2 Nuns Refuse to Change Abortion Stance

Two nuns, faced with expulsion from their religious order for abortion-related activities, said that despite the threat, “We cannot abrogate our consciences on an issue we believe is fundamental to justice for women in our society and our church.”

In a letter to Sister Catherine Hughes and the general government group of their order, the Sisters of Notre Dame deNamur, the two nuns--Sister Barbara Ferarro and Sister Patricia Hussey--refused to accept demands they stop speaking out on the abortion issue.

“As we have said in the past, your demands are really an attempt to silence our consciences and our public voices on the issue of reproductive rights for women,” the two said in a letter this week to officials of the order.

The two were among more than two dozen women religious who signed an Oct. 7, 1984, advertisement in the New York Times that argued that a diversity of opinion exists among committed Catholics on the issue of abortion.

In December, 1984, the Vatican responded to the advertisement with a demand that all signers within religious orders recant their participation or face dismissal. Although the Vatican has closed 24 of the 26 cases involving nuns, none has publicly retracted and Ferraro and Hussey have continued to resist all efforts to silence them on the issue.

On Jan. 15, Hughes notified Ferraro and Hussey, who currently work in a shelter program for the homeless in West Virginia, that the order has issued the “first canonical warning” of their pending dismissal unless they comply with the demands to stop speaking out on abortion.

The refusal to accept those demands sets up the final confrontation--a second canonical warning--between the two nuns and church authorities and, unless they comply, their dismissal from the order.