House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s repeated public support for abortion is a “grave sin” that means she should not be admitted to holy Communion, out of concern for her spiritual state, said Cardinal Raymond Burke. Cardinal Burke, who heads the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican's highest court of appeal other than the Pope, explained that Canon 915 of canon law “must be applied” in Pelosi’s case. That canon states that people who are “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin” should not be admitted to Communion. “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,” Cardinal Burke said in a July interview with the Minneapolis-based newspaper The Catholic Servant, republished recently in the Catholic newspaper The Wanderer. “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,” the cardinal said, noting that Catholic political leaders have a duty to safeguard and promote “the life of the innocent and defenseless unborn.” Cardinal Burke is prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest legal body in the Catholic Church. Rep. Pelosi, D-Calif., a Catholic, has long supported legalized abortion. At a June press conference, she responded to a question about the difference between legal abortion and the crimes of Kermit Gosnell, a notorious Philadelphia abortionist convicted of murdering several infants born alive during failed abortions. “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,” she said. Cardinal Burke said it is “just false and wrong” to say abortion and related matters are questions about the Catholic faith that have no role in politics. “I fear for Congresswoman Pelosi if she does not come to understand how gravely in error she is. I invite her to reflect upon the example of St. Thomas More, who acted rightly in a similar situation, even at the cost of his life,” he said. He noted that the rejection of abortion is not only a matter of Catholic teaching, but part of the “natural moral law written on every heart” and “illuminated” by Jesus Christ’s teaching, passion and death. Cardinal Burke added that it is a “contradiction” and a “scandal” when high-profile political figures who reject Catholic teaching on life and the family are honored at Catholic university commencement ceremonies, saying that this helps “contribute to the sinfulness of the individuals involved.” He deplored a “false sense of dialogue” in the wider culture and in some areas of the Catholic Church, where people simply “pretend to dialogue about open and egregious violations of the moral law.”
The spiritual climax of the Gospel of John, as Father John Waiss points out, occurs at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus utters his parting words: “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold your mother!” (John 19:26-27). While these words were addressed to the Apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Church has long understood this moment as a universal adoption. To truly image Christ, we must share in His parentage; if we embrace God as our spiritual Father but reject Mary as our mother, we treat Christ as a half-brother rather than our "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). As Origen noted as early as the third century, the profound depths of the Gospel are only accessible to those who, like John, rest their heads on Jesus’ breast and receive Mary into their own homes. This maternal role is deeply rooted in biblical typology, positioning Mary as the fulfillment of the great mothers of the Old Covenant. She is the New Eve , the mother of all the living according ...