In another story from Arizona, but one that’s attracting less attention than that state’s check your documents anti-immigration law, a nun in Phoenix has been ex-communicated after approving a live-saving abortion. Sister Margaret McBride was excommunicated for approving an abortion without which, doctors say, both the woman and her 11-week-old fetus would have died. According to Thomas Olmsted, the Bishop of Phoenix, approving an abortion is an excommunicating offense — period.

“If a Catholic formally cooperates in the procurement of an abortion, they are automatically excommunicated by that action,” said Bishop Olmstead.

Funny how that automatic excommunication clause doesn’t kick in when it comes to the sexual abuse of children and rape.

As the Church abuse scandal is revealed, for decade upon decade, the Church not only cooperated with child rapists but has protected them from prosecution, even promoting them to the very top of the Church hierarchy.

This Church, which flexed every once of its political muscle to strangle hard-won reproductive rights out of this country’s health insurance laws, is subsidized by US Taxpayers — not only through public funding of Catholic Churches — but also through blanket tax exemptions.

Perhaps its time we checked their documents. Are priests in this country legally? Have they read the Constitution? Do they grasp the basics of our — legal system? Or do they not? And how long are we going to keep allowing, not to mention funding these creeps?
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About author

Laura Flanders is the host of “GRIT TV” the new, news and culture discussion program aired daily on Free Speech TV (Dish Network ch. 9415) and online at the popular blog site Firedoglake.com. Flanders also hosts RadioNation, on Air America Radio, the weekly radio program of the Nation Magazine. She is the author of Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics Back from the Politiicans (The Penguin Press, 2007) and the New York Times bestseller BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso, 2004), an expose of women in George W. Bush’s Cabinet. Flanders was founding director of the Women’s Desk at the media watch group, FAIR and for more than ten years she produced and hosted CounterSpin, Fair’s radio program. For more information and to contribute video to GRIT TV go to www.grittv.org.