Grossly uninformed: US Rep. Cohen claims Pope Francis downgraded Catholic Church’s pro-life stance

U.S. Representative Steven Cohen showcased his own failure to apprise himself of facts before a judiciary hearing regarding federal funding for abortion on Thursday when he praised the pope for supposedly downgrading Church teaching on the sanctity of life to merely a “part of the Catholic history.”

The pope, he believes, has been “real good” at agreeing with liberal Democrats that the right to life is secondary to the distribution of wealth (and a host of other matters). Apparently Rep. Cohen missed the newsflash that the pope is practicing the same Catholicism that has remained unchanged on life issues for thousands of years. Maybe we can give him points for creativity, but unfortunately the representative flat-out failed in the facts department. Here’s what he said:

Had Rep. Cohen been asked for the quotes that backed up his imaginary claims about the beliefs of Pope Francis, he would have come up dry. At best, his perceptions were gleaned from ill-informed liberal media pieces that have misconstrued papal statements on the sanctity of human life from the beginning of Francis’s pontificate.

Seemingly unable to decide if he wanted to talk about abortion, homosexuality, wealth distribution, or tax policy, Cohen ultimately settled on demanding an account of how the pope’s so-called “new policies” were being effected in the U.S. But the Catholics in the room did not let the misrepresentation of Pope Francis’s view on life go unnoticed.

Richard Doerflinger, the associate director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, had this to say in response to the gross misrepresentation of facts spewed by Cohen:

The full conversation is well worth watching, and can be found here. It begins below at 1:39:10.