Because of her longstanding
support for abortion, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic,
must be denied Communion under the law of the Catholic Church, said
Cardinal Raymond Burke, reports CNS News.'Certainly this is a case when Canon 915 must be applied,' said Cardinal Burke in an interview reprinted on September 5 in The Wanderer, a national Catholic weekly.
'This is a person who obstinately, after repeated admonitions, persists in a grave sin--cooperating with the crime of procured abortion--and still professes to be a devout Catholic.'
'This is a prime example of what Blessed John Paul II referred to as the situation of Catholics who have divorced their faith from their public life and therefore are not serving their brothers and sisters in the way that they must--in safeguarding and promoting the life of the innocent and defenseless unborn, in safeguarding and promoting the integrity of marriage and the family,' said the Cardinal.
In mid-June at a Capitol Hill press conference, Pelosi was asked if there is a moral difference between aborting a baby at 26 weeks and what Dr Kermit Gosnell did in Philadelphia in delivering babies alive at 23 weeks and then severing their spinal cords to kill them?
Pelosi did not answer the question directly but said, '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, and that’s where you’re taking it and I’m not going there.'
It was in reference to that quote that Cardinal Burke was asked, 'How are we to react to such a seemingly scandalous statement? Is this a case where Canon 915 might properly be applied?' Burke replied: 'Certainly this is a case when Canon 915 must be applied.'