c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is clearly confused about Catholic teaching on life issues. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Tom Brokaw asked her: “When does life begin?” She answered, “We don’t know.”

Pelosi said “that as an ardent, practicing Catholic,” this is an issue she’s 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.”

Pelosi is wrong, and some Catholic bishops have tried to correct the record.

I don’t think the Democrats are worried.

A few years ago I rode the New York-to-Washington shuttle with a prominent politician who is a Catholic and a Democrat. He said that U.S. bishops collectively squandered their moral authority with the priest pederasty scandal. Whether for so-called “liberal” or “conservative” causes, he said, Catholic bishops are the political touch of death. No one listens to them.

Including, it seems, Catholic-educated Pelosi. While the bishops try to straighten out Pelosi, who confuses medieval discussions about “ensoulment” with historical teachings on abortion, the Democrats are trying to sound like they are both for and against abortion.

Brokaw backed Pelosi into a theological corner by playing part of a televised interview in which California Pastor Rick Warren asked Sen. Barack Obama (and, later, Sen. John McCain), “At what point does a baby get human rights?”

Catholicism calls that two questions: First, is the embryo human life? Second, when does the embryo become a person?

Obama addressed both questions. He said “If you believe that life begins at conception … then I can’t argue with you.” He also basically said deciding when the embryo becomes a person was above his paygrade.

After seeing the Warren-Obama replay, Pelosi muddled Brokaw’s question. She said _ incorrectly _ that the church only decided human life begins at conception “like maybe 50 years” ago.

Wrong, Madame Speaker. “The Didache” (the teachings of the apostles collected a generation after Christ) says, “You shall not procure an abortion, nor destroy a newborn child.” Several church fathers _ from Tertullian to St. Jerome _ and the apostolic constitutions all forbade abortion. Some, however, confused matters by talking about ensoulment, asking when the human being became a human person.

The ensoulment debate seems stuck in Pelosi’s memory, and could be what she was talking about. She said St. Augustine thought ensoulment occurred about 30 days after conception.

But trying to figure out ensoulment only leads to debate over whether abortion is merely similar to murder (killing a human being) or actually equal to murder (killing a human person).

No one knows for sure when the developing human being becomes a person with a soul. It might be at conception, or it might not. So Christianity, with other religions, has historically forbidden abortion in the face of this dilemma because the human being is always potentially a human person. The earliest fertilized egg is not a future banana or frog. It is human life.

What’s fascinating is that Sens. Joe Biden and John McCain agree that life begins at conception. And although neither expects (or possibly wants) help from the bishops, McCain has the most to gain by Pelosi’s misstep.

Pelosi is at best misinformed, and has misinformed a nation. The Catholic bishops will try to counter her bad information. And Catholic politicians, who have increasingly ignored a lot of Catholic teaching, don’t seem to think that what the bishops say will make any difference.

Seatbelts, everybody. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

(Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic Studies.)

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