Affordable Care Act, which didn’t have anything about terminating an abortion — a pregnancy.”

. . . “Now, our archbishop has been vehemently against LGBTQ rights, too, in fact, he led the way in some of the initiatives on — an initiative on the ballot in California. So this decision, taking us to privacy and precedent, is very dangerous in the lives of so many of the American people.”

The first part of the statement is misleading in several ways. The Catholic Church is not against family planning; it's against artificial birth control but not against natural methods. In vitro fertilization at minimum involves discarding in vitro fertilized embryos, but it may also involve aborting multiple pregnancies in the mother as a result of the procedure. These aren't small issues.

In effect, Pelosi's statements imply that she's continuing to hold what Abp Cordileone in the interview calls her "more and more extreme and more and more aggressive" views on reproduction and sexuality, attacking the Church's views on matters beyond abortion, bringing in by implication the issue of same-sex marriage and using the political shorthand LGBTQ. Abp Cordileone says, "I know I’m going to be accused of being punitive, of being political," but the problem for the bishops and indeed Pope Francis is that Speaker Pelosi is a politician, a very senior and influential one, and she herself is addressing the problem on a political level.

This brings me to Bp Barron's op-ed in the New York Post almost a year ago (I don't believe he's made any public statement on Abp Cordileone's specific action over Pelosi):

The Catholic bishops of the United States are facing a great deal of political pressure these days. We are told that we must pursue dialogue with those who disagree with the divine and natural law on the issue of abortion — or who agree privately as Catholic believers but decline to govern according to this moral teaching.

So he's acknowledging it's a political issue, and the bishops are more or less forced to be involved with it.

I’m the son of a dyed-in-the-wool Chicago Catholic Democrat. My father, whose family was very involved in city politics, would sooner have become a Lutheran than vote Republican. But my trouble with modern Democrats, I explained, has to do with abortion policy, where the party has lately staked out an especially extreme position.

My interlocutors insisted upon the necessity of an ongoing dialogue between pro-choice politicians and the Roman church. I replied, “OK, I’m with you. In fact, the Catholic Church, though it opposes all abortions, would be willing to support legislation that sets at least some limits to the procedure. If you’ll give even a little bit, we’re happy to talk.”

The problem is that Democrats have been locked into what Bp Barron calls an extreme and intransigent position, to the point that they won't even support protection for infants who survive abortion and are born alive. And while he doesn't go this far in the op-ed, nevertheless, over the past year, Democrat politicians have become more extreme over other areas of sexuality, advocating "gender affirming" surgery for pre-teens and insisting that transgendered men should compete in women's sports.

Abp Cordileone echoes Bp Barron in saying of the speaker, "her advocacy for codifying the Roe decision into federal law [is] becoming more and more extreme and more and more aggressive". And insofar as it's a legislative effort, it's political, and it's hard for Catholics, especially bishops, not to get involved in it. The positive side, though, is that Pelosi's position is looking more and more like a political loser, and it's a major reason why she'll likely lose the speakership in November.

Novertheless, the silence of both the liberal US bishops and the vague signal from Pope Francis that issues of life and death can't be defined down to matters of "choice" suggest that the balance is shifting even there.