Archbishop Edmund C. Szoka of Detroit demanded the resignation of Sister Agnes Mary Mansour as state Social Services director because of her support of state-funded abortions.
“If you are opposed to abortion (as Sister Mansour says she is), how can you not be opposed to the funding of abortion?” Detroit’s Roman Catholic archbishop asked yesterday at a press conference.
A spokesperson for the Sisters of Mercy said they would need time to “consider all of the elements implied” in the demand for Sister Mansour’s resignation.
The archbishop who described his decision as “the most painful” since coming to Detroit two years ago, said the nun’s support of state-funded abortions “confused, frustrated and disappointed” Catholics and non Catholics alike. A few threatened to stop supporting the church financially he said.
“It is the position of the Catholic Church, and my position,” he said, “that we must oppose and disapprove of anything that fosters or permits the continuation of the evil of abortion- including Medicaid payments,”
He said his last meeting with Sister Mansour was on Valentine’s Day in Detroit.
“I told her that I would call for her resignation if she did not make her opposition to abortion and Medicaid funding very clear,” he said.
The next day, in her first interview since taking the post, she told the Detroit News that she was personally opposed to abortion, but pointed out that Medicaid payments provide the only access to abortion for poor women. So, she said “more harm could come from halting state funding.”
In response, the archbishop said “While attempts to change attitudes are being fostered, thousands of innocent human lives are being terminated by abortion in Michigan. We cannot tolerate this wholesale destruction of human life while we try to change attitudes.”
