That Lying Malkin and Catholic Hospitals

Michele Malkin, like most of the right-wing conspiracy nuts, is more than pleased to stretch the truth and leave out inconvenient facts in order to drive the "ACLU is the Devil" and "War on Religion." This past week on GOPUSA, she penned an ignorant rant entitled The ACLU's Unholy War on Catholic Hospitals. Malkin writes:

Civil liberties activists have a particular vendetta against devout Phoenix Catholic Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who recently revoked the Catholic status of a rogue hospital that performed several direct abortions, provided birth control pills and presided over sterilizations against the church’s ethical and religious directives for health care.

Through all her blathering, Malkin got one thing right: there is an Unholy War on Catholic Hospitals. But that war is coming from the Catholic Church itself.

Let's take a look at the actual facts of the story of St. Joseph's:

• Founded in 1895 by Sisters of Mercy (yeah, not exactly "rogue")
• Performed an abortion as a last resort to save the life of a mother - who already had 4 kids - because severe symptoms of pulmonary hypertension would have killed her.
• The child could not have survived out of the womb, i.e., would have died either way: due to abortion or because the mother was dead.
• Bishop Thomas Olmsted excommunicated the nun involved in the decision.
• Bishop then stripped the Catholic status of the hospital based on this one event.

Malkin is out of touch and a liar. Bishop Olmsted is a sanctimonious moron.

As opposed to this being a story about the ACLU, this is a story about how far removed from reality the patriarchy of the Catholic Church is in our world. A lot of people in the Catholic Community are upset about this event, and not because an abortion was performed. On the contrary, Catholics nationwide are wondering how a bishop could choose doctrine over life, could publicly say that in the eyes of God it is better that a woman and her unborn child die and leave four children motherless than make the best of a terrible situation. And on top of it? Let's damn a nun to hell. Nice.

Catholics are splintering off, creating their own congregations, or simply no longer attending church because more and more people are realizing that in the arcane structure of the Catholic Church the Rules of Man take precedence over the Grace of God, that volumes and volumes of guidelines lose the most basic tenets of the simplest things Jesus ever said. "Treat others the way you would like to be treated." "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to get into heaven." Stuff like that.

So that's the story, Michele. I realize that anything that comes from the right is suspect, but this was just deplorable. It's not the ACLU or Barack Obama or George Soros or lefties or Democrats that are in the wrong here; it is the Catholic Church.