Word: mansourism
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Sister Agnes Mansour supervises Medicaid abortions...
...Michigan's most respected Roman Catholic nuns. She is also head of the state's department of social services, which spends more than $5 million a year on Medicaid abortions. Obedient to the teachings of her church, Sister Agnes Mary Mansour believes abortion is sinful. She also recognizes that others disagree, and feels that poor women are entitled to have publicly funded abortions so long as they are legal...
Blanchard, a Unitarian who is pro-choice on abortion, had good reason to choose Mansour to run the state's biggest agency. Her order, the Sisters of Mercy of the Union, runs 21 hospitals as well as other public service agencies in Michigan. Sister Agnes, who has a doctorate in biochemistry from Georgetown University, is an adept administrator who boosted both enrollment and endowments during the past decade as president of Detroit's Mercy College...
Sister Agnes and Archbishop Szoka first clashed last year when she ran unsuccessfully in a Democratic congressional primary. The Pope clearly indicated that priests and nuns should not hold public office, and those who do so should, according to current canon law, first get permission from their bishop. Mansour did not request permission, and says she did not know this was necessary. During the primary she tartly dismissed canon law as an "old set of rules that are invoked when somebody wants to invoke them, and ignored when someone wants to ignore them...
When Governor-elect Blanchard selected Mansour in December to be director of the public services department, she asked both her order and Archbishop Szoka for permission to serve. The order readily approved. So did Szoka, but he states that he gave his support only on condition that Mansour would clarify her position on abortion so that it was in line with church teaching. Szoka noted that the nun "cannot control the laws of the state," and added: "To make a big issue of this one thing seems a bit sensational...