Between applause, chatter and lunch at the YWCA’s annual fundraiser, Sister Simone Campbell complimented Charlotte’s social conscience. Standing at the podium, she told the 800 or so audience members, “There’s a lot of good work being done here.”
The “work” the diminutive, plain-spoken nun was referring to has nothing to do with the regular 9-to-5 grind of commerce and banking, and everything to do with helping those on the margins of society. Campbell came to Charlotte — her sixth visit in the past 12 months — to serve as keynote speaker of the YWCA’s largest public event of the year, held at the Westin Tuesday, Feb. 19.
Considering her fairly low profile just a couple of years ago, it’s remarkable that Campbell has become enough of a prominent national progressive figure — and familiar enough to Charlotteans — to be asked to deliver the keynote address at such a large event. Remarkable maybe, but no surprise. Even the Pope knows who she is.
Many of the people attending the fundraiser likely first heard of the attorney, nun and activist in April 2012, when the Vatican announced a crackdown on Network, a social-justice lobby run by Campbell, and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group of 1,500 Catholic orders that represents about 80 percent of all American nuns. The nuns, said the Vatican, had “serious doctrinal problems,” primarily disagreements with the male bishops over gay rights, the male-only priesthood and healthcare (the nuns came out in favor of “Obamacare,” while American bishops opposed it). The Vatican report also criticized Network and the Leadership Conference for promoting “radical feminist themes” and focusing too much on poverty and economic injustice, while staying “silent” on abortion and the supposed evils of same-sex marriage. While many American Catholics were outraged by the Vatican’s position, the Pope went ahead and appointed three bishops to “remake” the Leadership Conference.
“We were shocked that the Vatican had even heard of us, to be honest,” Campbell said. The nuns, she related, met and decided to use the controversy as a chance to spread their message, so they launched the Nuns on the Bus tour last summer, a nine-city, 15-day road trip in which they talked to whoever would listen about the dangers of the proposed Paul Ryan budget and its effects on “the lives of those who live on the margin.” (Ryan’s budget includes privatizing Medicare and drastically reducing all social welfare spending.) Campbell even spoke at last year’s Democratic National Convention.
Since the bus tour, and particularly after her DNC speech, Campbell has become a go-to source for news stories about social justice, as well as a guest on national talk shows including The Colbert Report, The Daily Show and even The O’Reilly Factor.
Last week she spoke of meeting with Ryan and telling the GOP’s then-future VP candidate that his idea of churches taking care of the nation’s poor was not a feasible response to the massive nature of our poverty-related problems. In her speech, she praised YWCA programs that put homeless people in transitional housing so they have somewhere to get their lives and, in many cases, their families, back in working order. But the public can do more to help the most vulnerable parts of society, she said.
“The most important thing you can do right now,” she told the crowd,” “is to please, please call your governor and your state legislators and tell them that expanding Medicaid, as part of the new health care law, is essential and a wonderful opportunity to ensure that everyone in the state benefits from an increased level of health care.”
Summoning more progressive tenets, Campbell said she supported offering everyone a safety net.
“It’s so much more reasonable to act as a caring community,” she said. “I came to that idea by my faith, but many others reach the same conclusion by other ways, and that’s just fine. The important thing is acting on those principles.”
At the end of Campbell’s speech, the audience rose and gave her a lingering standing ovation.
Afterward, she explained to me that she is “pro-life,” but not on the terms adapted by the movement of the same name.
“A pro-life stance,” Campbell said, “means that everyone in the richest country in the world should have easy access to health care. ‘Pro-life’ doesn’t just have to do with birth; it’s also about life after birth, and keeping up that stance throughout life.”
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This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 5, 2013.
Where does the CDF assessment of the LCWR and Network criticize the groups for “focusing too much on poverty and social injustice”? The opening of the document *praises* the social justice work of the religious sisters. And did “the American bishops” really “oppose” the Obama administration’s healthcare plan as a whole? I recall the bishops’ responses being quite *sympathetic* to the overall aims of the plan, only criticizing issues of abortion funding and the contraception/abortifacients mandate. (These sketchy claims are all too typical of the polarized-politics approach to Catholic doctrine, which is inevitably reductive.)
Thanks for your input, Daniel. Yes, the Catholic bishops DID oppose Obamacare and sent out a letter to Catholic churchgoers in March 2010 expressly saying so. Their opposition revolved around abortion funding, but they did, in fact, come out publicly in opposition to the entire package. Here’s a link to information about their opposition: http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/14/cath…
As for the CDF’s assessment of the nuns’ social justice work, the opening paragraph of the report did indeed compliment the US nuns on their work with the poor. Two paragraphs later, however, the harsh critiques began and continued until the end of the document. Here is a critical excerpt from page 3 of the report: “. . .while there has been a great deal of work on the part of LCWR promoting issues of social justice in harmony with the Church’s social doctrine, it is silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States. Further, issues of crucial importance to the life of Church and society, such as the Church’s Biblical view of family life and human sexuality, are not part of the LCWR agenda in a way that promotes Church teaching.”
These are not “sketchy claims,” as you called them. These are direct quotes from the bishops’ document.
I appreciate the response, John. You are right that the bishops opposed the passing of the healthcare bill, and I should have been more precise. The article you link to, though, seems to support my basic point– the bishops’ opposition was not about their views on healthcare in general, but *specifically* about the issue of abortion funding. Thus, though technically correct, it seems misleading, and tendentiously so, to suggest that the “doctrinal issues” the bishops raised with religious sisters were about disagreements over “healthcare” and the Obama administration plan, when really only abortion was at issue– as the Hot Air article says, a great many bishops would have been highly sympathetic to the plan otherwise. As for your second point, I didn’t claim the bishops didn’t criticize the religious sisters for their attitudes toward Church doctrine. I think they were right to do so, but I have no problem with someone who disagrees with them criticizing what they actually said. What I objected to was the suggestion that they blamed the nuns for “focusing too much on poverty and economic justice,” which is *not* an accurate summary of the quote you provided, and paints a deeply unfair picture of bishops who get mad at nuns for caring too much about the poor and suffering.
No, I’m sorry, Daniel, but the bishops opposed Obamacare; if it was because of abortion or something else entirely, it’s irrelevant in terms of the politics of the situation — they did officially oppose it. I think you’re trying to cut hairs a little too finely there. Also, I didn’t mean to criticize US bishops for getting mad at the nuns “for caring too much about the poor.” It’s more trivial on their part than that. It’s well known that the bishops were furious that the nuns gave the Obama administration “political cover” with Catholics regarding Obamacare, thus interfering with the bishops’ assumed authority over the nuns. My opinion is that it was high time for their self-regard to be knocked down a notch or two.
As for the quote from the CDF, it certainly includes a strong implication that since the nuns did not spend enough time on issues of abortion and homosexuality, they thus spent too much time on the social justice issues. That’s simply how the quoted CDF paragraph reads to anyone paying attention to the subtext.
One more note: I’ve been a Catholic — I admit, off and on at times — for nearly 60 years, since the pre-Vatican II days, and I’ve seen it all. A lifetime of experience of observing and dealing with the Catholic hierarchy, including of course the bishops, leaves me with less — much less — trust in their inherent “authority,” never mind wisdom, than you seem to have. That perspective comes out in my columns that regard the Church. You seem intelligent and forthright, and I suggest to you that a lifetime of honest observation and freedom of thought (America and all that, you know) will temper your regard for the church’s “bosses,” believe me.
You may be right that I’m splitting hairs there. That part read in a misleading way to me (i.e. painting the bishops as “right-wing” re: the healthcare plan), but I may just be overly sensitive as those things go. I don’t see that “subtext” in the CDF quote, though, and still think your description is inaccurate.
As for my “regard” for the episcopate, I do consider the bishops to have an indispensable doctrinal role of authority (as taught solemnly many times by the Church, including Vatican II), and that’s why it’s especially important to me to see their (often, I think, quite intelligent) contributions re: moral issues accurately represented. That doesn’t mean they are going to be right on every political issue, granted– and it *certainly* doesn’t mean they’re all going to be moral and responsible (what little I know of the sex abuse scandal shows that too well). So I can respect fair-minded criticism, and you are probably right I would sympathize more with you if I had more experience of frustrating dealings with authority. (And I’m glad to hear you’re coming at this from a Catholic perspective.) However, I think respect for the teaching office of the bishops is kinda part of the Catholic deal, even in those cases where bishops may not personally merit much or any respect.