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church people are in' loons!
But....they protect the pedophiles
Nun Excommunicated For Allowing Abortion
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...72&sc=fb&cc=fp
Last November, a 27-year-old woman was admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. She was 11 weeks pregnant with her fifth child, and she was gravely ill. According to a hospital do ent, she had "right heart failure," and her doctors told her that if she continued with the pregnancy, her risk of mortality was "close to 100 percent."
The patient, who was too ill to be moved to the operating room much less another hospital, agreed to an abortion. But there was a complication: She was at a Catholic hospital.
"They were in quite a dilemma," says Lisa Sowle Cahill, who teaches Catholic theology at Boston College. "There was no good way out of it. The official church position would mandate that the correct solution would be to let both the mother and the child die. I think in the practical situation that would be a very hard choice to make."
But the hospital felt it could proceed because of an exception — called Directive 47 in the U.S. Catholic Church's ethical guidelines for health care providers — that allows, in some cir stance, procedures that could kill the fetus to save the mother. Sister Margaret McBride, who was an administrator at the hospital as well as its liaison to the diocese, gave her approval.
The woman survived. When Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted heard about the abortion, he declared that McBride was automatically excommunicated — the most serious penalty the church can levy.
"She consented in the murder of an unborn child," says the Rev. John Ehrich, the medical ethics director for the Diocese of Phoenix. "There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child. But — and this is the Catholic perspective — you can't do evil to bring about good. The end does not justify the means."
Ehrich adds that under canon or church law, the nun should be expelled from her order, the Sisters of Mercy, unless the order can find an alternative penalty. Ehrich concedes that the cir stances of this case were "hard."
"But there are certain things that we don't really have a choice" about, he says. "You know, if it's been done and there's public scandal, the bishop has to take care of that, because he has to say, 'Look, this can't happen.' "
A Double Standard?
But according to the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer, the bishop "clearly had other alternatives than to declare her excommunicated." Doyle says Olmsted could have looked at the situation, realized that the nun faced an agonizing choice and shown her some mercy. He adds that this case highlights a "gross inequity" in how the church chooses to handle scandal.
"In the case of priests who are credibly accused and known to be guilty of sexually abusing children, they are in a sense let off the hook," Doyle says.
Doyle says no pedophile priests have been excommunicated. When priests have been caught, he says, their bishops have protected them, and it has taken years or decades to defrock them, if ever.
"Yet in this instance we have a sister who was trying to save the life of a woman, and what happens to her? The bishop swoops down [and] declares her excommunicated before he even looks at all the facts of the case," Doyle says.
Ehrich agrees that sexual abuse can't be tolerated. But he says neither can McBride's actions.
"She said, 'Yes, you can kill that unborn child.' That's a heinous act. And I'm not going to make a distinction between what's worse. They're both abhorrent," Ehrich says.
Ehrich says the nun can be admitted back into the Catholic community by going to confession and repenting. McBride still works at the hospital in another position. Whether she is allowed to remain in her religious order, Erich says that is up to the Sisters of Mercy.
church people are in' loons!
If they would allow abortions there would be no babies for them to .
Uggggggggg... Dogma run amok. Oh well, she's better off as an episcopalian anyways.
Beat me to it.
Catholics.
But she has the right of conscience under canon law - which allows for someone to review what they know of dogma and church law and knowingly violate it if they believe it to be wrong.
And as someone with a dead baby - I can still say that what this guy said "That's a heinous act. And I'm not going to make a distinction between what's worse. " is completely wrong.
Child molestation vs saving a woman who would certainly day - and the baby along with her because there is no way to save a baby at that gestational age - are completely different. I know people who have had to make the choice - abort or deliver pre-term with 100% certainty of death for your child or you both die. And that is an especially terrible pain to live with. But when there is no hope of life for the child, that is the right choice to make.
But child molestation by a priest not only horribly affects children, creates life-long struggles for most victims, sometimes creates a cycle of molestation and abuse, sometimes results in damage that leads to self-destructive behavior, destroys their trust in caregivers and authority figures and generally leads them away from the church - uh, yeah. There is a big difference between that and letting 1 soul of a partially formed, not yet viable baby die instead of 2 people dying unnecessarily.
And frankly, I found it outrageous that they think it's better to stand by and shrug your shoulders and let 2 souls die instead of 1. I can understand the moral dilemma if the baby is potentially viable, but I can't understand this. them.
The Vatican is also following up on "complaints of feminism and activism" regarding some nuns out in Washington state (link). Newsflash: the Catholic church doesn't like women.
Exactly. And then to place absolutely no value on the 4 little souls that would have been left motherless by this woman's death is even more outrageous!
^This
They would rather have 6 victims instead of 1.
I completely skipped over that this was her fifth.
To me it is unconscionable to place the life of an unborn and unviable fetus over the life of the mother, especially when there are other young children. Unreal. Better burn the nun too, excommunication surely isn't good enough.
27 and heart failure. Let's take a look at this heifer. Is she just a body for the lonely?
No offense to religious people out there, but seriously the catholic church.
Crazy Muslims.
I don't see where that would make a difference. Heart failure can occur for many different reasons and at any age.
Surely there is a reasonable dollar amount that the nun can pay over time to get back in the Church's good graces.
That's not a newsflash. Pretty much been the case since the gnostic gospels got ditched because they included too much Mary Magdalene.
...and then they turned her into a pros ute to seal their disapproval.
I loved studying the Gnostics. There's a lot of Peter Brown and Raymond van Dam floating around my apartment.
My mom has gotten some for being a female Protestant pastor (ah, the South), so misogyny isn't exclusive to the Catholics, but still. The Catholics have it mastered.
This was one thing that struck me the first time I read it.
"She said, 'Yes, you can kill that unborn child.' That's a heinous act. And I'm not going to make a distinction between what's worse. They're both abhorrent," Ehrich says.
By excommunicating her but letting the Pedo-priests of with 3 therapies and 4 Kumbayas, they HAVE made the distinction of which is worse.
Indeed.
And pregnancy can be extremely hard on the body. And some medications that people take for heart conditions can't be taken in the first trimester because of the danger of abnormalities.
I'm still irked that they cannot see the distinction between a casual abortion and a medical procedure with an unfortunate outcome that nevertheless saves at least one life.
I wish I could understand how people justify twisting things so much. The original opposition to abortion was not because these embryos and fetuses are living souls with rights, it was because of the fact that no one can know when the soul enters the body (at conception, during gestation, at birth), and as such there was a chance for murder to be committed.
How this termination of a life-threatening pregnancy is not only equal to but beyond 'regular' murder and is somehow completely unforgivable, when other sins are forgivable, is completely beyond my ability to reason out.
Especially since pedophilia creates more damage, because the victim is still alive.
another life ruined cause a lady can't keep it in her pants
The church actually does not have a problem with this. That is what Directive 47 is about.
No one says it is unforgiveable- not even the Catholic Church.How this termination of a life-threatening pregnancy is not only equal to but beyond 'regular' murder and is somehow completely unforgivable, when other sins are forgivable, is completely beyond my ability to reason out.
I think maybe some people do not understand what the term excommunication means.
That may well be. But either way, it is the severest censure put forth by the Catholic Church. It's still doesn't make it okay that the same form of censure is not applied to pedophiles.
keep what in her pants?
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