Following the passage of health care legislation by the House earlier this week, Randall Terry and company protested outside of the Vatican demanding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi be excommunicated from the Catholic Church and that Archbishop Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC stop allowing her and others to take Communion:
Today, the Catholic League, which exists primarily to fight back against any and all perceived swipes at the Catholic Church, took the unique step of more or less telling Terry to sit down and shut up:
Randall Terry and six others have been protesting near the Vatican, holding signs asking that Speaker Pelosi be denied communion and that the California Democrat be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. Pelosi is a lifelong Catholic and Randall Terry a fairly recent convert. Catholic League spokesman Jeff Field responds to the call for excommunication.
“We are a conservative Catholic organization, but yet we leave the bishop’s work up to the bishops,” says Field. “It’s not the job of Randall Terry, or anybody for that matter, to lecture the bishops on what they should or shouldn’t do with politicians such as Nancy Pelosi.”
He points out that Terry evidently believes it is his right to do so — “and we don’t believe that it’s our right or anybody’s right to tell the bishops what to do,” adds Field.
According to the Catholic League spokesman, that type of demonstration harms the process.
“I think it’s harmful to insert yourself into a discussion like that where you don’t have the right to do so, especially as Catholics believe,” Field argues. “We believe that the bishops speak for the church. We believe that excommunication is a decision that is based on their discretion, not [that of] any lay Catholic.”
He says while the Catholic League has been critical of Congresswoman Pelosi, the group would not dare suggest that she be excommunicated. Field suggests Terry is a “headline grabber, is over-presenting himself, and making a name for himself.”
That’s right; the Catholic League, run by the attention-seeking Bill Donohue, is calling Randall Terry a pathetic “headline grabber” out to make a name for himself.
I cannot wait for Terry to fire back and watch this explode into a battle between two holier-than-thou right-wing Catholic activists.
