On July 20, during an interview with CBS News correspondent Lara Logan in Kabul, Afghanistan, Democrat presidential hopeful Barack Obama was asked if he ever had any doubts about his foreign policy experience. In a show of what has become his signature arrogance and defiance of reality, Obama gave a one word answer that should frighten every single voter: “Never.”

Not to be out-arroganced, Speaker of the House and self-appointed theologian and Catholic dogmatic scholar Nancy Pelosi recently opined on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “doctors of the church have not been able to define when life begins”. The Pelosi back-and–forth began when moderator Tom Brokaw asked the Democratic Speaker of the House about the implications of the “above my pay grade” comments Mr. Obama made in an interview with Pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church.

In the following days, Pelosi came under fire from U.S. Catholic bishops, in a rare show of involvement in things political. Her comments prompted swift rebukes from Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl and Denver Bishop Charles Chaput, who both said that Pelosi was incorrect and that Catholic teaching has consistently condemned abortion and defined life as beginning with conception.

According to the Association Press, Cardinal Edward Eagan of New York voiced similar sentiment on Tuesday. Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities and Bishop William Lori, chairman of the Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, also issued a statement correcting Pelosi.

Despite clear and direct guidance from Catholic Church scholars to the contrary, Pelosi continued with her attempts to re-write Catholic doctrine. In a statement from a Pelosi spokesman, the self-anointed ‘Speaker of the Church’ “fully appreciates the sanctity of family” and based upon her own views on conception on the “views of Saint Augustine, who said: ‘…the law does not provide that the act (abortion) pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation…’”

Bishop Lori and cardinal Regali responded by stating “uniformed and inadequate theories about embryology”  in the Middle Ages led “some theologians to speculate that specifically human life capable of receiving an immortal soul may not exist until a few weeks into pregnancy. While in cannon law these theories led to a distraction in penalties between very early and later abortions, the Church’s moral teaching never justified or permitted abortion at any stage of development.”

It is beyond arrogance that Nancy Pelosi continues to defy Catholic theologians and cannon as she continues her effort to re-write dogma. In much the same vain as Barack Obama declaring that he has “never” questioned his own experience on issues of foreign policy, Nancy Pelosi is showing an enormous amount of conceit in her ongoing effort to reshape and rewrite the Catholic position on when life begins.

Speaker Pelosi should be mindful of another quote attributed to St. Augustine: “God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed.”