Nun: an abortion clinic escort

Someone could use a good dose of excommunication.



Nun Volunteering as Abortion Clinic Escort in Illinois
Sr. Quinn's prioress said in an email response to LSN that the nun sees her volunteer activity as "accompanying women who are verbally abused by protestors."

By Kathleen Gilbert

HINSDALE, Illinois, October 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Dominican nun has been seen frequenting an abortion facility in Illinois recently - but not, as one might expect, to pray for an end to abortion or to counsel women seeking abortions, but to volunteer as a clinic escort.

Local pro-life activists say that they recognized the escort at the ACU Health Center as Sr. Donna Quinn, a nun outspokenly in favor of legalized abortion, after seeing her photo in a Chicago Tribune article.

"I've called her sister several times, and she never responded," local pro-lifer John Bray told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN). "But it's her."

Amy Keane, a pro-life witness for 11 years, says Quinn has acted as escort for "six years, at least." Keane described one incident in which Quinn began shouting at the pro-lifers as they spoke to a woman about to enter the abortion facility.

"[Quinn] was so angry, and burst out very loudly so everyone could hear: 'Look at these men, telling these women what to do with their bodies!'" said Keane. "She was so angry, that it really took all of us aback." Keane says that the group was peaceful, and that the men present were not among those engaging the woman.

"For those of us who are Catholic, to have a member of a religious order so blatantly - it is so disheartening. It really is," said Keane. "She's participating actively in abortion. That is what is so disturbing for us."

Sr. Donna Quinn, OP, is renowned in the Chicago area as an advocate for legalized abortion and other liberal issues.

In 1974 she co-founded the organization Chicago Catholic Women, which lobbied the USCCB on a feminist platform before it dissolved in 2000. She is now a coordinator of the radically liberal National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN), which stands in opposition against the Catholic Church's position on abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and the male priesthood.

While LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) was unable to reach Sr. Quinn for comment, NCAN's Sr. Beth Rindler confirmed to LSN that Quinn is still a member of their group, which favors unrestricted legalized abortion and disagrees with the teaching that abortion is intrinsically evil. "We respect women, and believe that they make moral decision, and so we respect their decisions," Rindler explained.

In a 2002 address to the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School, Sr. Quinn described how she came to view the teachings of her Church as "immoral": "I used to say: 'This is my Church, and I will work to change it, because I love it,'" she said. "Then later I said, 'This church is immoral, and if I am to identify with it I'd better work to change it.' More recently, I am saying, 'All organized religions are immoral in their gender discriminations.'"

Quinn called gender discrimination "the root cause of evil in the Church, and thus in the world," and said she remained in the Dominican community simply for "the sisterhood."

Sr. Patricia Mulcahey, OP, Quinn's Prioress at the Sinsinawa Dominican community, said in an email response to LSN that the nun sees her volunteer activity as "accompanying women who are verbally abused by protestors. Her stance is that if the protestors were not abusive, she would not be there."

Though Sr. Mulcahey claimed that her sisters "support the teachings of the Catholic Church," she declined to comment on Quinn's public protest of Catholic Church teaching.

Joe Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League says Quinn came in contact with his own office in 1982, when she and a group of other pro-aborts picketed his building on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

"She figures it's part of her religion to take these women in and protect them, and get them abortions," said Scheidler of Quinn's recent activity. "Something dreadful has happened to make a Catholic nun become an escort at an abortion clinic - that's the lowest form you can reach, where you escort a woman with a living child in her into a place to have the child killed, and to ruin that woman's soul."

"If I didn't even believe in the humanity of the child - which of course would be crazy - even if I didn't, I would fight abortion for the sake of the women," Scheidler added. "They miss that baby, and they can't get it back. They never can."

I would know what to do with the "sisters" in that convent.

Catholic Culture - Diogenes

Anyone who seriously thinks the nun will end up excommunicated needs their head checking. She's one of them.

We will rightly condemn it and they will find excuses for it...

Well noted.


This post has been edited by Credo on Oct 25 2009, 11:35 PM

If you participate in an abortion, aren't you automatically excommunicated?

That is true, Adesto.

Updated: Nun Abortion Clinic Escort Reprimanded - Dominican Congregation Apologizes for Scandal
Three bishops now discussing ways to end this many years ongoing scandal

By Peter J. Smith

HINSDALE, Illinois, November 3, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A congregation of US Dominican nuns has publicly apologized for the scandal caused by one of its members acting as a volunteer escort at a Chicago area abortion facility, who now faces severe canonical penalties including excommunication and the possibility of dismissal.

LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) first broke the story about Sr. Donna Quinn, O.P., a Dominican nun who is outspokenly in favor of legalized abortion, who had been identified by pro-life witnesses as an escort for the ACU Health Clinic.

Sr. Quinn's religious community, the Wisconsin-based Sinsinawa Dominican Congregation, admitted in a press release posted on their website that they were informed of the allegation several months ago, and, after having completed a period of investigation, the Congregation's leaders have informed the pro-abortion sister that "her actions are in violation of her profession as a Dominican religious."

The congregation reports that its leaders "are working with Sr. Donna to resolve the matter appropriately" and regret the public scandal caused by her actions.

The Sinsinawa Dominicans took the opportunity to re-affirm unequivocally their commitment to the Catholic Church's core teachings, as well as the necessity to witness to the sanctity and dignity of all human life from conception to natural death.

"We as Sinsinawa Dominican women are called to proclaim the Gospel through the ministry of preaching and teaching to participate in the building of a holy and just society," read a statement issued on behalf of the congregation.

"As Dominican religious, we fully support the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding the dignity and value of every human life from conception to natural death. We believe that abortion is an act of violence that destroys the life of the unborn. We do not engage in activity that witnesses to support of abortion."

ChicagoCatholicNews.com reports that three Catholic hierarchs are meeting to discuss what remedial action must be taken to correct Sr. Quinn: Cardinal Francis George of the Archdiocese of Chicago, Bishop J. Peter Sartain of Joliet, Illinois and Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin. An anonymous aide to Morlino said the three were involved since Sr. Quinn's motherhouse is located within Bishop Morlino's territory, but Sr. Quinn resides in the Chicago Archdiocese, while the abortion clinic where she gave formal assistance to abortion as an escort is situated within Sartain's diocese.

Formal cooperation with abortion is considered a grave sin in the Catholic Church that carries an automatic penalty of excommunication or excommunication latae sententiae as it is called within the Church's canon law (Canon 1398). Earlier in July, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reiterated the penalty of excommunication applied to all parties formally cooperating in abortion, emphasizing that the penalty was an act of mercy, because in that way the Church "makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society."

All three prelates will have to take that matter into consideration when they consult, but canon lawyer Edward Peters on his blog says that Sr. Quinn faces the possibility of dismissal from her order if matters are not reconciled.

"Canon 695 calls for the mandatory dismissal of a religious guilty of the delict of abortion described in Canon 1398," writes Peters. The case would be made that Sr. Quinn is an accomplice to abortion under Canon 1329, which would then make Canon 695 applicable.

"The novelty of nuns serving as murder mistresses at abortion clinics means that there is not much jurisprudence for such cases, I grant, but it is still a theory worth exploring," Peters remarked.

Another possibility would then be Canon 696, Peters continues, "dismissal from religious life can be imposed against one who gives 'grave scandal arising from culpable behavior.'"

That leaves either Sr. Quinn's superiors or the three bishops with the option to pursue Sr. Quinn's dismissal in the Church's courts. With American Archbishop Raymond Burke as the head of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church's supreme court of appeal for canon law cases, it is doubtful that Sr. Quinn could acquit herself of the charges in light of long-standing evidence regarding her support for abortion.

Chicago-area pro-life witnesses informed LifeSiteNews.com that Sr. Quinn has acted as escort for "six years, at least" and they were finally able to identify her after her picture appeared in an article for the Chicago Tribune.

Sr. Quinn has also spoken out in favor of legal abortion for decades and is a coordinator of the National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN), an organization which opposes the Catholic Church's position on abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and the male priesthood.