Nuns Caring for Terminally Ill Sue New York Over Transgender Mandate
“I think the most important thing is that we are adamant in keeping our Catholic identity. Without that, there’s no purpose for us to do what we’re doing.”
It’s Sisters of the Poor all over again.
The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne run the Rosary Hill Home, located about 34 miles north of New York City.
The nuns take in terminally ill patients who have no one to care for them.
According to EWTN News, the state’s public health agency sent the nuns three letters, accusing them of not complying with a 2023 New York law for “refusing to assign a room to a resident other than in accordance with the resident’s gender identity,” “prohibiting a resident from using a restroom available to other persons of the same gender identity,” and “willfully and repeatedly failing to use a resident’s preferred name or pronouns after being clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns.”
The New York Legislature passed “The Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights for LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers and People Living with HIV” in 2023.
The nuns filed a complaint on April 6, claiming the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
We all know Catholic teachings:
But complying with the state’s rules is not an option for them, since the directives contradict their Catholic faith, the sisters told the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News.
The Catholic Church teaches that sex can’t be changed or separated from gender, although it also says people identifying as transgender must be treated with respect and compassion.
“I think the most important thing is that we are adamant in keeping our Catholic identity. Without that, there’s no purpose for us to do what we’re doing,” Mother Marie Edward, OP, the superior of the religious congregation, told the Register.
Rosary Hill Home does what any sane place would do. They separate patients by sex, meaning only males room with males. Each floor is also dedicated to a single sex.
The agency’s website shows no complaints against Rosary Hill Home. In fact, the home has not received a single complaint in five years.
“Over the same time period, New York has received more than 55,000 complaints against other nursing homes and has issued an average of 23 citations to each nursing home in the state,” the nuns wrote in the complaint.
But hey! Let’s target Catholics, especially nuns who provide an exceptional service.
The nuns claim New York’s mandate:
- Compels speech and conduct contrary to Catholic values and teaching
- Requires “Cultural Competency” training contrary to Catholic values and beliefs
- Posting requirement compels false speech
- Requires record keeping contrary to Catholic values and teaching
The big one, though? The mandate exempts some religious organizations, but not Catholics.
Yup:
While the Mandate includes no general religious organization exemption, it does include a religious exemption narrowly tailored to protect the Church of Christ, Scientist and its affiliates. The exemption states: “The provisions of this article shall not apply to a facility or institution engaged principally in providing services by or under the supervision of the bona fide members and adherents of a recognized religious organization whose teachings include reliance on spiritual means through prayer alone for healing in the practice of the religion of such organization and where services are provided in accordance with those teachings.” N.Y. Pub. Health Law § 2801(1).
This exception shields LTCFs operated by the Church of Christ, Scientist from the requirements of Section 2803-c-2. The Mandate provides no exemption for Catholic facilities or staff members.
Governments cannot narrowly tailor a law to protect one religion. The exemption must apply to all religions.
The First Amendment applies to all.
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Comments
The state of New York is toast. Once one religion is exempt all must be exempt. The should admit defeat, but they won’t. The state just wants to make the Sisters of the Poor suffer as long as possible even if it means elderly people also suffer.
The Sisters will win their case, but not for that reason. The exemption is available to them too, it just doesn’t serve the purpose they want. If they chose to provide only religious services and nothing else then they could get the same exemption, but their beliefs tell them to also provide medical care, so the exemption doesn’t apply.
Likewise the state can’t regulate people who merely pray for the hungry, but it can certainly regulate those who feed the hungry. If you want to open a facility where the hungry can come and you’ll pray for God to remove their hunger but you don’t provide any food, then the health department has no say in the matter. But if you open a kitchen it does.
Kathy Hochul is rubbing the nuns’ noses with dog doo.
The really atheistic Dem Party doesn’t realize that in their Islamo-Marxist coalition, they are digging their own graves. First they came for elderly with Covid, then Peanut and Fred got it and now the very ill and abandoned. Just like the Chinese… bringing religion to heel.
The nuns should return the favor and simply refuse to comply with this WACKO UNCONSTITUTIONAL New York State law.
They are. That’s why they’re challenging it.
Clown world.
It seem to me there are three issues.
1) Violation of religious liberty (mentioned)
2) government compelled speech (mentioned)
3) government coercion to commit fraud
Yes, fraud. And I have it on good authority that the government cannot compel you to commit a crime.
I’ve long maintained that there’s no such thing as a ‘trans’ person. They are mentally ill cross dressers who wear the affectations of the opposite sex as a gender costume in order to commit fraud in a pathetic attempt to lie to themselves and others about who and what they are. They then cudgel the rest of society to affirm or enable their fraud so as not to ‘misgender’ them. *gasp*
I think this is the basis for many states refusing to issue a DL to these fraudsters with that fraudster’s fraudulent identity of ‘trans’ whatever.
I think the federal govt. recently adopted the same reasoning for passports. IE: you can’t lie about your identity.
But that’s precisely what NY is attempting to do against nuns: force them to commit fraud by coercing them to affirm or enable another’s fraudulent identity.
And I have it on good authority that the government cannot compel you to commit a crime.
No, it is not fraud. By definition fraud requires a material harm to the victim and benefit for the fraudster.
Let the NY Muslim clerics care for the so-called “transgenders”, let us all know how that works out.
Reading back through the article, I don’t see anything about the Rosary Hill Home receiving any state funding so the state can’t withhold what it’s not paying out in the first place. However, that doesn’t mean Noo Yuck can’t sue the Home.
That’ll look good on the news.
New York is stupid. Alabama laughs.
.
It doesn’t matter whether or not the nuns receive state funds; the state still cannot violate the constitutional rights of its citizens, and can’t coerce the facility to accept this violation of rights by withholding funds the facility would be otherwise entitled to under state law.
The punishment is making the nuns fight thru the crooked court system for 3 or 4 years to get their rights.
Spending funds that would otherwise go towards care for their patients.
This isn’t about state funding, and conditions imposed on that funding. It’s about a “civil rights” law, that regulates all providers of long-term care that consists of anything other than pure religious services such as prayer, requiring them to respect their patients’ “right” to be housed on the floor of their choice and to use the facilities of their choice, everyone else be damned.
Good luck to the Nuns, hope the win.
Turning kids into Trannies is against God’s plans
What have kids got to do with this? No kids are involved, and no one is expecting the nuns to “turn” anyone “into trannies”.
There is not one single complaint against Rosary Hill. But there are over 55,000 complaints against other nursing homes in the state (an average of 23 citations each).
The irony is the state is fishing for problems at a top-tier facility while the rest of the system is on fire.
It’s the government way if something works, tax it, regulate it and screw it up royally.
Exactly. There is no reason to harass the sisters doing G-d’s work other than to force the Progressive dogma where it has no right to be. This has nothing to do with “trans rights” and everything to do with exerting the power of the fringe left.
the nigerians are in control no matter what continent we are on
they slaughter the non believers
People don’t have “genders”.
.
(Even if, arguendo, they did., i.e. if we cater to an imaginary internal “feeling” of being masculine or feminine, why, when the issue is medical care, would “gender” supersede “sex”.)
What’s more astounding to me is that some individuals never confront reality and always complain about pretended discrimination even when facing a terminal disease. I mean, shouldn’t they have more serious worries?
I don’t see anything indicating that they’ve had any complaints from anyone who is actually dying. The complaints are only coming from busybodies in perfect health, who can’t stand that there are people who care for the needy but don’t subscribe to their idiosyncratic moral beliefs.
If there are no complaints, how did this even come up? Did some lefty come to claim the body of a neglected relative and decide that their ‘trans’ great grandmaw had been placed on the wrong floor?
Hope the nuns have some shark Jewish Attorneys representing them!
Governments cannot narrowly tailor a law to protect one religion. The exemption must apply to all religions.This is not a valid objection. The point of the exemption in the law is that Christian Scientist institutions are not providing medical care. All they’re providing is religious service, and of course the state can’t regulate that, so the law exempts them.
Catholics have the exact same exemption for the religious services they provide; they are not required to accept “trans-men” as priests or monks, nor “trans-women” as nuns, and those Catholic churches that still have segregated seating don’t have to let “trans-men” sit on the men’s side or “trans-women” on the women’s side. But the exemption applies only to religious services, not to medical services, even if they’re being provided only as the result of the providers’ religious beliefs.
This is the key point. These nuns are not doing what they do for fun, nor are they doing it for money. They work hard and sacrifice their entire lives, and benefit the whole community, for one reason and one reason only: because they believe it’s what Jesus wants them to do.
But they believe just as strongly that Jesus doesn’t want them to house male patients on the female floor or vice versa, especially since many of their patients (not just the “trans” ones) are of questionable mental competence, and are thus vulnerable.
So they’re telling the dying: We’re more than happy to look after you and easing your passing in any way we can, but only if we can do it our way. If you insist on being cared for in some other way then you’re free to find someone else who’s interested in doing that, but we’re not. If you can’t find anyone else, and refuse our care, then you can die on the street. It’s your choice.
But you can’t force us to care for you in a way that destroys the entire point of our doing this work in the first place. If we have to do that we may as well go and be lawyers or engineers or get married and have families, and leave you all to fend for yourselves. Is that what you really want?!