Daily French Roast

Anne is reading …

Sister Simone Campbell, Exec Dir of NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobbying group which works closely with the LCWR.The Vatican gavel came down hard on US nuns Wednesday, with the appointment of Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle to lead the process of reforming the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, with assistance from Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki and also Bishop Leonard Blair, who was in charge of the investigation of the group.

The New York Times explains that the LCWR had challenged church teachings on homosexuality and men-only priests, while promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

The sisters were reprimanded for making public policy statements that “disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.” The disagreements have been acute over President Obama’s healthcare legislation and most recently the contraception mandate compromise.

The LCWR is an umbrella organization representing 1,500 members and 80 percent of the Catholic nuns in America. It came into existence at the Vatican’s request in 1956.

NPR reached out to Sister Simone Campbell for her reaction to the Vatican report. Sister Campbell heads NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobbying group that works closely with the LCWR and is named as another problem organization in the report.Sister Campbell responds:

Quite frankly, it’s very visceral. It’s like a sock in the stomach. I wish I knew what was in their brains. I don’t know. But it looks like from the outside that they are not used to strong women who took the urging of Pope Pius XII very seriously. Pope Pius XII urged women religious, way before I was in the community, to be educated in theology, to get educated in advanced degrees.

So, we took it seriously and we did it. The leadership doesn’t know how to deal with strong women. And so, they’re way is try to shape us into whatever they think it should be, not realizing that we’ve been faithful to the call this whole time.

Last year, American bishops demanded that a well-reviewed, scholarly book by Fordham University theologian Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson be removed from all Catholic schools and universities.

AOC has previously reported on another inquiry of American nuns, known as a “visitation”. It was concluded last December with the majority of nuns refusing to fill out the forms.

More DFR

Bishop Compares Obama to Hitler

Peoria Bishop Daniel Jenky accused President Obama of following previous repressive governments that “tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches.”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, iled a formal complaint asking the IRS to investigate the diocese, arguing that Jenky may well have crossed a line that could put the church’s tax-exempt status in jeopardy.

Speaking at a Sunday homily at Peoria’s St. Mary’s Cathedral, Huff Po reports the event:

“Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services and health care,” the (Peoria) Journal Star and Chicago Tribune quoted Jenky as saying during the homily. “In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda – now seems intent on following a similar path.”

Jenky continued telling the congregation: “This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries – only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down.”

The Anti-Defamation League also called on Jenky to apologize for his comments. Regional Director Lonnie Nasatir said Thursday that the bishop needs a history lesson on “religious intolerance and anti-Semitism fostered in society” by Hitler and Stalin.

The Founding Fathers

Insurance Mandate It turns out that President Obama isn’t the first president to pass a mandated health insurance bill. Forbes reported in Jan 2011 that in July of 1798, Congress passed — and President John Adams signed — “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.”

There was no debate at the time about what the Founding Father’s intentions were, because they wrote the Constitution. The law did a number of fascinating things.

First, it created the Marine Hospital Service, a series of hospitals built and operated by the federal government to treat injured and ailing privately employed sailors. This government provided healthcare service was to be paid for by a mandatory tax on the maritime sailors (a little more than 1% of a sailor’s wages), the same to be withheld from a sailor’s pay and turned over to the government by the ship’s owner. The payment of this tax for health care was not optional. If a sailor wanted to work, he had to pay up.