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Tussling Over Jesus

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: January 26, 2011

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The National Catholic Reporter newspaper put it best: Just days before Christians celebrated Christmas, Jesus got evicted.

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Y et the person giving Jesus the heaveSIGN IN TO E-MAIL ho in this case was not a Bethlehem innkeeper. Nor was it an overzealous PRINT mayor angering conservatives by REPRINTS pulling down Christmas decorations. SHARE Rather, it was a prominent bishop, Thomas Olmsted, stripping St. Josephs Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix of its affiliation with the Roman Catholic diocese.
Damon Winter/The New Y ork Times

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The hospitals offense? It had terminated a pregnancy to save the life of the mother. The hospital says the 27-yearold woman, a mother of four children, would almost certainly have died otherwise. Bishop Olmsted initially excommunicated a nun, Sister Margaret McBride, who had been on the hospitals ethics committee and had approved of the decision. That seems to have been a failed attempt to bully the hospital into submission, but it refused to cave and continues to employ Sister Margaret. Now the bishop, in effect, is excommunicating the entire hospital all because it saved a womans life.

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Make no mistake: This clash of values is a bellwether of a profound disagreement that is playing out at many Catholic hospitals around the country. These hospitals are part of the backbone of American health care, amounting to 15 percent of hospital beds. Already in Bend, Ore., last year, a bishop ended the churchs official relationship with St. Charles Medical Center for making tubal ligation sterilizations available to women who requested them. And two Catholic hospitals in Texas halted tubal ligations at the insistence of the local bishop in Tyler. The National Womens Law Center has just issued a report quoting doctors at Catholicaffiliated hospitals as saying that sometimes they are forced by church doctrine to provide substandard care to women with miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies in ways that can leave the women infertile or even endanger their lives. More clashes are likely as the church hierarchy grows more conservative, and as hospitals and laity grow more impatient with bishops who seem increasingly out of touch. Catholic hospitals like St. Josephs that are evicted by the church continue to operate largely as before. The main consequence is that Mass can no longer be said in the hospital chapel. Thomas C. Fox, the editor of National Catholic Reporter, noted regretfully that a hospital with deep Catholic roots like St. Josephs now cannot celebrate Mass, while airport chapels can. Mr. Fox added: Olmsteds moral certitude is lifeless, leaving no place for compassionate Christianity. To me, this battle illuminates two rival religious approaches, within the Catholic church and any spiritual tradition. One approach focuses upon dogma, sanctity, rules and the punishment of sinners. The other exalts compassion for the needy and mercy for sinners and, perhaps, above all, inclusiveness.

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Tussling Over Jesus - NYTimes.com

The thought that keeps nagging at me is this: If you look at Bishop Olmsted and Sister Margaret as the protagonists in this battle, one of them truly seems to me to have emulated the life of Jesus. And its not the bishop, who has spent much of his adult life as a Vatican bureaucrat climbing the career ladder. Its Sister Margaret, who like so many nuns has toiled for decades on behalf of the neediest and sickest among us. Then along comes Bishop Olmsted to excommunicate the Christ-like figure in our story. If Jesus were around today, he might sue the bishop for defamation. Y et in this battle, its fascinating how much support St. Josephs Hospital has had and how firmly it has pushed back in effect, pounding 95 theses on the bishops door. The hospital backed up Sister Margaret, and it rejected the bishops demand that it never again terminate a pregnancy to save the life of a mother. St. Josephs will continue through our words and deeds to carry out the healing ministry of Jesus, said Linda Hunt, the hospital president. Our operations, policies, and procedures will not change. The Catholic Health Association of the United States, a network of Catholic hospitals around the country, stood squarely behind St. Josephs. Anne Rice, the author and a commentator on Catholicism, sees a potential turning point. St. Josephs refusal to knuckle under to the bishop is huge, she told me, adding: Maybe rank-and-file Catholics are finally talking back to a hierarchy that long ago deserted them. With the Vatican seemingly as deaf and remote as it was in 1517, some Catholics at the grass roots are pushing to recover their faith. Jamie L. Manson, the same columnist for National Catholic Reporter who proclaimed that Jesus had been evicted, also argued powerfully that many ordinary Catholics have reached a breaking point and that St. Josephs heralds a new vision of Catholicism: Though they will be denied the opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist, the Eucharist will rise out of St. Josephs every time the sick are healed, the frightened are comforted, the lonely are visited, the weak are fed, and vigil is kept over the dying. Hallelujah. I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground, where this week, George Clooney and I are taking your questions about malaria. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on January 27, 2011, on page A31 of the New York edition.

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