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New York State Governor Cathy Hochul, a Catholic, who has never met a statute or policy opposing Church teachings she was unwilling to support, signed 2023’s LGBT Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights into law. Among its provisions, the law requires nursing home operators to use pronouns, assign rooms, and grant access to patients based solely on their self-proclaimed gender identities. The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who operate a skilled nursing facility for indigents “from all walks of life, ideologies, and faiths” dying of cancer, filed suit challenging the law on April 7 in a federal trial court in New York.
I hesitate to call someone an Enemy of the Church, but there are times when their actions make me wonder why I should not name them so. It does not mean they are beyond redemption, as that would be blasphemy to suggest that there are sins that are greater than God's ability to forgive.
Mother Mary Alphonsa, formerly Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of the classic novel The Scarlet Letter), founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, Congregation of Saint Rose of Lima, in 1900. A convert to Catholicism wishing to serve God and the poor, she opened the 42-bed facility at the congregation’s motherhouse that separates men and women by floors while providing compassionate, dignified, palliative care, and comfort to indigent, incurable cancer patients in their final days. The New York law requires officials at long-term care facilities to assign those receiving care to rooms based on their gender identities rather than biological sexes, regardless of other patients’ wishes, use their preferred pronouns even when not present, and post notices affirming compliance with its dictates. It also requires staff to undergo “cultural competency” training at least once every two years in attempting to force them to comply with the state’s preferred gender ideology.
The good Dominican Sisters provide hospice care at no charge to the patient or their families, regardless of religious beliefs. In some cases, their patients have no family.
The Sisters could not only be fined, but they could also be jailed for failure to obey 2023’s LGBT Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights.
Discussion (23)
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What the hell is wrong with people these days?
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This is even more preposterous than Barry-O's jihad against the Little Sisters of the Poor for not offering providing contraceptives to employees under the Affordable Care Act.
Though clearly they are a band of wild-eyed radicals.
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They had better win that lawsuit. There are multiple constitutional violations in the law, and the Supreme Court should take it up.
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Central governments have never liked competition in the charity/welfare business. That's why they try to get private charities to be distributors of governmental largess. Government funding is the means for government control.
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They had better win that lawsuit. There are multiple constitutional violations in the law, and the Supreme Court should take it up.
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