On Meet the Press (Aug. 24), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated, regarding abortion, that "as an ardent, practicing Catholic," and one who has "studied the issue for a long time", she believed that the doctors of the church were sufficiently confused on the matter of human life, that "it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to choose [abortion]." Pelosi was basing her argument on scholastic debates over the moment of animation (infusation of the soul), which, some believed to occur at the "quickening" of the child in the womb.

Pelosi's self-serving sorti into moral theology is way off base. Archbishop Chaput of Denver responded in a pastoral letter that the issue of animation has never affected the church's teaching that abortion is a grave evil, and that this moral position has been consistent from its earliest times; a position clearly explained and upheld in the Catholic Catechism (CC2270-2275), and documented by the authoritative historical work the Jesuit theologian John Connery. Chaput further quotes the eminent Lutheran theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who died by hanging in a concentration camp for opposing the nazi extermination of the Jews), that: "Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise the question of whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder." Chaput states, finally, that "Catholics who make excuses for it [abortion] fool only themselves and abuse the fidelity of those Catholics who do sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and their Catholic faith."

In his diplomatic reply, Chaput refrains from pointing out that the church imposes a canonical penalty of excommunication latae sententiae (automatic by the very commission of the act) on any "Catholic" who cooperates formally in an abortion (CC2272). How "formal" the cooperation of someone who establishes, defends, and sustains the legal structure that abets the murder of unborn children would be, is beyond my judgement. But it's clear that Pelosi's public claim to ardent Catholic practice is hypocritical nonsense.