Sister Margaret's choice: She tried to save a woman's life and got ex-communicated
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John Overmyer / Newsart
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We finally have a case where the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy is responding forcefully and speedily to allegations of wrongdoing.
But the target isn't a pedophile priest. Rather, it's a nun who helped save a woman's life. Doctors describe her as saintly.
The excommunication of Sister Margaret McBride in Phoenix underscores all that to me feels morally obtuse about the church hierarchy. I hope that a public outcry can rectify this travesty.
Ms. McBride 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."
Ms. McBride was a member of that committee. She declined to discuss the episode with me, but the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmstead, ruled that Ms. McBride 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.
Let us just note that the Roman Catholic hierarchy suspended priests who abused children and in some cases defrocked them but did not normally excommunicate them, so they remained able to take the sacrament.
Since the excommunication, Ms. McBride has left her post as vice president and is no longer listed as one of the hospital executives on its website. The hospital told me that she had resigned "at the bishop's request" but is still working elsewhere at the hospital.
I heard about Ms. McBride from an acquaintance who is a doctor at the hospital. After what happened to her, 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.
First Published May 28, 2010 12:00 am
