CNS' Holy War Against Nancy Pelosi

The uber-Catholics who run CNSNews.com despise Pelosi so much, they've declared her insufficiently Catholic, similar to their attacks on President Biden -- and have even attacked her for advocating prayer.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 11/29/2021

Terry Jeffrey

An anonymous CNS writer seemed upset with Pelosi in a January article in which she "expressed her view that pro-life Catholic and Evangelical voters had been responsible for electing Donald Trump president in 2016 after responding to Trump’s 'dog whistle' about Supreme Court justices." The anonymous writer didn't dispute that but instead got nitpicky by noting that Brett Kavanaugh wasn't originally on the list of judges Trump said he would appoint.

CNS also trotted out the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, where Pelosi is from, to attack Pelosi:

• A anonymously written Jan. 22 article featured the archbishop "sharply criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.)—who represents San Francisco—for attacking Catholics who voted for President Donald Trump to advance the pro-life cause of protecting unborn babies from abortion," quoting him as saying, "To begin with the obvious: Nancy Pelosi does not speak for the Catholic Church."
• A May 3 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman hyped how the archbishop "explains why Catholic politicians (and other public Catholics) who support abortion must not receive Holy Communion and why they must stop pretending that advocating for abortion is compatible with the Catholic faith," though he admitted that the archbishop did not specifically name Pelosi or Biden.
• Chapman promoted the archbishop again in a May 17 article quoting him saying that Pelosi advocates "practices that are gravely evil" and that it's his job to determine whether she deserves to receive Communion.

CNS also got mad that Pelosi had opinions about her faith and how she practices it. Craig Bannister complained in a May 14 article that "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who supports legalized abortion, said at her press briefing on Thursday that she can use her "own judgement" on whether to take Holy Communion at a Catholic Mass," adding that "she was “pleased” with a recent letter on the subject of pro-abortion Catholic politicians receiving communion the Vatican sent to U.S. bishops" urging them against a blanket refusal to Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. (The May 17 Chapman article was in response to this.)

CNS even takes stealth potshots at Pelosi over her support for abortion rights. An anonymously written Jan. 22 article noted that Pelosi issued a statement "celebrating the 48th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that declared abortion a constitutionally protected right" -- while including an undated file photo of Pelosi holding a baby. An anonymous June 21 article noting that Pelosi "put out a statement on Sunday to mark World Refugee Day and note that every 'precious life torn apart by violence and catastrophe is a tragedy'" is illustrated with the same photo.

Failed gotcha

The uber-Catholics at CNS tried -- and failed -- to own the Catholic Pelosi on a discussion about her religion. From an anonymously written April 2020 article:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) said on PBS “NewsHour” on Tuesday that she had an “Epiphany” on Easter that told her she “must call out the truth” on the COVID-19 pandemic and as a result of that Epiphany she has been criticizing President Donald Trump.

“Easter,” Pelosi said, “I had sort of an epiphany, an epiphany on Easter, that said: ‘We must call out the truth on this.’ Because we cannot--It's one thing to overlook what happened in the past and be sad about that. It's another thing to let the misrepresentations continue.

“And so that's why I am saying that he's a poor leader,” Pelosi continued—referring to Trump.

[...]

In Pelosi’s Catholic faith, the feast of the Epiphany is celebrated on January 6. It commemorates the day the Magi visited the baby Jesus and became the first gentiles to meet Christ.

CNS is rather clumsily arguing that Pelosi can't keep her religious holiday straight and rather stupidly claiming that one cannot possibly have an epiphany on Easter and that epiphany has only a religious meaning. The holy day of Epiphany describes the revelation of baby Jesus as divine to the Magi, something that might actually be more accurately described as a theophany.

While the dictionary offers a religious definition of epiphany, it also offers a non-religious one as well "a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience."

In other words, it's possible and permissible to have an epiphany on Easter. And, thus, CNS' attempt to own Pelosi utterly fails.

The prayer war

In 2018, CNS published a mocking column by John Horvat II sneering at her call to pray for Dreamers, huffing that Pelosi "calls herself Catholic" and accusing her of having "politicized" her call to prayer. Last October, Susan Jones mocked her again under the headline "Pelosi, After Provoking Trump, Urges Prayers for His 'Health'," blaming her and Democrats for "deliberately provok[ing]" Trump (and , of course, not Trump for being so lacking in self-control that he allowed himself to be provoked).

After touting in February 2020 how Trump lashed out at Pelosi for allegedly "say[ing] I pray for you when they know that that's not so," CNS spent the next several months being fascinated by Pelosi's various calls to prayer:

• Pelosi: 'Why Don't We Begin With a Prayer'
• Pelosi: ‘I Am Always Advocating Prayer. I Am a Big Believer in Prayer’
• Nancy Pelosi Tells Stephen Colbert: ‘I Am Always a Believer in Prayer, as I Know You Are as Well’
• Pelosi Urges Colleagues: ‘During This Holy Season for People of Many Faiths, Let Us Pray...’
• Pelosi Calls for ‘World Prayer...That God Would Enlighten Those Responsible for the Common Good’
• Nancy Pelosi Retweets: ‘May We Use This Moment of Isolation to Pray as One Body’
• Nancy Pelosi: ‘I Always Pray for the President'
• Pelosi Spends Moment in Head-Bowed Silence as She Begins Press Briefing
• Pelosi: ‘We Don’t Have a Vaccine and...Pray That Science Will Be an Answer to Our Prayers in That Regard’
• Pelosi: 'Let's Pray for Those Who Are Hungry; Let's Pray Harder for Those Who Will Not Feed Them'
• Nancy Pelosi Sends a Prayer to Her Democratic Colleagues: ‘Pray Harder for the Wealthy...’
• Nancy Pelosi on President Trump: ‘I Pray for Him Every Day’
• Pelosi: 'I Pray...the President's Heart Will Be Open to the Millions of People Who Have Been Affected'
• Pelosi on Trump: ‘My Heart is Full of Prayers for Him’

It's unclear what CNS wants its readers to take away from its fixation on Pelosi and prayer. Its uber-Catholic editors like Terry Jeffrey and Michael W. Chapman have never respected the way Pelosi conducts her Catholic faith, so they obviously don't believe her calls to prayer are sincere. So why promote them at all, except as a sort of backhanded acknowledgment that even the despised Pelosi believes in prayer?

That would certainly conflict with the multi-pronged war against her at CNS, though -- which may be why it stopped highlighting them after the November 2020 election.

CNS helps Pelosi's bishop attack her

CNS ramped up its holy war by serving as a stenographer to the archbishop of her San Francisco diocese, dutifully repeating his partisan attacks on her. Editor Terry Jeffrey wrote in a July 23 article:

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, whose archdiocese includes all of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district, issued a statement on Thursday rebuking Pelosi for a statement she made at her press briefing that day explaining why she is pushing for federal funding of abortion.

At her briefing, Pelosi had an exchange with a reporter about the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies appropriations bill for fiscal 2022 that is moving through the House and that, as the Appropriations Committee puts it, includes "repealing the discriminatory Hyde Amendment."

[...]

Later that day, Archbishop Cordileone put out a statement. It was headlined: “Statement of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defending efforts to permit federal funding of elective abortions.”

“Let me repeat: no one can claim to be a devout Catholic and condone the killing of innocent human life, let alone have the government pay for it,” said the archbishop.

An anonymously written Aug. 6 article hyped Cordileone's attacks again under the headline "Pelosi’s Archbishop Smacks Her Again for Supporting Tax-Funded Abortion: ‘Catholics Stand for Human Life’":

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco, who presides over the archdiocese where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) lives, sent out a tweet on Sunday of a story in LifeNews.com that was headlined: “Nancy Pelosi Blocks Vote on Bill to Ban Taxpayer-Funded Abortions for the 55th Time.”

“The Hyde Amendment saved 2.4 million innocent babies,” Archbishop Cordileone said in his tweet. “Catholics stand for human life and core human rights.”

A Sept. 6 article -- also anonymously written -- started to sound repetitious in parroting Cordileone again:

Catholic Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, the diocese where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) resides, published a commentary in the Washington Post on Sunday stating that you cannot be a good Catholic and support the killing of unborn children through abortion.

“You cannot be a good Catholic and support expanding a government-approved right to kill innocent human beings,” said Cordileone. “The answer to crisis pregnancies is not violence but love, for both mother and child.”

Cordileone specifically addressed the response of both Pelosi and President Biden—both of who profess to be Catholics—to Supreme Court’s refusal to issue an injunction against a Texas law that bans the abortion of babies who have a detectable heartbeat.

CNS cranked up the biased attacks with a pair of Oct. 18 articles, both by managing editor Michael W. Chapman. The first hyped an anti-Pelosi prayer campaign the archbishop was promoting:

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who has repeatedly implored pro-abortion Catholic politicians, especially House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), to accept the pro-life teaching of the Church, recently called on all Catholics to say some special prayers (and fast) every Friday for Pelosi to have a conversion of heart.

[...]

“Speaker Pelosi speaks fondly of her children," he added. "She clearly has a maternal heart. Pope Francis has called abortion murder, the equivalent of hiring a hitman to solve a problem. The solution to a woman in a crisis pregnancy is not violence but love."

"Please join me in praying the rosary and fasting for a conversion of Speaker Pelosi’s maternal heart to embracing the goodness and dignity of human life not only after birth, but in the womb as well," said the archbishop.

The second promoted Cordileone saying that "While discussing his prayer and fasting for the conversion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi," he called abortion a "Satanic practice."

This being a highly biased right-wing "news" outlet, CNS gave Pelosi no opportunity to respond to Cordileone's attacks. It did, however, publish a Sept. 23 article by Craig Bannister featuring Pelosi responding to the bishop:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she and San Francisco’s archbishop “have a disagreement about who should decide this,” when a reporter asked her to react to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s declaration that her abortion bill constitutes “child sacrifice.”

“This proposed legislation is nothing short of child sacrifice,” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said in a Tuesday statement regarding the Women’s Health Protection Act (H.R. 3755).

[...]

Pelosi replied that “it’s none of our business” to tell others they can’t have abortions, that no one has the right to talk about the issue unless they’ve given birth – and that she and Archbishop Cordileone disagree about who should decide whether or not an unborn child is aborted:

Bannister featured several other anti-Pelosi quotes from Cordileone, even though none of the Cordileone-promoting articles permitted a response from Pelosi.

CNS' mission statement states that it will "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." It has failed to do so yet again.

Pelosi says she's Catholic, CNS pounces

CNS hates Pelosi so much, it also takes offense when Pelosi merely describes herself in public as a Catholic -- it doesn't outright attack her for it, but the fact that CNS publishes an article seemingly every time she does so is evidence enough -- that and the fact that all these articles are written anonymously, credited only to "CNSNews.com Staff." Apparently, no CNS reporter wants their name associated with these petty attacks.

A July 22 article carried the weirdly teasing headline "Pelosi on Funding Abortion: ‘As a Devout Catholic and Mother of Five in Six Years, I Feel That God...’":

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) said at her press briefing today that funding abortion with federal tax dollars is a matter of “fairness and justice” and cited her faith as a “devout Catholic” to explain why.

[...]

“As a devout Catholic and mother of five in six years, I feel that God blessed my husband and me with our beautiful family–five children in six years, almost to the day. But it's not up to me to dictate that that's what other people should do. And it's an issue of fairness and justice for poor women in our country.”

A Sept. 23 article whined that Pelosi "said at her weekly press briefing on Thursday that she is Catholic and comes “from a pro-life family,” but that her family is “different in their view of a woman’s right to choose than I am.” The anonymous writer made sure to include a statement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declaring it "especially shameful that any self-professed Catholic would be implicated in such an evil, let alone advocate for it."

Pelosi faced another anonymous complaint in a Sept. 24 article:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) gave a speech on the House floor today talking about her status as a “Catholic mother” before the chamber voted to approve the Women’s Health Protection Act—which guarantees a nation-wide right to abortion on demand.

“I come to this as a Catholic mother of five in six years and one week and with the joy that all that meant to us,” said Pelosi.

There was more whining in an Oct. 4 article:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) said at her press briefing on Thursday that she and Sen. Joe Manchin (D.-W.V.) are “Italian Americans” and “Catholics” who “have shared values.”

The day before that Manchin himself had put out a statement saying he could not support the $3.5 spending bill that Pelosi is trying to push through the House.

One writer who was willing to put his name on his Pelosi-hate was CNS' favorite dishonest Catholic, Bill Donohue, who spent a July 22 column complaining that Pelosi called herself a "devout Catholic":

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines "devout" as meaning "believing strongly in a religion and obeying all its rules or principles." Pelosi does not obey the teachings of the Catholic Church on many key public policy issues.

Her enthusiasm for abortion is off-the-charts. She opposes laws that ban the killing of babies who are 80 percent born (partial-birth abortion) and she even won Planned Parenthood's highest award in 2014. In 2008, she stunned Tom Brokaw on "Meet the Press" when she falsely claimed that the Catholic Church has not taken a position on when life begins; the bishops unloaded on her for lying. That is not how "devout Catholics" act.

Pelosi not only rejects the Church's teaching on marriage; she lied in 2015 when she that her support for same-sex marriage is "consistent" with Catholic teaching. In 2020, she declared war on Catholic schools when she sought to rescind funding for Catholic schools that were granted money by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. That is not how "devout Catholics" act.

Pelosi also lied when she said she does not want to "dictate" to others what they should do. Last September, she sought to dictate to San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone what to do about Mass attendance during the pandemic. To be exact, she lectured him for opposing the mayor's rule that only one person at a time was allowed inside churches to pray. That is not how "devout Catholics" act.

[...]

Non-Catholics, never mind Catholics, know Pelosi is lying about her Catholic status. So does she.

Donohue did not explain who gave him the authority to judge the religious faith of other people.

Pelosi as murderer

CNSNews.com believes that Nancy Pelosi is a murderer. Why? Even though she has never had an abortion, let alone performed one,she doesn't support prohibiting other people from getting one. And that, in the twisted and hateful minds at CNS, is no different from murder. Take this Sept. 28 column from anti-abortion activist Judie Brown, under the screeching headline "Grandma Death":

She has five children and nine grandchildren, but her real devotion is to the practice of killing babies before they are born. Who is this woman? Her name is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and her game is murder.

Oh, we know that many folks are turned off when we say that direct abortion is an act of murder, but really, what else would you call it? A human being is alive and growing within her mother one moment, and the next moment she is dead. Why? Because she is murdered.

In Pelosi’s world, you must reject that fact and call it Women’s Health Protection instead. Then you, along with your Democrat cronies, pass a bill that enshrines abortion into law from one end of the nation to the other. The pro-aborts call it protection for the right to access abortion care throughout the nation. We call it the right to murder members of the human family on-demand.

[...]

Grandma Death’s comments callously disregard truth, and she has convinced herself that abortion is not the act of killing people but rather a political and/or personal matter that has nothing to do with human beings, killing, or child safety prior to birth. Sadly, Grandma Death has been infected with the sin of pride.

Brown, apparently, has been infected with the sin of shamelessness and not with the virtue of moderation and reason.

Not to be outdone, CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey had his own hateful invective to sling at Pelosi in his Oct. 13 column:

During the first four years that Nancy Pelosi served as speaker of the House (2007 through 2010), approximately 4,676,300 unborn babies were aborted in the United States, according to estimates published by the Guttmacher Institute.

To put that in more precise language, adopting the accurate wording to describe abortion that Pope Francis recently used, 4,676,300 unborn American babies were murdered in those four years.

[...]

So, how does Pelosi, who describes herself as a "devout Catholic," and who is one of the top lawmakers in the United States, deal with this form of murder?

She is for it.

[...]

In other words, she voted "as a Catholic" for what the church correctly calls the murder of "absolutely innocent" human beings.

Given that abortions killed approximately 4,676,300 unborn American babies during Pelosi's first four-year stint as speaker, and that she now supports legislation to legalize abortion on demand nationwide, she not only supports the murder of innocent human beings but their mass murder.

Weird, we remember being lectured by right-wingers that people were not allowed to call Kyle Rittenhouse a "murderer" because that is a legal term that one must be convicted of in a court of law for it to accurately apply. If Brown and Jeffrey want to call Pelosi -- or any woman who chooses to have an abortion -- a murderer, they should charge her with murder in a court of law, then amass the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to make that case.

This, of course, is not a a serious philosophical argument but a partisan one; Brown and Jeffrey see that Pelosi has power so she must be destroyed by any means possible, including maliciously false claims of "murder."

The wrong Bible

CNS has even lashed out at Pelosi for quoting the Bible. This happened in an anonymously written Oct. 21 article:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) participated in a press event on the “Build Back Better Act” in front of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, where she quoted from the Gospel of Matthew.

“Not this past Sunday, but the Sunday before this one, the Gospel was about the children in the Catholic Church,” said Pelosi.

“It was about the children,” she said. “And it talked about the Pharisees–hypocrites that they were--the Pharisees in long robes saying that children of divorced parents and all the rest were not as worthy as other children.

“And that's when Christ said, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me,’” said Pelosi. “All children–all children in our country are about our country's future. And we want to make sure that all children have the opportunity that they deserve.

“They're all blessings containing their spark of divinity,” said Pelosi.

The funny thing about this attack is that the article's link on "Gospel of Matthew" is to a an online King James Version of the Bible. But the Catholic Church does not use the King James Version, which was commissioned by, yes, King James for use in the Church of England -- which was created by King Henry VIII out of the Catholic Church so he could divorce Catherine of Aragon after he was unable to receive an annulment of the marriage in the Catholic Church -- and omits certain books from the Old Testament that Catholics recognize but Protestants don't. Catholic Masses use a different version, the New American Bible.

CNS did the same thing in an Oct. 18 article, in which an anonymous writer stated that Pelosi "quoted from the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins from the Gospel of Matthew at a press event focused on public housing that she held in San Francisco on Friday with San Francisco Mayor London Breed." But the article's links on the "Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins" and the "Gospel of Matthew" go to an online edition of the New King James Version of the Bible.

You'd think the uber-Catholics who run CNS would know enough to not make such a basic theological mistake. Apparently not.