By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

At least two U.S. bishops have taken action against a women’s religious community and the Catholic Health Association for publicly expressing support for pro-abortion ObamaCare in defiance of the stated position of the U.S. Conference of Bishops.

The Catholic News Service (CNS) is reporting that Bishop Lawrence E. Brandt of Greensburg, Pa., has directed diocesan offices, parishes and the diocesan newspaper not to promote the “vocation awareness program of any religious community” that was a signatory to a letter urging members of the House of Representatives to pass the health reform bill.

Just prior to passage of the bill, a group of dissenting religious sisters named Network sent a letter to Congress in support of the legislation. The nuns misrepresented themselves to Congress by stating that they represented “59,000 Catholic sisters in the U.S.” even though they represented only the 54 women who actually signed the letter.

Sr. Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association (CHA), also publicly supported the bill on behalf of the CHA, which prompted Providence, R.I., Bishop Thomas J. Tobin to take action. He instructed the Catholic Health Association to “remove the diocesan-sponsored St. Joseph Health Services of Rhode Island from its membership rolls, saying that CHA leadership had ‘misled the public and caused serious scandal’ by supporting health reform legislation that the bishops opposed,” CNS reports.

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