During the tail end of the healthcare reform fight, several supposedly Catholic orders of nuns weighed in for the bill, even though it funded abortion and didn’t protect the conscience rights of healthcare professionals. They signed a letter that went to President Obama on March 17th in support of the bill, which was in direct opposition to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Some of those nuns, specifically the Sisters of St. Joseph, are now facing the consequences for publicly supporting the atrocious legislation – they are being barred from recruiting new nuns in a diocese in Pennsylvania, right outside of Pittsburgh. The nuns are launching a recruiting drive through ads and community events and Bishop Lawrence Brandt has refused to allow them to add to their members when they so blatantly opposed the Church by publicly supporting the healthcare legislation and the Church’s teachings regarding the sanctity of life.
Brandt “has a right to disapprove a request from a religious community that wants to host a recruitment event when that community has taken a public stance in opposition to the church’s teaching on human life,” the diocese said in a statement dated April 15.
“Furthermore,” the statement continued, “an environment of dissent from and public opposition to the positions of the U.S. Catholic bishops does not provide an appropriate seedbed for vocations.”
Bishop Brandt isn’t alone. In Providence, R.I., the bishop there ordered a “diocesan-sponsored health care system to withdraw from the Catholic Health Association, which also supported the health care bill.”
We are glad to see the bishops exercising their roles as teachers of the faith and taking actions to uphold the Church’s teachings and reprimand those who publicly oppose and encourage dissent from the teachings of the Church.
Yesterday, those of us in the Diocese of Arlington were asked to keep a day of prayer and fasting by Bishop Loverde to ask God’s protection and guidance for those who are crafting health care legislation. I imagine that it is no accident that the petitions for Evening Prayer in the Divine Office for yesterday started off with these:
Last week was a 
Additionally, SMS is asking our supporters to pass the word in joining Bishop Paul Loverde, Bishop of the Diocese of Arlington, VA in his call for Monday, March 15th to be a national day of prayer and fast to protect the sanctity of life in any health care legislation that comes from Congress. 
