Excommunicated for saving a life

A Catholic nun in Arizona was reassigned and 'automatically excommunicated' for her role in deciding to provide a life-saving abortion. She was a nurse and a senior administrator at the hospital.

A statement released by the hospital said, "In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother's life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy. This decision was made after consultation with the patient, her family, her physicians, and in consultation with the Ethics Committee, of which Sr. Margaret McBride is a member." According to The Arizona Republic, the patient suffered from pulmonary hypertension, which limits heart and lung function and can be fatal during pregnancy.

Pulmonary hypertension in pregnancy is a killer.

From a blogger, who describes herself as:

As the daughter of a Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) patient myself, I've come to learn a lot about the condition. Pulmonary Hypertension's a killer, not least because there isn't enough information out there about it. Please let people know this site exists, and hopefully we can work together to save lives!

some (non-jargony) information:

An early case series reported a 50% mortality rate associated with pregnancy and Primary Pulmonary Hypertension (PPH). A more recent account noted a 30% mortality rate and partly attributed the decline in the mortality rate to earlier recognition, better understanding of the pathophysiology of Primary Pulmonary Hypertension (PPH), along with improvements in medical therapy and critical-care obstetrics. Recognition of the elevated maternal-fetal mortality rate has led physicians to recommend effective contraception and, in the event of a pregnancy, early fetal termination.

Now, we don't know the severity of this woman's disease, but presumably all those medico-types at her bedside had an excellent opportunity to assess her chances. One in three or one in two chances of dying sounds pretty dire to me.

But the bishop, who, as far as we know, is not the possessor of any kind of medical degree, disagreed.

Reverand Thomas J. Olmsted, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix said in a statement "I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this Diocese. I am further concerned by the hospital's statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother's underlying medical condition." Olmsted also said "If a Catholic formally cooperates in the procurement of an abortion, they are automatically excommunicated by that action."

Boom, yer outta here, sistah!

So, who is this guy Olmsted?

He's described as a 'Hardline Catholic' and he has the mean-spirited history to prove it.

Thomas J. Olmsted, the Catholic bishop at the center of the abortion excommunication controversy once refused communion to a 10-year-old child with autism.

He refused to allow the child, who could not swallow, to take communion.

Olmsted, of Phoenix, Arizona, also tried to shield his archdiocese from clerical sex abuse suits by incorporating the local parishes individually.

Tellingly, he did not speak out on behalf of the victims, preferring to protect the financial interests of the Church.

Beating up on women and children while protecting the financial interests of the church. Yup. 'Hardline', all right.

You know, sometimes I really really really hope there is a hell.

Ratzy vs. the Nuns, continued

Well, the loony Merkin congresscritters are finally voting on death panel healthcare reform legislation. As someone who regularly searches 'abortion' at Google News, I am sick to death (panels) of the thousands and thousands of headlines shrieeeeking about whether the bill would allow federal funding of abortion, about daily Catlick hissy fits, about whether this or that politician can accept the 'abortion language'.

As a measure of just how nuts this story is, dig this from Maureen Dowd:

The nuns have it right

WASHINGTON - Angry nuns have been calling Congressman Bart Stupak's office to complain about his dismissive comments on their bravura decision to make a literal Hail Mary pass, break with Catholic bishops and endorse the health care bill.

As a Catholic schoolboy, the Michigan Democrat had his share of nuns who rapped his knuckles when he misbehaved, like the time he crashed a kickball through the school window.

So, of course, he's having some acid flashbacks, but he told me, "They're not printable even in The New York Times."

Like that other troublemaking Bart (Simpson), Stupak, who wants to kill the health care bill because he thinks the language on abortion funding is not restrictive enough, should have to write on the blackboard a hundred times: "I will listen closely when the nuns tell me I am wrong. I will not be an obstinate lawmaker."

Stupak got in hot holy water when he told Fox News, "When I'm drafting right-to-life language, I don't call up nuns." He followed that with more scorn for sisters, telling Chris Matthews that the nuns were not influential because they rarely try to influence - which makes no sense - and because "they're not the recognized spokesperson for the Catholic Church." He listens to the bishops, he said, and anti-abortion groups.

We might have to bang Bart's head into a blackboard a few times before he realizes that in a moral tug-of-war between the sisters and the bishops, you have to go with the gals.

The nuns are giving the Democrats cover. As Bob Casey, an abortion opponent who helped negotiate the abortion language in the Senate bill, observed, quoting Scripture: "They care for 'the least, the last and the lost.' And they know health care."

On Friday, Tim Ryan, an anti-abortion Democrat from Ohio, took to the House floor to say he had been influenced by the nuns to vote for the bill.

"You say this is pro-abortion," he said to Republicans, and yet "you have 59,000 Catholic nuns from across the country endorsing this bill, 600 Catholic hospitals, 1,400 Catholic nursing homes endorsing this bill."

Go read the whole thing.

Here's how she ends it (link mine):

Because Benedict has addressed the sex scandal belatedly and sparsely, stonewalling on the skeleton in his German closet, he has lost authority to speak about the issue consuming his church. The only internal investigation he has undertaken with alacrity, for heaven's sake, is the one bullying American nuns.

You go, grrrls.

Here is Dowd's terrific piece on Ratzy's investigation of the nuns.

Ratzy vs. the Nuns

So, did you hear the one about the Catholic nun who volunteers as an escort at an abortion clinic?

No, really.

Local pro-life activists say that they recognized the escort at the ACU Health Center as Sr. Donna Quinn, a nun outspokenly in favor of legalized abortion, after seeing her photo in a Chicago Tribune article.

SHRIEEEEEK!

She's in favour of legalized abortion, but why would she act as an escort?

Sr. Patricia Mulcahey, OP, Quinn's Prioress at the Sinsinawa Dominican community, said in an email response to LSN that the nun sees her volunteer activity as "accompanying women who are verbally abused by protestors. Her stance is that if the protestors were not abusive, she would not be there."

So, in the opinion of a Catholic nun, the abortion-clinic stalkers are not the peaceful, prayerful 'witnesses' they claim to be. They're abusers.

Sr. Donna Quinn is a member of the National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN), an interesting group, in favour not only of abortion, but of female ordination.

Which brings us to a recent article that Maureen Dowd is taking some crap over. It's called 'The Nuns' Story'.

In 2004, the cardinal who would become Pope Benedict XVI wrote a Vatican document urging women to be submissive partners, resisting any adversarial roles with men and cultivating “feminine values” like “listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.”

Nuns need to be even more sepia-toned for the über-conservative pope, who was christened “God’s Rottweiler” for his enforcement of orthodoxy. Once a conscripted member of the Hitler Youth, Benedict pardoned a schismatic bishop who claimed that there was no Nazi gas chamber. He also argued on a trip to Africa that distributing condoms could make the AIDS crisis worse.

The Vatican is now conducting two inquisitions into the “quality of life” of American nuns, a dwindling group with an average age of about 70, hoping to herd them back into their old-fashioned habits and convents and curb any speck of modernity or independence.

Nuns who took Vatican II as a mandate for reimagining their mission “started to look uppity to an awful lot of bishops and priests and, of course, the Vatican,” said Kenneth Briggs, the author of “Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns.”

The church enabled rampant pedophilia, but nuns who live in apartments and do social work with ailing gays? Sacrilegious! The pope can wear Serengeti sunglasses and expensive red loafers, but shorter hems for nuns? Disgraceful!

One of the two Vatican inquisitions investigations is on general 'quality of life' of American nuns and one is specifically on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a benign-looking outfit -- as opposed to those radical feminuns in NCAN -- that claims to represent 95% of American nuns.

Ah, the Mother Church and its psychosis over actual women.