{"id":94,"date":"2008-08-25T10:24:12","date_gmt":"2008-08-25T10:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html"},"modified":"2008-08-25T10:24:12","modified_gmt":"2008-08-25T10:24:12","slug":"abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html","title":{"rendered":"Abortion, Augustine and…Nancy Pelosi?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Nancy<\/span>And Aristotle, Aquinas, Archbishop Chaput and various Bishops, and Brokaw…All weigh in on the House Speaker’s response to Brokaw on Sunday morning’s “Meet the Press”<\/a> (scroll to the end) in which he raised–yet again–the age-old question, “When does life begin?” <\/p>\n

Pelosi’s response did not, to say the least, do justice to the Catholic tradition:<\/p>\n

\n

<\/span>MR. BROKAW:  Senator Obama saying the question of when life begins is above his pay grade, whether you’re looking at it scientifically or theologically. If he were to come to you and say, “Help me out here, Madame Speaker.  When does life begin?” what would you tell him?<\/p>\n

<\/span>
\n\"Augustine.jpg\"<\/span>REP. PELOSI:  I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time.  And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition.  And Senator–St. Augustine said at three months.  We don’t know. The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose.  Roe v. Wade talks about very clear definitions of when the child–first trimester, certain considerations; second trimester; not so third trimester.  There’s very clear distinctions.  This isn’t about abortion on demand, it’s about a careful, careful consideration of all factors and–to–that a woman has to make with her doctor and her god.  And so I don’t think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins.  As I say, the Catholic Church for centuries has been discussing this, and there are those who’ve decided…<\/p>\n

<\/span>MR. BROKAW:  The Catholic Church at the moment feels very strongly that it…<\/p>\n

<\/span>REP. PELOSI:  I understand that.<\/p>\n

<\/span>MR. BROKAW:  …begins at the point of conception.<\/p>\n

<\/span>REP. PELOSI:  I understand.  And this is like maybe 50 years or something like that.  So again, over the history of the church, this is an issue of controversy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Brokaw was taking up what Rick Warren began at Saddleback, when he asked Obama and McCain that question–though without exploring the lameness (Obama’s “above my pay grade”) or inconsistency (McCain’s “stem cell research is okay”) of those answers. On the one hand, it is good to see Augustine, as well as Aristotle before him and Aquinas after him, among others, being discussed in the public square. Very Catholic, we must admit. But  “Meet the Press” doesn’t seem like the most enlightening forum for such an issue. Wouldn’t the discussion more proper to that venue be about public policy on abortion?  <\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/span>Pelosi’s response earned the first and sharpest retort<\/a> from Denver’s Archbishop Chaput, whose statement one commenter likened to “an attack ad.” Maybe not quite, but he’s doughty, as ever: “Catholics who make excuses for [abortion–whether they’re famous or not–fool only themselves and abuse the fidelity of those Catholics who do sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and live their Catholic faith.<\/p>\n

The U.S. bishops’ Pro-Life and Doctrinal committee heads responded here<\/a>, and Washington’s Archbishop Donald Wuerl also weighed in with a measured statement<\/a> that included this paragraph:<\/p>\n

\n

We respect the right of elected officials such as Speaker Pelosi to address matters of public policy that are before them, but the interpretation of Catholic faith has rightfully been entrusted to the Catholic bishops. Given this responsibility to teach, it is important to make this correction for the record.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As regards public policy, it is interesting that the final part of Pelosi’s answer has received less notice, and no response (that I’ve seen) from church authorities:<\/p>\n

\n

REP. PELOSI: … But it is, it is also true that God has given us, each of us, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And we want abortions to be safe, rare, and reduce the number of abortions. That’s why we have this fight in Congress over contraception.  My Republican colleagues do not support contraception. If you want to reduce the number of abortions, and we all do, we must–it would behoove you to support family planning and, and contraception, you would think. But that is not the case. So we have to take–you know, we have to handle this as respectfully–this is sacred ground. We have to handle it very respectfully and not politicize it, as it has been–and I’m not saying Rick Warren did, because I don’t think he did, but others will try to.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The best discussion I’ve seen so far, and by far, is over at dotCommonweal<\/a>, where several pros weigh in with thoughtful exchanges. Check it out here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All in all, the Pelosi-Brokaw-Bishops exchange illustrates once again not only the difficulty in linking religious precepts with public policy, but also the difficulty in being a Catholic in public life. With Biden on the ticket, it seems likely this debate will continue. Will it scare McCain away from choosing a Catholic veep?   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And Aristotle, Aquinas, Archbishop Chaput and various Bishops, and Brokaw…All weigh in on the House Speaker’s response to Brokaw on Sunday morning’s “Meet the Press” (scroll to the end) in which he raised–yet again–the age-old question, “When does life begin?” Pelosi’s response did not, to say the least, do justice to the Catholic tradition: MR. BROKAW: …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,12,1,9,3],"tags":[37,483,71],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-catholics","category-election-08","category-religion-in-the-public-square","category-u-s-constitution","tag-abortion-2","tag-catholics","tag-nancy-pelosi"],"yoast_head":"\nAbortion, Augustine and...Nancy Pelosi? - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Abortion, Augustine and...Nancy Pelosi? - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"And Aristotle, Aquinas, Archbishop Chaput and various Bishops, and Brokaw…All weigh in on the House Speaker’s response to Brokaw on Sunday morning’s “Meet the Press” (scroll to the end) in which he raised–yet again–the age-old question, “When does life begin?” Pelosi’s response did not, to say the least, do justice to the Catholic tradition: MR. BROKAW: …\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-25T10:24:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/files\/import\/imgs\/Nancy%20Pelosi.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Gibson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Abortion, Augustine and...Nancy Pelosi? - Progressive Revival","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Abortion, Augustine and...Nancy Pelosi? - Progressive Revival","og_description":"And Aristotle, Aquinas, Archbishop Chaput and various Bishops, and Brokaw…All weigh in on the House Speaker’s response to Brokaw on Sunday morning’s “Meet the Press” (scroll to the end) in which he raised–yet again–the age-old question, “When does life begin?” Pelosi’s response did not, to say the least, do justice to the Catholic tradition: MR. BROKAW: …","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html","og_site_name":"Progressive Revival","article_published_time":"2008-08-25T10:24:12+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/files\/import\/imgs\/Nancy%20Pelosi.jpg"}],"author":"David Gibson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html","name":"Abortion, Augustine and...Nancy Pelosi? - Progressive Revival","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/files\/import\/imgs\/Nancy%20Pelosi.jpg","datePublished":"2008-08-25T10:24:12+00:00","dateModified":"2008-08-25T10:24:12+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/files\/import\/imgs\/Nancy%20Pelosi.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/files\/import\/imgs\/Nancy%20Pelosi.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/abortion-augustine-andnancy-pe.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Abortion, Augustine and…Nancy Pelosi?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/","name":"Progressive Revival","description":"Politics from the New Religious Progressives","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71","name":"David Gibson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","caption":"David Gibson"},"description":"DAVID GIBSON is an award-winning religion journalist, author, filmmaker, and a convert to Catholicism. He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}