Nuns Trump Bluedogs like Stupak

Here is a story worth retelling. An interesting article in Salon magazine about how women in the Catholic church in the form of nuns are a mighty force to be reckoned with these days.

Defeated and humiliated by the the hierarchy for their support of Geraldine Ferraro's Vice Presidential "Pro-Choice" bid in 1984, the women have plowed on for women's issues, pro-humanity views in the public arena.

Rep. Bart Stupak, (D- Michigan), frat house member of the “C” street fundie crowd, bellyached and threatened to sink Healthcare without an Executive Order to spell out, redundant/moot with the new law, specific continuity of the entrenched anti-abortion agenda.

Indeed the article states rightfully so that – ”Abortion has become the "evil of drink" of this century, and legal prohibitions against it always fail as dismally as the 18th amendment banning alcohol did.”

While the boy bishops keep sending out their holier than thou misogynist messages of more abortion regulations and also being against healthcare coverage for the poor and all Americans, nuns have campaigned for passage of Obama’s Healthcare reforms.

Catholic healthcare scoreboard: Nuns and laity 2, bishops 0

The healthcare reform debate in Congress has brought to the fore a sharp division within the Catholic Church. The lines are drawn by gender: Catholic bishops focused on the unborn on one side; Catholic nuns advocating for the already-born on the other…

Many nuns feel they have little to lose in challenging bishops because they have been treated so shabbily by their hierarchy. Many of America's nuns supporting Obama's healthcare initiative were, until recently, among the "uninsured" that the bill addresses. Only in the past two decades have US bishops taken up an annual collection to pay for basic health insurance for nuns, and for their decades of unpaid Social Security…

Today, as when nuns and others first challenged Rome on abortion in ‘84, too many women are dying from breast cancer, ovarian cancer, overlooked cardiac crises, ignored psychoses that may lead to suicide, domestic abuse injuries and deaths, and a host of other illnesses, injuries and fatalities a national health plan might help identify, diagnose, treat, avoid and even cure. Women are uninsured in larger numbers than men, and their children go uninsured, and untreated, with them. The already-born need care and compassion in the purest form of "respect for human life.”…

The majority of American Catholics -- often led by the nuns of their childhood -- have always chosen reasonable responses to complicated and personal life challenges, even when their clergy have seemed unable to do so. Such a rational approach is the best example of the appropriate and rightful exercise of free will and conscience. (Both of these are basic to Catholic teaching, in which they are called “the sense of the faithful.”)

There is life and morality within the RC church. The Catholic blogosphere and non-profit organizations such as the Catholic Health Association can be a force for good.

The cheerless out of touch bishops cannot rule by decree anymore. The GOP may have the bishops but Social Justice has the nuns and average Roman Catholics when it comes to everyday practical matters regarding life.