The Catholic archbishop of San Francisco is commending a recent pro-life law that went into effect in Texas while also denouncing pro-choice Catholic politicians, including President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The Texas Heartbeat Act (SB8) went into effect Sept. 1, effectively banning abortions in the Lone Star State after six weeks of pregnancy.
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, who oversees territory that includes the area represented by Pelosi, expressed gratitude that the new abortion law was passed.
He noted that Texas “is investing $100 million to help mothers by funding pregnancy centers, adoption agencies and maternity homes and providing free services including counseling, parenting help, diapers, formula and job training to mothers who want to keep their babies.”
The archbishop also pointed out how Biden and Pelosi are planning ways to stop the law, including possible legal action.
“As a faith leader in the Catholic community, I find it especially disturbing that so many of the politicians on the wrong side of the preeminent human rights issue of our time are self-professed Catholics,” Cordileone wrote.
In June, there was much speculation that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) would ban pro-choice Catholic politicians from taking Communion. The USCCB, however, later clarified that no such ban had occurred.
Commenting on the matter, Cordileone noted that church officials “were accused of inappropriately injecting religion into politics, of butting in where we didn’t belong.”
But the archbishop, citing how the late New Orleans Archbishop Joseph Rummel took a stand against racism in the Civil Rights Movement despite “protests and boycotts” from pro-segregation White Catholics, said he “sees things differently.”
Cordileone touted Rummel’s actions, such as admitting African Americans into New Orleans’s Notre Dame Seminary, removing ‘white’ and ‘colored’ signs from the Archdiocese’s churches, mandating desegregation throughout the Archdiocese’s churches and Catholic schools, and closing a church who refused to accept a Black Catholic priest.
Despite critics characterizing Rummel’s actions against segregation as “weaponizing the Eucharist,” Cordileone defended the late archbishop.
“Rummel recognized that prominent, high-profile public advocacy for racism was scandalous: It violated core Catholic teachings and basic principles of justice, and also led others to sin,” Cordileone wrote.
Just as Rummels advocated against racism, Cordileone called on Catholic church leaders to take a stand against abortion, describing the issue as “the most pressing human rights challenge of our time.”
“Can we pastors speak softly when the blood of 60 million innocent American children cries out for justice?” he asked. “When their mothers are condemned to silence, secretly suffering the injuries of the culture of “choice?”
“You cannot be a good Catholic and support expanding a government-approved right to kill innocent human beings,” Cordileone asserted. “The answer to crisis pregnancies is not violence but love, for both mother and child.”
This isn’t the first time Cordileone has called out pro-choice Catholic politicians. In May, he called on the Catholic church to bar any pro-abortion Catholic politician from receiving Communion. In July, he even denounced Pelosi after she used her Catholic faith to defend the idea of taxpayer-funded abortion.