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Sister Barbara's Gone Rogue! NPR Touts Nuns for 'Enshrining Abortion Rights' in Missouri
mrc NewsBusters ^ | May 4, 2024 | Tim Graham

Posted on 05/06/2024 3:06:44 PM PDT by Morgana

Leftists love to believe that churches should be run like clubs -- the majority rules. So they'll make a big deal out of polls, like the Pew Research Center finding six of ten Catholics disagree with the church's opposition to abortion. They do not ask self-identified Catholics whether they actually go to church on Sundays, or if they stopped the minute they became an adult. You would get a more conservative result.

On Tuesday, NPR's newscast All Things Considered brought on reporter Katia Riddle to channel the views of pro-abortion Catholics, but what made it more shocking is touting a pro-abortion nun -- someone who is financially supported by the Church, and who should be accepting of all the Church teachings.

KATIA RIDDLE: Today, Missouri is replete with Catholic churches, iconography and people like Sister Barbara.

SISTER BARBARA: I certainly did not intend to, you know, become a sister or a nun.

RIDDLE: She's standing outside her modest apartment, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. She grew up Catholic but wasn't all that religious. In her 20s, she describes a kind of love affair she fell into with Catholicism.

SISTER BARBARA: An emphasis on serving the poor and getting involved in just, you know, the social justice issues of the day. And that was a whole new idea for me about what religious life was really about.

Church officials might want to know who this nun is, and why she would publicly -- well, not all the way -- bite the hand that's feeding her.

RIDDLE: NPR is not using Sister Barbara's last name. She fears retribution from her local archdiocese for publicly expressing her beliefs on reproductive rights. She doesn't agree with the church's position that abortion is a sin and should be illegal.

SISTER BARBARA: I just don't see it in just real absolute terms.

RIDDLE: She says she wouldn't personally choose to end a pregnancy.

SISTER BARBARA: However, I have not been in the situation of a person who has - had suffered from incest or rape or all of those things.

RIDDLE: The Bible, she points out, does not say anything explicit about abortion. She fell in love with Catholicism for its practice around compassion and service, not politics.

SISTER BARBARA: I want to put a sticker on the car that says, don't like abortion? Don't have one.

RIDDLE: That's why she's supporting an effort in Missouri to enshrine abortion rights in the state's Constitution. Several other nuns interviewed for this story said they feel the same. One was even collecting signatures to put the measure on the November ballot, though she didn't want to talk about it on the record.

Over seven minutes, Riddle lined up the Catholic abortion advocates: ex-nun Alice Kitchen, retired reproductive endocrinologist Marilyn Richardson, Democrat state representative Ingrid Burnett, and college student Mary Helen Schaefer. The only surprise is a brief nod to Matt Lee, who runs a pro-life group called Missouri Stands with Women. He's a deacon in the church.

RIDDLE: Lee says he's not surprised that many Catholics support abortion access. Some reproductive rights advocates say church leadership is scared of this diversity of opinion among its followers, but Lee disagrees.

LEE: Could you say the Catholic Church is under attack or the church's beliefs are under attack or their institutions are? Sure, but that doesn't mean that the Catholic Church is scared. I mean, scared people tend to run away. The Catholic Church is not running away from this fight.

Try not to laugh at NPR saying some other organization is scared of having a diversity of opinion inside its walls.

Riddle concluded with the unsubtle hint that the Catholic hierarchy should be tethered to polls instead of their view of God's will:

SISTER BARBARA: I think that the Catholic Church would not be here today if they didn't have a remarkable ability to turn corners when it's necessary - when things are about to collapse for it.

RIDDLE: After all, she points out, Catholicism has been around for centuries. She's hoping this abortion debate is a relatively brief distraction from what she sees as the faith's fundamental aspirations.

SISTER BARBARA: Reaching for some kind of ideals in the way we love and live with each other, with one another.

RIDDLE: For Sister Barbara, one of those ideals would be for church leadership to value what a majority of Catholics believe.


TOPICS: Catholic; Moral Issues
KEYWORDS: abortion; catholic; frankennun; modernism; nun; prolife; vcii

1 posted on 05/06/2024 3:06:44 PM PDT by Morgana
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To: Morgana

Ah, NPR, where all the women are weird, all the men are women, and all the children support Palistinian rights.


2 posted on 05/06/2024 3:12:30 PM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: Da Coyote

Which is kinda strange in that the Palestinians don’t support abortion or gay rights like NPR does.


3 posted on 05/06/2024 3:16:04 PM PDT by Morgana ( Always a bit of truth in dark humor.)
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To: Morgana
SISTER BARBARA: I certainly did not intend to, you know, become a sister or a nun.

That's very fortunate, 'ster,* because you didn't.

*The bad boys at my Catholic grade school corrupted "Yes, sister" to "Yes 'ster" as a sign of their respect, and I am granting the same level of respect to 'Ster Baba.

4 posted on 05/06/2024 3:17:41 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (The worst thing about censorship is █████ ██ ████ ████ ████ █ ███████ ████. FJB.)
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To: Morgana
For Sister Barbara, one of those ideals would be for church leadership to value what a majority of Catholics believe.

Sister Barbara needs to repent of her heresy.

Failing that, she should be honest and join a religious community in which doctrine is subject to majority vote and may be contradicted when change is deemed "convenient".

5 posted on 05/06/2024 3:28:53 PM PDT by NorthMountain (... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: Morgana

“SISTER BARBARA: However, I have not been in the situation of a person who has - had suffered from incest or rape or all of those things.”

Ok, what about the other 99%+ of cases, “sister”?


6 posted on 05/06/2024 3:47:48 PM PDT by j.havenfarm (23 years on Free Republic, 12/10/23! More than 8,000 replies and still not shutting up!)
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To: NorthMountain

Every church, Catholic or Protestant or otherwise, needs to make sure the hedonists have no influence in our churches (1st Corinthians 5).


7 posted on 05/06/2024 4:11:22 PM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: Morgana

LGBT in front of me, pro-abort behind, all of them immaculate, standing in the Communion line.


8 posted on 05/06/2024 4:34:57 PM PDT by JJBookman (Leave Rome and come home to Eastern Orthodoxy, it's The Church as it was BEFORE V2 ruined it)
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To: NorthMountain

If “Sister Barbara” even exists.....


9 posted on 05/06/2024 5:05:39 PM PDT by Bigg Red (Trump will be sworn in under a shower of confetti made from the tattered remains of the Rat Party.)
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To: Morgana

Fake poll. No way do 60 percent of Catholics support abortion. And ALL the leftists want to “help the poor,” just not the most vulnerable people of all.


10 posted on 05/06/2024 5:32:19 PM PDT by Missouri gal
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To: Bigg Red; NorthMountain

Yea I remember Sister Simone Campbell but this is the first time I’ve even heard of this Sister.

Plus Sister Barbara does not use her last name in the article. Sister Simone did not care who knew and she went around with that group “Nuns under the bus”


11 posted on 05/07/2024 1:40:07 AM PDT by Morgana ( Always a bit of truth in dark humor.)
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To: OriginalChristian

Save


12 posted on 05/08/2024 3:48:55 AM PDT by OriginalChristian (The end of the American Republic as founded, began when the first Career Politician was elected...)
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