Comedian Flip Wilson used to joke about the "Church of the What's Happenin' Now."

Well, if the church exists, Nancy Pelosi is the With-It Most-High Priestess. She worships at the altar of situational ethics, and situations always change. She's hip. She's now. She represents San Francisco in the U.S. House. No worries.

But her "progressive" act, so popular on the left, requires some odd intellectual contortions to keep up -- such as drawing upon Middle-Ages theologians to justify her support of abortion.

Asked Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press to reconcile her "ardent" Catholicism with her support of abortion, the House speaker stammered and stuttered her way through an answer the length of winding Lombard Street, invoking St. Augustine and the Middle Ages' view of when life begins.

Wow.

Does she expect her internist to practice from the same playbook? Bloodlettings, anyone?

Understandably outraged church officials quickly pointed out that "uninformed and inadequate theories about embryology" in St. Augustine's day prompted "some theologians to speculate that specifically human life capable of receiving an immortal soul may not exist until a few weeks into pregnancy."

Of course, U.S. bishops and cardinals say, the Catholic church has never been ambiguous in its opposition to abortion. And, of course, someone needs to let Ms. Pelosi know about modern science and what we've learned about fetal development since the Dark Ages.

At another point in the interview, Pelosi derided the church's position on abortion as only being 50 years old. That's not true at all. But it's funny: She's willing to genuflect nonetheless to a court ruling that's younger than that.

The Archdiocese of Denver posted a statement on its Web site saying abortion "is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions employed to justify it."

Indeed, Pelosi's pathetic attempt to justify her anything-goes brand of religion by purposely obscuring church teachings is reprehensible.

That kind of situational ethics might work in the Church of the What's Happenin' Now, but not in this case.