Send your support to Sr. McBride in Arizona

25 thoughts on Send your support to Sr. McBride in Arizona

1. Are comments from NON-catholics likely to help or hurt her cause?

2. We’ve received notes and letters already from people from a wide variety of faith traditions and from secular voices as well. I think that a letter of support can only be helpful to Sr. McBride during this difficult time.

3. Why should we support this misogynist? She thinks it’s appropriate to dole out medical care only to women she deems sufficiently deserving. No “ethics panel” should be deciding whether to withhold or grant medical care to women seeking abortion at all. Her Catholicism is only mildly less disgusting than the Bishop’s. Courage and providing the healthcare women need, my ass.

4. If my support won’t hurt Sister McBride I’ll be happy to lend it to her cause.

5. Done.
   That’s the first Catholic website I’ve visited in the last week that didn’t give me a pain in the stomach.

6. I don’t know, I don’t really support Sr. McBride’s “right” or whatever it is, to make these kinds of decisions at all, no matter what the circumstances or her opinion. Yea, “staying true to her conscience” may have helped a woman in this case, but would it in the next? And why the hell should a woman’s health be at the whim of anyone’s “conscience”. I mean, I get backing her in this one particular case. But it still rubs me the wrong way. Sorry.

7. I have thought a lot about this. I don’t really think I can support Sr. McBride. She belongs to, supports and, as a nun, represents a very cruel and very powerful organisation. She has, apparently, accepted the teaching of the Catholic Church up until now although she must have known how much suffering it has caused. Now, faced with this decision, she has found it impossible to be as cruel as her Church requires. I know that this decision must have taken courage and I do admire her for that. But surely there are other questions to be asked Why did she belong to this Church for so long? Will she now leave it altogether? If she now leaves and announces that she wants no more to do with it then she deserves support, but not until then.

   There has been some misunderstanding about the situation. Sr. McBride’s quarrel is with her Church not with Bishop Olmsted. Olmsted has not excommunicated her. He has simply stated, quite correctly, that, according to the Church, she is excommunicated by virtue of having approved of the abortion. He was not obliged to state that and it is possible to think that he was not wise to do so but his statement does not change the situation. She would still have been excommunicated even if Olmsted had said nothing.

8. Yeah, what Andrea said. I’m very happy that Sr. McBride stood up against her superiors and did the right thing this time, but it’s still sickening that there is an ethical board that has the right to deny a life-saving, legal medical procedure at all based on a set of entirely personal and irrational beliefs.
   Just like feminist men, you do not get a cookie for taking the correct course just once.

   That said, if Sr. McBride can go on to be a voice of progress and institutional change in the RCC, more power to her and I will applaud her efforts.

9. I am a devout agnostic (nope, not a contradiction) who married a strident atheist, and married a super, super strict Catholic family.

   I knew little about Catholicism, as my family was loosely Baptist/ Pentecostal, but I have long known of the tradition of good works in the faith. My mother-in-law is a wickedly anti-choice, single issue voter, which I was squeamish about at first. But, as I got to know her, I grew to respect her views, as she practiced what we pro-choicers have long called for.

   While yes, she believes abortion is murder, she, in connection with her diocese, began a clinic to provide health care in the rural areas where they live. This clinic offers support to young mothers (not a “crisis counseling center” but those who choose to carry the pregnancy to term) who need it: food and shelter, medical care, diapers and formula, vaccinations and assistance with education.

   I admit that my knee jerk reaction was wrong. While I still REALLY disagree with her beliefs, I have a hell of a lot of respect for the way she walks the walk, and I see this same Christlike compassion in Sister McBride.

   The reaction from the Bishop is myopic and nauseating, and it leads me back, every time I read about this story to a verse from the Bible (yep, lost of us heathens have read the Bible):

   For many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they shall lead many astray. Matthew 24:5

   Blessings to Sr. McBride.

10. kbrowne: that’s what Bishop Olmsted would have people believe.
    It’s NOT TRUE. As Athenia said in the first post on this subject, bishops need to stop being arseholes: I would add, and pretending that Catholics are supposed to obey every shit idea they come up with.

    It’s very important to support the Sr.MacBrides everywhere. They are fighting the cruel people in the organisation.

11. Michael Liccone has an interesting take on the aspect of whether Bishop Olmsted should have declared publicly that Sister McBride “had excommunicated herself”. (The thread descends into the usual anti-choice fulminatings against a nun for daring to decide that a saving a woman’s life was worth doing: and Liccone himself is emphatically not pro-choice.) I link to it here because it seems to me that the excommunication issue is what would hurt a nun worst – if her order supports the bishop’s decision, she could be expelled from it – and Liccone makes a solid Catholic case for the bishop simply having decided wrong.

12. Thank you for the back-up, Jesugislac.

    I have great trouble reading the comments on that site: going there makes me understand what TwistyJill means by blowing a lobe.

    I am particularly puzzled by the way they keep using the word “magisterium”: they all read atheist Philip Pullman’s ‘Northern Lights’ trilogy and are reclaiming the term?
    In a similar vein they bang on about ‘cafeteria catholics’: quoting a fictional corrupt hypocrite who causes a disturbed young man to murder people gruesomely. Really not getting why we should in agreement with him. Especially since he isn’t real.

13. Olmsted may well be an arsehole. He’s a Catholic bishop, so he probably is. But his understanding of Catholic teaching on abortion is correct. Of course it is possible to disagree, because it is always possible to disagree, but Olmsted’s view is the straightforward, mainstream Catholic view.

    If the Church ever changes its teaching on abortion it will have to do so by explaining that earlier statements did not mean what they seemed to mean, because that is how teaching is changed in the Church. They cannot simply state that they were wrong; they have to say that the new teaching is what was really being said all along.

    Liccione, in the link provided by Jesurgislac, seems to be saying simply that we do not have all the facts but in his article in ‘First Things’ he does try to reinterpret Catholic teaching. However, it is not an attempt that works. If the Church ever changes its mind we can be sure it will not do so by following Liccione’s argument.

    According to the principle of double effect, it is permissible to perform an action that has an unintended but foreseeable bad effect, but the action performed must be good or neutral. That rules out abortion for Catholics because it is considered an evil action. Liccione, in ‘First Things’, argues that the nature of an action is determined by the intention of the person who performs it and abortion, therefore, may not be evil if the intention was not to kill the foetus but simply to remove it from the woman’s body. The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It allows not only all abortions (‘I did not want to kill the foetus, simply to remove it from my body’), but all other actions as well (‘I did take the bottle of brandy from the shop without paying for it, but I did not want to deprive the shop owner of the value of the brandy, I just wanted a drink of brandy, and there is nothing wrong with that.’)

    This sort of mental contortion by people who desperately want Catholic teaching to come up with the conclusion that sane, decent people have arrived at without any problem would be funny if it were not so serious.

    As for the word ‘magisterium’ it is a perfectly cromulent word. It means the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. It would be very odd if Catholics felt they had to stop using it because Pullman put it in ‘Northern Lights.’

14. kbrowne, you are confusing “shit bishops say” with “mainstream Catholic thought”.
    I realise you are having fun and enjoying what you believe is your intellectual superiority, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d cease pontificating on the subject, because you are wrong.

    The internet is already infested with a distressing number of anti-abortion misogynists currently hijacking the adjective ‘Catholic’. You are not helping.

15. eilish: Thank you for the back-up, Jesurgislac.

    Unfortunately I have just heard (though via a pro-life nutcase, so goodness knows if it’s true) that Sister McBride has “repented her error” (letting the woman live) and the excommunication has been lifted.

    If true, it does make it all the more important to ensure Catholic doctrine is not allowed any authority over medical staff: if the Church instructs doctors etc under pain of excommunication to let patients die, then the Church must not be allowed to rule health care provision. Just full stop NOT.

    I hope it’s not true (and hope for Sister McBride’s sake she repented with her fingers crossed, or under direct orders from her Order (for goodness sake, Sister, tell the Bishop you’re sorry!) rather than she now genuinely wishes she’d let the woman die) but if it is true… well, it’s disturbing news for people dependent on Catholic hospitals.

16. eilish,

    I am very surprised by the nastiness of your post. I have not insulted you. Why the sneer?

    Of course I don’t think I am intellectually superior to you. Why would I? I am, to some extent ‘having fun’ because I enjoy discussing things. I would not have posted here otherwise. Of course this matter is far more important than having fun, but I am not silly enough to think my posts here, or on any other blog, are going to make any difference.

    If you do not want to discuss Catholic teaching with me, that is fine by me. If you do, it is not enough to say that I am wrong. You need to point to official Catholic documents, such as canon law, the catechism or papal encyclicals that show I am wrong.

    The news that Sr. McBride has ‘repented’ does not surprise me in the least. She has been a nun for many years and I am sure she knows Catholic teaching very well. She was not monster enough to put it into effect when required to do so but you can be sure she is not going to risk Hell for that.

17. kbrowne: “you are confusing ‘shit bishops say’ with ‘mainstream Catholic thought’ ” isn’t a sneer. It’s a statement. Not very good at nuance, are you? (Just so it’s clear: that’s a sneer. Do you see how they’re different?)
    If you weren’t trolling, I would launch into another post on the implications of the right of conscience which Catholics have beeen arguing since 1963: but you are, so I won’t.
    Your last post concludes with a condescending and ignorant assumption of Sr. MacBride’s motivations in undergoing reconciliation. The religious SWAT team will be arriving shortly. You will be fervently prayed for by a bunch of rosy-cheeked middle aged women. You’ll be begging for forgiveness after two decades of the rosary.

    jesurgislac: I read at Catholics for Choice that the ex-communication has been resolved. That could mean Sr. MacBride had a chat with a sympathetic priest and said how sorry she was the bishop got upset. Bingo! Absolved. (And a great big f.u. to Bishop Olmsted with that.)

    As someone pointed out in the first thread on this subject, it would have been illegal for the hospital staff to deny the abortion. Olmsted is saying Catholics should break the law. As this would result in losing their livelihoods and massive lawsuits for the Church, it’s not going to fly.
    That being said, I am totally in support of threatening Olmsted with withdrawal of funding for Catholic hospitals in Arizona. Just imagine how much trouble he would be in with the man who counts the Church’s money.

18. No, eilish, the sneer was not in your first sentence, but in the first part of your second sentence. But perhaps you just do not know when you are sneering because you have never learnt how to talk politely.

    As for trolling, how am I trolling by giving my views about the excommunication? But perhaps trolling means ‘saying something that eilish disagrees with.’

    People like you amaze me. You are supporting an evil, misogynist organization by pretending that it is good and reasonable. You have chosen the role of ‘useful idiot’.

    Are you seriously suggesting that automatic excommunication does not apply if the person honestly thinks Church teaching is wrong? Even if that were so, it would obviously not change Church teaching. Olmsted is right about official Church teaching and useful idiots cannot change that.

    Telling a priest that she was sorry Olmsted was upset would not have been enough to get the excommunication lifted. Once again, I have to point out that Olmsted did not excommunicate McBride. He stated that she was excommunicated.

    ‘Resolved’ is an ambiguous word. If the excommunication was lifted then McBride repented. But it is true that she may have argued successfully that the excommunication never applied in her case.

    What really matters is what happens now. Will St. Joseph’s hospital state that in future Catholic teaching will be adhered to? Or will it state that all medical care available to women in secular hospitals will be offered to women at St. Joseph’s? It is really disturbing that America, a secular state, has allowed a network of hospitals to be built up that are run by religious people according to cruel religious teachings.

    I intend to go on reading this blog and I may post here in future. But this will be my last post in answer to eilish. I do not talk to people who cannot take the trouble to be polite. So you have the last word, eilish. Bring on the sneers.

19. kbrowne: gee, thanks.
    I don’t know why you keep insisting you know more about being a Catholic than me, or why you keep attributing thoughts and beliefs to me that are in direct contradiction with my actual stated beliefs, but by golly, it’s irritating.

    I see it’s not nuance that confuses you: it’s basic comprehension. I am greatly relieved to find you have been able to understand SOMETHING I have said. (“But it is true that she may have argued successfully that the excommunication never applied in her case.”) Get a tutor and continue to work hard. One day, you might be able to contribute usefully to a discussion.

20. That being said, I am totally in support of threatening Olmsted with withdrawal of funding for Catholic hospitals in Arizona. Just imagine how much trouble he would be in with the man who counts the Church’s money.

    Well, quite. For the Catholic Church, as we saw over the child molestation scandals, nothing counts more than money. Furthermore, it can work: not long ago in the UK, in Scotland I think, a bishop who was responsible for writing the book for Catholic schools, made the mistake of saying in an interview in a Sunday newspaper that lesbian and gay teachers wouldn’t be hired, and if they managed to conceal their sexual orientation to get hired, they wouldn’t ever be promoted. And he strongly implied that this was going to be in the manual.

    While this is absolutely true in practice, and one of the key reasons why so few lesbian and gay teachers come out (there are a LOT of Catholic schools in the UK) it is also illegal. No secular employer is allowed to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation, and religious employers only when they can show it’s directly required by their religion (ie the Catholic Church can declare “no gay priests”: but it couldn’t declare “no gay teachers”).

    And what happened? The Education board responded to the Catholic bishop’s interview by flatly saying that if this was in fact in the manual, as soon as the current guide was published, they would withdraw all public funding to any school that adopted it.

    And the Cardinal said, literally in the next Sunday newspaper, that of course the Church wouldn’t be discriminating as employers, of course lesbian and gay teachers were free to work at Catholic schools. So that got turned around within a week.

    Now Bishop Olmsted has said that Catholic hospitals with emergency rooms are required to refuse abortions to women who need them. Even when the woman will die without an abortion and is too sick to be moved to another hospital. That’s unacceptable, it’s illegal and medically inethical, it puts all doctors who work in Catholic hospitals at risk of losing their license. So how do we go about ensuring that the public funders and licencing authorities of hospitals in Arizona tell Bishop Olmsted he retracts what he said and confirms that if an abortion is medically required a Catholic hospital can provide it, or else all hospitals that identify as Catholic and obedient to the Bishop lose their licence?

21. Make abortion legal on request in Arizona. It worked a treat here.

22. Jesurgislac,

    There is nothing in official Catholic teaching that forbids Catholics to hire lesbians and gay men as teachers. Therefore, in the Scottish case you mention, it was easy for the cardinal to tell the bishop to back down.

    Abortion is a different matter. It is forbidden in all cases by official Catholic teaching. Of course, Catholic teaching can change, has changed in the past and may change in the future but changing it is a difficult and lengthy process. Look at all the time and trouble that is being taken to get rid of Limbo.

    The Church could get rid of the automatic excommunication rule, although Olmsted certainly does not have the authority to do that on his own. But that would not solve the problem. It would still be true that the Church teaches that formal cooperation in an abortion is a very serious and potentially a mortal sin.

    Even if funding were withdrawn and the Arizona church authorities wanted to get the money back it is difficult to see what they could do. Perhaps one solution would be to let it be known that Catholics who cooperated in an abortion where the abortion was medically indicated would not be guilty of mortal sin because they would not be truly free agents, since they would be liable to serious penalties under American law. This would be an unsatisfactory solution; it would not change Catholic moral teaching and it would suggest that a doctor who let a woman die rather than perform an abortion was heroic in Catholic eyes and his suffering that of a martyr.

    What will happen? Well, I think McBride will patch up her quarrel with her Church if she has not done so already, Catholic hospitals will continue to offer substandard care and the whole incident will be quickly forgotten.

    After all, it is not as if any of this is really new. Here is something Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said in 2006 about English Catholic hospitals:
    “In fairness to healthcare professionals, patients, and benefactors, there must be clarity that the hospital, being a Catholic hospital with a distinct vision of what is truly in the interests of human persons, cannot offer its patients, non-Catholic or Catholic, the whole range of services routinely accepted by many in modern secular society as being in a patient’s best interest.”

    That about sums it up really.

23. And even now, after all of these years has not even one person said exactly why women are not allowed to have abortions. Do not claim it is canon law. That tells me nothing. What is behind that canon law. Is their anyone out there who can explain why canon law is as it is. Most laws come about for a reason usually a good reason or at least one that makes some sense. I keep asking this question but have never heard an answer.

    When I was a child attending 12yrs of Catholic education one could ask a priest or a nun about these kinds of questions. But now there are so few priests and nuns there is no one to ask. I have about six or eight high school friends who are priests and one who is a Bishop but not nearby. And, btw, not a pedophile among them.

    In the local diocese they are closing many churches because of the lack of priests and the lack of parishioners. We have lost 44,000 parishioners in the last eight years.

    For sake of full disclosure: I no longer go to church since it is now a member of the Republican party, the party of killers for profit, oil, supremacy and never ending hate(Hannity, O’Reilly, Scalia, Noonan, Ingraham, Malkin, Crowley, Buchanan, etc, ad nauseam).

    Re: Sr. McBride, I ask myself WWJD. His central message was one of peace, love, tolerance and “Do unto others… After the Church’s, really the Vatican’s behavior, over the last 30yrs I no longer care what the Vatican thinks. I am so sick of hearing about the fetus and the fact that the Repubs used Religion for political purposes and very much still do. But in reality they who have screamed the most about Pro-life and Family Values are the very ones who are doing all of the killing for oil, oil company profits and other corporate profits.

    Personally, I think the day will come when the popes will deeply regret their hooking-up with the Repub party and their Gospel of Prosperity and their endless worship of money and espousal of dollar values over human/people values and their endless 24/7/365 espousal of hate for everyone who does not agree with their soulless and secularist beliefs that we are not our brothers keeper. For if we are not our brothers keeper then their is no God but their “god of money, mammon, the golden idol”. I do not accept that belief!!!

    As the Republican party goes, so goes the Catholic Church.

    I knew there was something very sick and evil going on when Pope John Paul II and Rev. Jerry Falwell put St. Reagan in the WH and he attacked working parents and their families, called the poor “welfare queens” and espoused southern hatred embodied in Reagans call for “States Rights”. In those moments is when hate began and evil ruled our nation under satans minions. I voted for some of those Rethugs(Voinovich, DeWine, LaTourette, et. al.) but never again. Now I only associate with and vote for those who have values which are similar to mine—including thou shalt not kill-for oil, covet-oil or steal oil or bear false witness; aka the Laws of God.

    So before I go too far afield and get overly verbose I still wonder why abortion is an excommunicable offense. I’ll check back later fro the answer. So far, I totally agree with Sr. McBride. WWJD? Jesus would NOT have let that woman die. Jesus was not about dogma, He was about life. He would have performed a miracle. Since Bishop Olmsted cannot perform a miracle he should not have just stood around an let that woman die. Omlsted should have allowed the miracle of modern medicine to save that womens life.

    Personally, I think Catholic hospitals should do what ever they want, BUT should not receive gov’t funding. And when they let a woman die they should be sued for malpractice and have their hospital license removed. Me, I’ll take a Jewish doctor any day! I have had three and they are the best, and among the best human beings on this planet.

    So as a man, am I to tell my nieces that they must die if they ever have one of those deadly illnesses of pregnancy such as an ectopic pregnancy.

    God isn’t the problem, religion, man-made religion is the problem. 2000yrs of convoluted and involutional theology is the problem. If it doesn’t enhance human life, Gods creation, the Family of Man, it is wrong headed destructive theology and therefore a product of evil.

    As someone posted, up-thread I, too, am reminded of the biblical passage that speaks about those who lead others astray and do so in Jesus name. That, dear friends, is the entire Republican party, including such as Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, et.al, ad nauseam. Also Sarah Palin/Heath(past Catholic family) and Glenn Beck(past Catholic, now LDS).

    Lest we forget: Jesus warned and forbade us to NOT merge church and state when He said “Render unto Caesar…. So why is the Vatican the first to sin against Jesus. It has done so since the time of Constantine. Could it be that the hierarchs are a bunch of moral relativists and cafeteria Catholics, bereft of all Humility and consumed by the Cardinal Sin of Pride.

    But then what do I know, I’m one of the hated ones, a liberal. I have been targeted, the cross hairs are on my back. I believe people are far more important than money. The Repubs believe other wise.

24. kbrowne: WRONG AGAIN. Homophobia has been afflicting bishops since the days of St.Paul. Nothing in canon law? Are you serious? Where do you pull this stuff from?
    We have a ‘freedom to discriminate against people you don’t like’ clause that covers religious schools, so sadly, our Catholic school principals can still discriminate against gays.
    We need laws that protect people’s rights.

    bobtr: you’re not alone.

25. eilish,

    Thanks.

    And all the best-

    bobtr900

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