Thursday February 8, 2007
San Francisco Archbishop Niederauer Says He Doesn’t Know Nancy Pelosi Stand on Abortion
Archbishop “resisted every opportunity to make a clear statement about what the Church teaches"
By John-Henry Westen
SAN FRANCISCO, February 8, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an interview with
KCBS radio in San Francisco aired Sunday, was asked sensitive questions about communion for pro-abortion
politicians, ordination of homosexuals and homosexual adoption.
While the Catholic Church’s official teachings on the issues are very
clear and direct, the Archbishop was described as having taken “great
pains to avoid direct answers.” The California Daily Catholic,
which transcribed portions of the interview, also said that the
Archbishop of San Francisco “resisted every opportunity to make a clear
statement about what the Church teaches.”
In what is likely to be viewed as the most bizarre statement in the
interview Niederauer says he does not understand House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi’s stand on abortion. Rated by the National Abortion
Right’s Action League as 100% in support of abortion, Pelosi has for
years been a leading abortion proponent while continuing to call
herself Catholic.
One of the show hosts described Pelosi as “not only pro-choice, but she
would be someone who would be working to try to keep abortion
legal.” The Archbishop was asked, “In your view is she less of a
Catholic because of that?” He replied saying about Pelosi, “We haven’t had an
opportunity to talk about the life issues. I would very much welcome
that opportunity, but I don’t believe that I am in a position to say
what I understand her stand to be, if I haven’t had a chance to talk to
her about it.”
Niederauer did say that he had spoken to Pelosi last year, but not
about abortion, but about “immigration”, explaining
“because that was very much the hot-button topic of the time.”
The radio hosts pressed the Archbishop whether he would deny communion
to pro-abortion politicians. After avoiding the question twice,
the Archbishop said: “I think that when I stand at Communion time, in
front of the altar, to distribute Communion, I, like all priests and
bishops, I believe, am counting on the individual communicant who’s
coming forward to receive Communion, to decide whether he or she is
worthy of Communion and is ready to receive it, this Sacrament. I am
not there principally as a gatekeeper. I am there as a priest and a
celebrant to give forth the Eucharist.”
The answer can be seen to contradict the Vatican’s directives which
indicate that once instructed and warned and still persistent in the
sin and presenting themselves for communion, pro-abortion politicians
“must” be denied communion.
The Archbishop was also asked about a compromise he approved on
homosexual adoption when the state required that adoption agencies,
including the Catholic agency be required to treat homosexual partners
as equally valid adoptive parents. The compromise which
Archbishop Niederauer said he was “really very happy with” saw the
church involved with a secular agency that would carry out homosexual
adoptions, but the Church involvement was simply to put up information
on the Internet information on children in need of adoption.
Prospective adoptive parents, homosexual couples included, seeing the
information provided on the Internet, would then apply to the secular
agency to adopt the children.
However, the official Church teaching on the matter considers adoption
of children by homosexual couples to be “violence” toward the
child. In a document issued before he was elected Pope,
"Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions
Between Homosexual Persons," then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, "Allowing
children to be adopted by persons living in (homosexual) unions would
actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their
condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment
that is not conducive to their full human development." See the full
document here:
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/jul/030731a.html
The Archbishop admitted there was controversy around his
decision. “Now there are those within the Church, and I
understand and respect their opinion, who feel that’s, even that is too
much of an involvement, but I believe we have examined what we’re doing
and vetted it very carefully, and what we’re really doing is putting
potential adoptive parents in touch with adoption agencies that can
help them,” he said on radio.
Hear the full radio interview here:
http://podcast.medianext.com/stations/kcbs/media/mpeg/KCBS_In_Depth__Archbishop_Niederauer-1170462129.mp3
(with files from the California Catholic Daily http://www.calcatholic.com )
Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.