Sen. Dick Durbin defends Pelosi, criticizes Archdiocese of San Francisco for denying her communion

Illinois Democrat Senator Dick Durbin came to the defense of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this week, blasting the Archdiocese of San Francisco for banning the Speaker from receiving communion for her advocacy of abortion.

The San Francisco Archdiocese announced last week that he was banning the House Speaker from receiving the eucharist because of her pro-choice beliefs in abortion.

“A Catholic legislator who supports procured abortion, after knowing the teaching of the Church, commits a manifestly grave sin which is a cause of most serious scandal to others,” San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wrote last Friday. “Therefore, universal Church law provides that such persons ‘are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”

Senator Durbin was barred from receiving communion in his own state 18 years ago for the same reason. “It’s very personal to Speaker Pelosi as it is to me,” said Durbin during a press conference.

“The decision of the Catholic bishops and the treatment of pro-choice Catholics is different in diocese by diocese as a policy, they were poised to act for the entire nation, but then withdrew that decision,” he added, in response to a discussion last year about banning all pro-choice Catholics in the United States from receiving communion.

“I still believe that the authorities in the church believe we have issues that can only be decided by our own conscience, and not by some bishop’s conscience,” Durbin said.

Speaker Pelosi has in the past been vocal about her efforts to codify Roe v Wade into law, and has redoubled her efforts since the leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion that appears to show the high court is poised to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling that made abortion legal at the federal level.