The Dominican Sisters operating Rosary Hill Home in Hawthorne New York, a home for needy people who are dying of cancer, are suing the state of New York after it demanded that the facility adhere to gender ideology laws that violate Catholic teaching on gender theory.According to the Catholic Benefits Association (CBA), the New York State Department of Health sent a series of letters to the sisters who have been running Rosary Hill Home for the last 125 years. The letters demanded that they align patient care and the training of their sisters and employees with the State’s gender ideology laws.
These mandates, signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2023, require long-term care facilities to house biological men in women’s rooms even over the opposition of a female roommate, to permit residents and their visitors of one sex to access bathrooms set aside for those of the opposite sex, to use false pronouns, to use language and “create communities” affirming patients’ sexual preferences, and to accommodate patients desire for extramarital sexual relations. Long-term care facilities are also required to ensure that their staff members are trained in “cultural competency” informed by the State’s gender ideology.
It was a request the sisters could not accept because it would force them to choose between their faith and crippling fines, the loss of their license, and even jail time.
The Church teaches that although people identifying as transgender must be treated with respect and compassion, that God created us, male and female, and that our bodies, souls, and identities as male and female are integral to who we are as human persons.
In light of this teaching, the sisters had only one choice – to obey Christ and the teachings of His Church.
“We Sisters have taken care of patients from all walks of life, ideologies, and faiths,” said Mother Marie Edward, General Superior of the Hawthorne Dominicans. “We treat each patient with dignity and Christian charity. We have never had complaints. We cannot implement New York’s mandate without violating our Catholic faith.”
The sisters immediately sought legal counsel to request an exemption from these mandates, but the State chose not to respond.
Martin Nussbaum of the First & Fourteenth law firm and counsel for the Sisters, said, “This was especially disappointing because New York’s law provides religious exemption for long-term care facilities affiliated with the Christian Science Church but not for similar Catholic facilities. The Sisters were left with no choice but to file suit in federal court…”
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Mother Marie Edward said, "We are consecrated religious Sisters and have one mission. It is to provide comfort and skilled care to persons dying of cancer who cannot afford nursing care. We do not take insurance or government funds or money from our patients or families. The care is totally free."
She continued: "We are supported by the goodness of our benefactors. We do this without discriminating on the basis of race, religion, or sex. We do it because Jesus taught us that, when the least among us are sick, we should care for them, as if they were Christ himself."
Citing John 14:6 as one of the reasons the sisters can’t treat males as if they were females, or vice versa, Mother told Angelus News: “Christ is the center, and the Eucharist sustains us. But Christ is also, as he said, the way, the truth, and the life. And if he’s the truth, then we cannot practice what we do, incorporating something that is an untruth,” she explained.
“And it is an untruth to say that a male should go into a female patient’s room. You’re just trying to contort things, for whatever reason. So we have to stand by the truth of what has been taught to us in the natural law. It is not to be changed.”
Sister Stella Mary, O.P., Administrator of Rosary Hill Home said the Order’s foundress, Mother Alphonsa Hawthorne, charged them to serve those who are “to pass from one life to another” and to make them feel as happy and comfortable as if they were with their family in the best bedroom of their own home.
“We intend to continue honoring this sacred obligation,” Sister Stella Mary said, “but need relief from the Court to do so.”
Let us pray that these dear sisters will be able to continue their vital mission to needy patients who are facing the end of their earthly life!
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
