Sister Margaret
You need to read this Nicholas Kristoff column in the New York Times.
Sister Margaret was a senior administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. A 27-year-old mother of four arrived late last year, in her third month of pregnancy. According to local news reports and accounts from the hospital and some of its staff members, the mother suffered from a serious complication called pulmonary hypertension. That created a high probability that the strain of continuing pregnancy would kill her.
“In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’s life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” the hospital said in a statement. “This decision was made after consultation with the patient, her family, her physicians, and in consultation with the Ethics Committee.”
[T]he bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmstead, ruled that Sister Margaret was “automatically excommunicated” because she assented to an abortion. “The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s,” the bishop’s communication office elaborated in a statement. […]
I heard about Sister Margaret from an acquaintance who is a doctor at the hospital. After what happened to Sister Margaret, he doesn’t dare be named, but he sent an e-mail to his friends lamenting the excommunication of “a saintly nun”:
“She is a kind, soft-spoken, humble, caring, spiritual woman whose spot in Heaven was reserved years ago,” he said in the e-mail message. “The idea that she could be ex-communicated after decades of service to the Church and humanity literally makes me nauseated.”
“True Christians, like Sister Margaret, understand that real life is full of difficult moral decisions and pray that they make the right decision in the context of Christ’s teachings. Only a group of detached, pampered men in gilded robes on a balcony high above the rest of us could deny these dilemmas.”
[…]
“Everyone I know considers Sister Margaret to be the moral conscience of the hospital,” Dr. John Garvie, chief of gastroenterology at St. Joseph’s Hospital, wrote in a letter to the editor to The Arizona Republic. “She works tirelessly and selflessly as the living example and champion of compassionate, appropriate care for the sick and dying.”
Dr. Garvie later told me in an e-mail message that “saintly” was the right word for Sister Margaret and added: “Sister was the ‘living embodiment of God’ in our building. She always made sure we understood that we’re here to help the less fortunate. We really have no one to take her place.”
I’ve written several times about the gulf between Roman Catholic leaders at the top and the nuns, priests and laity who often live the Sermon on the Mount at the grass roots. They represent the great soul of the church, which isn’t about vestments but selflessness.
This is why the Catholic Church as an institution is dying. The old men in Rome are no longer Christian. Sister Margaret and those like her are the soul of the “church.” They are the ones following Christ, and if you are Catholic, you should follow her rather than the old men in Rome, who protected pedophiles and endangered your children for decades if not centuries. Read more about this Saint, Sister Margaret, here.
Tags: Abortion, Catholic Church, Catholicism
I read about this a few days ago and it sickened me, but I unfortunately was not surprised. When it comes to medical issues, there is where you find my reasoning to keep it legal. I absolutely do not support it as a birth-control option, something on the level of the pill, condom, etc., but as a medical-reasoned option, absolutely legal.
This story hits me, because it’s a familiar situation, not where I can say I had direct-witness experience, but still very close to home. It’s also why my opinion is shaped around medical conditions. No one ever has a chance to change my opinion about medical reasoning, no one. I do feel sympathy for Sister Margaret. I have to imagine this wasn’t so easy of a decision as it may be portrayed, either. She probably had a moral struggle, at least I imagine it so. My belief is she made the right decision, but ultimately to her personal detriment in losing her livlihood. I hope she prevails in her path forward.
another reason to separate from the pseudo (pedo) church.
“The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s
There’s a problem when someone in Rome is generalizing about the circumstances of someone they don’t know. These bishops will also never, ever have to make this decision. They won’t have children, they won’t have pregnancies and they don’t have to worry about paying to feed their family. I guess I’m having a hard time with Smitty’s statement about the nun’s “moral struggle.” I don’t think it’s the nun’s decision to make either and shame on the hospital that makes it so.
In this case, how can they even argue about the fetus? There’s no way the fetus could survive. Pulmonary hypertension is an extremely dangerous condition.
If she had raped the woman instead of saving her life she’d still be in the Church. Maybe transferred to a new hospital. If she was a guy, that is.
The bishop is incorrect; excommunication is not automatic, it was his call. He’s ducking responsibility.
I still think about that story of the 11-year-old girl in South America (Brazil?) who was raped by her stepfather and pregnant with twins. The hospital performed an abortion because the girl was too small to carry a pregnancy or give birth. The church excommunicated the doctors and the mother. The stepfather is still a member of the Church. This is their problem – they elevate certain sins above others and it leads to unjust outcomes.
Not that I believe all men are callous toward pregnancy (since we don’t have to suffer this condition), but I suspect that if men could get pregnant, Congress and the Vatican would somehow rationalize abortion into a god-granted right.
And this is where Judaism and the Catholic Church differ. I was always taught by my rabbis that the mother’s life would take precedence when it came to either saving the mother or saving the fetus.
Maybe I need to convert. But I do believe in Jesus. Hey, I could be a Jew for Jesus!!!
Don’t go there, DD. Not a big fan of that cult.
LOL.
Well, as Jesus said about abortion:
“_________”
So it is written.
Some things:
1. Her excommunication was not at the behest of the bishop. It was latae sententiae which is Church speak for “automatic”. They set up the rules and if you break them (which nobody is disputing) then there’s little to dispute.
2. Excommunication doesn’t mean she’s been defrocked or fired or anything of the sort. She is removed from any sacremental duties but not pastoral ones. If she were to die today she would be denied (probably) ecclesiastical burial.
3. The purpose of excommunication is not to throw people out forever. Rather it is a corrective. Think of it as an ecclesiastical time-out. You have done something wrong, go to your room and think about what you did then get back to me.
4. She can (and probably will) be absolved of excommunication after a meeting with the Bishop (and possibly a tribunal depending upon how contentious this is going to get) and then confession, penance, etc.
You can disagree with the rules all you want but you cannot argue that they were either unclear or unknown to Sister Margaret.
I are not arguing that the rules were unclear or unknown to Sister Margaret. In fact, given her actions in quietly accepting her “punishment,” I am sure she was aware. I am arguing that rules are assine and anti-Christian.
1. Her excommunication was not at the behest of the bishop. It was latae sententiae which is Church speak for “automatic”. They set up the rules and if you break them (which nobody is disputing) then there’s little to dispute.
Sister Margaret claimed authorization under Directive 47 of the USCCB’s ethical guidelines. Admittedly that is probably a stretch, depending on exactly what happened. But it is not true that “nobody is disputing.” I didn’t hear the bishop overruling her claim.
Sister Margaret deserves support and sympathy for immediately taking the weight upon herself to save the life of the mother. She will be forgiven; but I am not so sure about the Church leaders.
3. The purpose of excommunication is not to throw people out forever. Rather it is a corrective. Think of it as an ecclesiastical time-out. You have done something wrong, go to your room and think about what you did then get back to me.
In this case, it is a martyr’s punishment to be accepted gladly and in the name of Christ. May the Holy Spirit give her peace to accept it, and the strength to do the same thing again if called.
Newt Gingrich is a Catholic in good standing. Just sayin’.
Being excommunicated by Rome is like being deported from Nazi Germany or the USSR — whether it’s a punishment or a reward is a matter of interpretation.
from a source that doesn’t hate the Catholic Church (unlike the majority here on the DL)
Bishop Olmsted An Evil Monster?
National Catholic Register ^ | 5/27/2010 | Jimmy Akin
I thought I would take the opportunity to offer a few thoughts on some of the issues raised in the combox of my previous post regarding the situation in the Diocese of Phoenix.
A sizeable number of commenters strongly deplored Bishop Thomas Olmsted’s actions regarding Sr. Margaret McBride.
So far as I can tell based on the known facts, Bishop Olmsted had done three, possibly four, things regarding Sr. McBride:
1) He has contacted Sr. McBride to get her side of the story regarding the abortion she approved.
2) He has informed her that, based on the facts as he understands them, she has triggered the provision of canon law that provides a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication connected with abortion.
3) After the excommunication was reported in the press, Bishop Olmsted allowed his communications director to confirm the excommunication.
4) Bishop Olmsted *may* (or may not, we don’t know since nobody official is discussing this) have had a role in the reassignment of Sr. McBride to other duties at St. Joseph’s (the Catholic hospital where she works and where the abortion occurred).
I don’t see how anybody can object to Action #1. If a Catholic bishop is informed that an abortion has taken place at a Catholic hospital in his diocese, he is supposed to investigate it and find out what happened. Contacting people for their side of the story is always a good thing, so I don’t see grounds for outrage on this one.
Action #2 is something I think people may misunderstand. I’ve seen reports elsewhere on the Net where people are saying things like “the Bishop automatically excommunicated her when he found out.” This is not what happened. It’s a misunderstanding. He didn’t “automatically excommunicate” her. According to the Bishop, she “automatically excommunicated” herself. He informed her of this fact.
Canon law provides an automatic excommunication for a small number of offenses (e.g., abortion, throwing away the consecrated species of the Eucharist, assaulting the pope). When a person commits one of these actions (all things being equal) the person automatically incurs the censure of excommunication by the commission of the act itself.
If Sr. McBride incurred this penalty, it was by her own action, not the bishop’s.
Based on his reading of the facts, Bishop Olmsted concluded…
There are two different questions here:
Was the bishop correct according to Church rules? Almost certainly.
Do the Church rules conform to a decent moral standard of humanity? Probably not.
@anon; In terms of “disputing” I meant that nobody disputed that she was on the committee that decided whether or not it was ethical to abort the baby. That’s all.
@pandora: indeed.
Yes, Sr. Margaret (from a church standpoint) excommunicated herself. Any Catholic who hasn’t yet bailed from the church should know that. However, it doesn’t look good that Bishop Olmsted and his brethren have not come out as strongly about the ecclesiastical fate of their priests who have abused kids, broken their vows of celibacy, fathered children and encouraged women to have abortions.
Have read nothing but was written here–having worked as a hospital administrator for Catholic Health Services—IF the termination was discussed as an alternative, I can assure you the patient was transferred safely to another facility (and being familiar w/ Phoenix, that would be a very simple task)–these discussions are had, and options chosen, so I’m not quite sure why Sister Margaret is catching the brunt of this. I am more concerned that the termination HAPPENED at St. Joseph’s. That would be the bigger story. Guess I’ll have to hunt this one down. Heck, we even had to do tubal ligations off site–same doctors, but separate facility for those “interfering procedures”. What I never understood, yet witnessed, were priests visiting people on death row for heinous crimes, but walk right by and deny visitation to a woman in critical condition status post an elective termination, that landed her in the Intensive Care Unit (this at a “gentile” institution). Never made sense to me. But maybe that’s just another one of those mysteries of the Church we’ll find out about later. Can’t imagine erring on the side of compassion to anyone gravely ill, would trip up anyone’s eternal progression.
“When you believe in things that you don’t understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain’t the way”
Stevie Wonder
There is a medical standard of care that most physicians agree on. The financial backers of a hospital should not have any say in those standards.
We cannot afford as a church to lose good and faithful nuns like Sister Margaret. Sometimes our lives are filled with the most heart-wrenching decisions, in this case I believe that Sister Margaret made the right decision. The continued life of the mother is in jeopardy, and if the pregnancy were to continue, you would lose both the mother and the baby. There was no hope for this child, that’s the way it is sometimes. Perhaps this woman has more children waiting to come to earth through her, and by saving her life, the path to life remained open to them… IMHO… I am a Catholic and I don’t believe in abortion, and I grieve for this lost child, but I don’t want this mother to have to die because of my beliefs. I think it was the right thing to do to save this mothers life…Sister Margaret should be reinstated in the church without fear of any retribution.
“from a source that doesn’t hate the Catholic church”
Any rational person who doesn’t hate the Catholic church is a walking oxymoron.
Be careful with distinguishing parts of the Catholic Church. The old men in Rome, the current Pope, the bishops and cardinals who have for years endangered children… hate them. Parts of the Catholic Church like Sister Margaret, like Sister Mary Vincent of Mt. Aviat Academy, like the many priests and nuns and bishops who do good works as Christ intended …. don’t lump them in with Rome.
That is silly, Del Dem. They lump themselves in with Rome, and so should everybody else. Sister Margaret’s “problem” is one of her own making.
a1 – that’s the same argument advanced by intellectual rock-heads who demand that a member of the Republican Party has to disassociate themselves from Rush Limbaugh, or Michael Steele, or any other offensive person. Belonging to an organization, working for a company or believing in a religious tradition does not mean that a person automatically agrees with every leader or every decision past and present. Example: I’m a volunteer with the Boy Scouts, yet I believe that its ban on atheists and gays is flat-out wrong. I choose to work for change from the inside. Does it make me a homophobe or anti-atheist because I’m a member?
At least your self righteous purism is consistent, Anonone. That you would hate Sister Margaret reveals all we ever need to know about you.
I never said anything about “hate,” DD, so that is just more silliness and inaccurate hyperbole from you. The fact is that when you voluntarily join an organization – whether it be a political party, club, or Church – you alone are responsible for that decision and you have to accept the consequences of joining it. We can feel sorry for Sister Margaret, but she chose to align herself with the Vatican in the most extreme way that a woman can. She chose to do that voluntarily and in spite of its history. In earlier times, she would not have just been excommunicated; she would have been burned at the stake in the Vatican square, as many were.
I have kids in scouts, too, anon. It doesn’t make either of us a homophobe or anti-atheist, but I also accept the fact that there may come a time when we need to leave if the circumstances dictate.