By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
While speaking at the Catholic Community Conference on Capitol Hill yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) thanked God for the dissident nuns who supported the pro-abortion bill in opposition to the official stance of the U.S. Bishops.
According to a report by CNSNews.com, the Speaker said she believed the health care initiative respected the dignity and worth of every person, then gushed with thanksgiving over the role the nuns played who sent a letter to lawmakers expressing their support of the bill just days before the vote.
“Thank God for the nuns,” the Speaker said. “And nuns, imagine, 50, 60 leaders of orders representing 59,000 orders — and I didn’t realize it was Dominican, Benedictine and Franciscan, Notre Dame de L’Amour, Notre Dame School Sisters, every possible kind of name you can think of, there they were on the list. And they wrote to us saying, ‘We support this life-affirming legislation.’ We were so proud of them and they helped us do just that.”
The letter, written by a small group of nuns who belong to a Catholic social justice organization called Network, urged lawmakers to cast a “life-affirming ‘yes’ vote” when the bill came to the Senate floor. Their letter was sent in spite of the fact that the U.S. bishops officially opposed the bill because it allowed taxpayer funds for abortion and provided inadequate conscience protections for health care workers.
In the same letter, the nuns erroneously claimed to be representing 59,000 Catholic sisters, a number repeated by Speaker Pelosi even though it has since been shown to be a gross exaggeration.
“Network’s letter, about health care reform, was signed by a few dozen people, and despite what Network said, they do not come anywhere near representing 59,000 American sisters,” said a spokesperson for the U.S. Bishops shortly after the letter was sent. “The letter had 55 signatories, some individuals, some groups of three to five persons. One endorser signed twice. There are 793 religious communities in the United States. The math is clear. Network is far off the mark.”
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