Nun excommunicated for allowing life-saving abortion

[Rjevan]

Once again the Catholic Church demonstrates how much it values a woman's life - not at all.
Generally I couldn't care less about "the most serious penalty the church law can levy", excommunication, but in this case it's the reason why it was issued and the "justification" which are shocking. Besides of the usual ignorance it's hard to see any other "reason" than open misogyny which could have motivated Bishop Olmsted and his apologists. As is said in the article, nobody evens thinks of excommunicating child-molesting priests (on the contrary!) altought it is said that "both [abortion and abusing children] are abhorrent". So why treat them differently? Why protect and guard the real criminals while punishing a nun who wanted to save a mother's life? Hypocrisy at its finest (emphasis by me):

By Barbara Bradley Hagerty, May 19, 2010

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 document, 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 circumstance, 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 circumstances 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.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=126985072

[GreenCommunism]

communist priest were excommunicated too.

[leftace53]

First off, I didn't know religious hospitals still existed, medicine is science, not mystical crockery. Secondly,

her doctors told her that if she continued with the pregnancy, her risk of mortality was "close to 100 percent.

Why would the doctors give her this option if they knew her condition, and knew that they were in a religious institution? While choice is where its at, this is kinda like dangling food in front of a hungry person, then taking it away.

Of course there is sexism embedded in the catholic religion (and most if not all other religions), and all my theories of sexism comes down to the control of the factor of human production. The more they control their women, the more they will blindly obey males and birth more catholics for the church.
I feel like they excommunicated this chick because she wasn't exactly high up in the church (what woman is?), so the church looks good in front of the public because they weeded out a bad catholic. They don't do the same to the priests high up molesting children because they probably think that if these priests are excommunicated, people might lose faith in the church because a "better" person is committing atrocities.
No wonder churches stick to lobbying for abortion. I've never seen a religious campaign to stop child molestation.
This makes me absolutely furious.

[GreenCommunism]

No wonder churches stick to lobbying for abortion. I've never seen a religious campaign to stop child molestation.

so true. or any abuse for that matter. or sexual abuse of children or adults.