Nancy Needs to Get Her Own House in Order

By the time you read these words, the whitewash of Paul Pelosi’s recent “hammer incident” will be complete. How do I know that? Well, the FBI and the Capitol Police were immediately dispatched to the scene. Say no more. These agencies are highly-efficient cover-up machines for the elite now.

A thousand questions will not be asked by the hyper-partisan media, and even if they were, the answers will not be given by anyone in charge of the investigation. On the cusp of a national election we are being force fed a toxic mix of obfuscation, misdirection, and smoke and mirrors about the incident as well as an avalanche of blame placed on their political enemies.

That is the way of politics, but as Catholics, we keep our eyes fixed on a deeper reality, a more pervasive Truth than we can get from corrupt media or politicians. The Truth is Jesus Christ Himself. The Truth is a Person with eyes “like a fiery flame” and a face that shines “Like the sun at its brightest” (Revelation 1:14, 16).

This means that, as proficient as the elites have become in committing and covering up crimes, there is something they are utterly powerless to do: they cannot fool God. I say this because the dishonest public figures who benefit from the cover ups are in for a reckoning that is far more dreadful than a political scandal.

Nancy’s Real Dilemma

Case in point, Nancy Pelosi’s personal dilemma involves much more than her husband’s embarrassing incident. (Actually, it’s his third embarrassing incident in as many months if you count his shameless insider stock trading and his recent, catastrophic DUI.) It involves her soul.

Could the timing of these incidents be indicative of some larger attempt of God to get at her?

In May, Madame Speaker was told by her Archbishop in a highly public manner that she should not present herself for Holy Communion in the Catholic Church. The issues that led to this principled rebuke have been clearly expressed by the Archbishop himself, so I do not intend to debate whether or not he had just cause to restrict her from receiving Communion. He certainly has the apostolic authority to do so.

Technically, the prohibition applies strictly to the churches in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, over which Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone exercises direct spiritual authority. But it also applies, by extension, over any and all Catholic churches that she may enter. She is bound by law to obey the strict prohibition of her bishop, and she is bound by spirit to obey the intent of his restriction everywhere.

But obedience to the truth or the authority of Christ is not Nancy’s strong suit, so she immediately went out and received Communion from a “friendly” church in the Archdiocese of Washington DC. Then she added insult to injury by travelling to the Vatican and receiving Communion at a papal Mass in full view of a friendly Pope.

Given her Archbishop’s prohibition, these are sacrilegious acts.

Despite constantly referring to herself as a “devout Catholic,” Nancy Pelosi’s extreme abortion advocacy has endangered her soul for many decades now. We can be assured that her diligent Archbishop did everything possible to convince her in private to repent of her sin and public scandal.

She mocked him. She mocked the Church. She even mocked the Pope. Now she is mocking God Himself. Apparently she didn’t read Galatians 6:7-8:

Do not be deceived: God is not to be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return. The one who sows to please his flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; but the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

The converse, then, must also be true: those who sow unrepentantly in the realm of spiritual sin will reap eternal spiritual death. Let’s see how that worked out for the Pharisees, whose sins, like Nancy’s, were apparently not of the flesh but of the spirit.

The Mercy of God

Jesus took a hard-ball approach to the Pharisees who, after repeated attempts at dialogue and persuasion – He even dined at their houses – did not repent of their sins against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:32). Rather, they hardened their hearts.

As time went on, the Lord upped the severity of His message. He first pointed out their sin by telling the people not to follow their example (Matthew 5:20). He used parables such as the Pharisee and the publican (Luke 18:10-14) to put them in their place. He also engaged in fierce debates and even turned the tables on them numerous times (Mark 11:29-33; 12:35-40) to outsmart their worldly cunning.

Nothing worked.

Finally, He launched into the most aggressive call to conversion recorded in scripture (the entire 23rd chapter of Matthew’s Gospel). Note that what can only be called a controlled tirade comes at the end of the Gospel, which means He spent the first twenty-two chapters trying the other tactics.

We all know the passage. It started like this:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the kingdom of heaven before men. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter.

This was followed by six more “woes”, six more “hypocrites”, five “blind guides/fools”, one “brood of vipers”, one “serpents”, and one “whitewashed tombs”. Did I miss anything? Oh yes, He even accused them – and their forefathers – of murder.

Is this what we call divine mercy?

You bet it is. It has a divine character because it is the expression of His extreme patience with the rebellion of men. God puts up with much more than any man, myself included, would put up with.

It is mercy because, instead of abandoning them to the one He elsewhere called “your father, the devil,” (John 8:44), He keeps trying to get to their hearts until the final measure of the symphony of mercy is played out. God gives every single soul a chance to repent – in fact many more chances than most of us deserve – and He leaves no stone unturned in His attempt to bring us into His Kingdom. No one can ever say that God treated them unfairly.

And yes, God’s mercy is infinite, but our chances to repent of sin are not. God will not be mocked.

Back to Nancy

The Church has done its job in warning Nancy Pelosi about the danger to her own soul. I personally believe that she should be excommunicated, but we all know that she would just parade that around as a badge of honor in the run-up to an election. If her archbishop judged that extreme measure to be counterproductive, I’ll leave the matter to his best judgment.

Yet, could it be that God is hitting Nancy Pelosi with a divine two-by-four after several decades of increasingly dire warnings as well as her continuous, obstinate mockery of His sacraments? Despite her laughable claim to being “devout”, she has yet to show the slightest sign of repentance.

We can’t judge her heart, of course, but we are not doing that. We are simply observing her actions. She has been utterly shameless in her abortion advocacy throughout her entire political career, even up to the present moment.

Presumably, her Archbishop has a better grasp on her inner life and motivations for her objectively scandalous behavior. That’s why he has acted as an instrument of God’s divine discipline and mercy in trying to prevent Nancy from running headlong off that dangerous spiritual cliff.

Like Jesus with the Pharisees, however, nothing has worked, and Nancy is now experiencing Matthew’s Chapter 23 treatment.

The Disorder of Her House

Would a few extreme embarrassments showing the world the wretched state of her own household get Nancy to do some needed self-analysis about the state of her own soul?

The Lord’s inclusion of the Pharisees’ ancestors in His tirade might be indicative of how He is working on her. We are all much more sensitive to family issues than to what we perceive as political posturing or moral lectures, even from God. These lessons “hit home” in a very personal way.

Family members also become mirrors for us when we are blind to our own sins. Catastrophes in the family can often be wake-up calls for us on many levels. That is true of the negligent dad, for example, who has seen his son or daughter go off the deep end proving how little he has actually invested in the personal formation of the child.

The catastrophe is a mirror of sorts calling him to conversion, but it is also a demand. It requires the negligent parent (or sinner of any type) to wake up and take direct responsibility for his sin and then go about putting his own house back in order very deliberately.

Nancy’s leadership of the out-of-control US House of Representatives is a mirror of the abject disorder of her own husband’s situation right now. She is running America off that proverbial cliff and expects us to look the other way, just like we’re supposed to pretend that there is “nothing to see here” regarding her husband.

But these external messes are just mirrors of the disorder of her own abortion-loving soul, and the mirrors are currently being shattered with a hammer wielded by God or perhaps by Nancy’s own hand. Only she can do something about that. She can obfuscate and spin and cover up all she wants, but she cannot hide the state of her soul from God.

Christ or Chaos

Will Nancy put her own house in order? We must hope for that, even if the prospect looks rather thin.

In her initial public statement about her husband’s recent incident, Nancy Pelosi claimed that she was traumatized by the affair. “Trauma” is a good way to describe what happens when God decides to give someone the Matthew 23 treatment.

It’s medicinal, and if you get to that point, it usually means you don’t have many – if any – chances left.

Will Nancy respond to this personal trauma like Peter after his denial or like Judas after his betrayal? The jury is still out – but Nancy is 82, and the clock counting down to her Zero Hour is ticking.