After the backlash following her ignorant comments on the Holocaust, one would think The View's Whoopi Goldberg would learn not to speak about issues she doesn't understand. Apparently, however, she lacks the wisdom to learn from her mistakes, as she recently returned to headlines by criticising San Francisco Archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone, for "blurring the lines between Church and state". The reason? He called for Nancy Pelosi to be denied communion for her support of abortion, which apparently is not his job.
The problems with this rant are so numerous, it's hard to know exactly where to begin. I suppose we could start with the fact that actually, according to the Catholic religion, yes, it is absolutely the archbishop's job to decide who may and may not receive communion. And it's quite obvious that he should know it. The archbishop is not a new convert; he knows his own religion, and has achieved a rather high rank within it. So who is Whoopi Goldberg to tell him about Catholicism?
As far as I can tell, not a Catholic. Now, I could be wrong here. A brief Google search turned up conflicting results, some sources claiming she is Catholic, others claiming she at one point said she's Jewish, and most saying she doesn't claim any particular religion. I couldn't find any direct quotes from her. But based on both her shockingly low knowledge of Catholicism, and her decidedly anti-Catholic views/behavior, I'm 90% confident she is not Catholic. The question is, then, why does she even care?
There's probably a joke in this about how if she supports such a grotesque practice as abortion, it's no wonder she wants Nancy Pelosi to pretend to consume the literal flesh and blood of Christ. I'm not enough of a comedian to make that work, but hey, it's out there now. At any rate, if Whoopi Goldberg is not a Catholic, why should it bother her what goes on in the Catholic Church? It doesn't bother me. I don't believe the Catholic Church, so I don't care much about their inner scuffles. Why does Whoopi?
Perhaps it's because hypocrisy is just a virtue of the radical Left. It is often said if it wasn't for double standards, the Left would have no standards at all. So in Goldberg's eyes, Pelosi is quite within her rights to profess a pro-life faith while simultaneously supporting abortion. But frankly, as much as I disagree with the Catholic Church, nothing annoys me more than hypocrisy. If you're going to claim a false faith, I have no respect for you for denying it in the next breath. If you claim to be Catholic, be Catholic. That includes being pro-life. If you're going to support abortion, support abortion, but don't pretend to be part of a faith that condemns abortion as such a grievous sin, you can't even receive one of its holy sacraments if you champion it. You don't get to use religion to score political points. It's effective, but it's illogical and immoral.
Goldberg's comments are so bizarre that criticising them would take far more effort than just this one brief article, but it all comes down to this: We all need to know what we believe, and act consistently with it. Whoopi, as far as I know, does not claim to be Catholic, and she certainly doesn't know enough about Catholicism to criticise an archbishop. Thus, the sane and consistent thing is to zip it. Nancy Pelosi does claim to be Catholic, but is in no way consistent with that. The one most in the right here is the aforementioned Archbishop, who may well follow a false faith, but at least believes and acts consistently with it.
In the end, all 3 of these people will pass on from this world to be judged by God. He will examine every deed, every idle word, even every thought, and will respond accordingly. Abortion is sin, and so those who commit it, ironically, will be "aborted". God's Kingdom, God's choice. But this is not His desire. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and so He made Jesus, who knew no sin, become sin for us, so we may become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). Therefore, there is a way for both Whoopi Goldberg and Nancy Pelosi to be saved.
But not through communion. Communion, according to Scripture, represents the thing that saves us, namely Christ's death and resurrection. As Paul says, "...as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes." (1 Corinthians 11:26). The irony here, then, is that even if Pelosi takes communion, she is only drinking judgement upon herself. Each time she eats that bread, and drinks that cup, she is saying "yes Jesus, I believe you died for my sins, and that you are coming back to judge". Now, given that she knows and apparently wants to proclaim this truth, how much greater will her punishment be for denying it?