c. 2008 Religion News Service
Pelosi agrees to talk with archbishop on abortion stance
WASHINGTON (RNS) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accepted her hometown archbishop’s invitation to talk about Catholic teachings, but avoided mentioning her recent statements on abortion, which have been condemned by 10 Catholic prelates.
“I welcome the opportunity for our personal conversation to go beyond our earlier most cordial exchange about immigration and the needs of the poor to church teaching on other significant matters,” Pelosi wrote San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer.
A spokesman for Pelosi, D-Calif., said the letter was delivered by hand to Niederauer on Friday (Sept. 5).
That same day, Niederauer said Pelosi’s recent statements on abortion “are in serious conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church.”
On “Meet the Press” last month, Pelosi said “doctors of the church” disagreed on when life begins, and said abortion “continues to be an issue of controversy” in the Catholic Church.
At least 10 bishops have publicly condemned those remarks, saying the church has believed abortion is wrong since the first century.
“I regret the necessity of addressing these issues in so public a forum,” Niederauer said, “but the widespread consternation among Catholics made it unavoidable.”
Niederauer also said Catholics are not supposed to “pick and choose” which teachings to follow and that moral issues should not be dictated by opinion polls.
The San Francisco prelate added that “many Catholics” have written him about Pelosi’s remarks, “very often” asking him whether the congresswoman should be allowed to receive Communion.
Niederauer noted the disagreement among U.S. Catholic bishops about denying Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, but didn’t state his opinion on the matter.
_ Daniel Burke
Vatican disciplines director of Medjugorje shrine
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican has disciplined one of the promoters of a world-famous Bosnian shrine to the Virgin Mary, while it investigates him on charges of heresy and sexual misdeeds.
The Rev. Tomislav Vlasic has been confined to an Italian monastery and forbidden to make public appearances or hear confessions during the investigation, according to documents posted on the Web site of the Catholic diocese with jurisdiction over the shrine at Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
One of the documents refers to accusations of “heresy and schism, as well as scandalous acts” against the Sixth Commandment, which according to Catholic teaching, forbids adultery and other “sins gravely contrary to chastity.”
The order was issued jointly by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is conducting the investigation, and the Franciscan order to which Vlasic belongs.
Medjugorje has supposedly been the site of more than 40,000 apparitions of the Virgin Mary since 1981, drawing millions of pilgrims to the Herzegovinan town.
However, the Catholic Church has never endorsed the apparitions, and in 1985, the Vatican banned church-sponsored pilgrimages there.
According to a report by Catholic News Service, Vlasic was one of the spiritual advisers to the six persons who claim to have received the visions as children. He left Medjugorje in 1988, following a sex scandal involving a nun, and moved to Italy, where he founded a group that promotes belief in the apparitions.
_ Francis X. Rocca
Quote of the Day: Actress and Episcopal priest Ann Gillespie
(RNS) “I got an e-mail from a fan who said she was coming to church to meet me. I thought, `Whatever it takes to get them in the door.”’
_ The Rev. Ann Gillespie, who had a role in the TV show “Beverly Hills 90210” and is now an Episcopal priest in Alexandria, Va. She was quoted by The Associated Press. (Sept. 8)
KRE/RB END RNS
