Simone Campbell | |
|---|---|
 Sister Simone in 2012 | |
| Born | Mary Campbell October 22, 1945 Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Mount St. Mary's College UC Davis School of Law |
| Occupations |
|
| Organization | NETWORK |
| Awards |  Presidential Medal of Freedom (2022) |
Simone Campbell SSS (born October 22, 1945), is an American Catholic religious sister, lawyer, lobbyist and executive director of NETWORK. She belongs to the Sisters of Social Service. She is known as an outspoken advocate for social justice.
When Campbell was born in Santa Monica, California, to parents who had recently moved from Colorado, she was given the first name "Mary" in honor of her paternal grandmother. She was the eldest of four siblings.
She joined the Sisters of Social Service, an international Catholic religious congregation rooted in the Benedictine tradition, in 1964 and took her final vows in 1973, adopting the name "Simone." [1]
She received a bachelor's degree in 1969 from Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles. In 1977, Campbell received the degree of Juris Doctor from the University of California, Davis, School of Law, where she had been an editor of the UC Davis Law Review.
In 1978 Campbell founded the Community Law Center in Oakland, California, which she served for the next 18 years as its lead attorney. She practiced family law and worked on the needs of the working poor of her county in Probate Court. [2]
Between 1995 and 2000, Campbell was the General Director of her religious institute and oversaw its activities in the United States, Mexico, Taiwan, and the Philippines. [2] [3]
Campbell was first recruited to lead NETWORK in 2004 [4] and continues to serve as its executive director.
In March 2010, the United States Congress debated reforms to healthcare, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H. R. 3590). As a part of her work with NETWORK, Campbell wrote the "nuns' letter" supporting the reforms and asked leaders of women's religious orders to sign it. Sixty heads of religious orders and umbrella groups signed and the letter was sent to all members of Congress. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not support the healthcare reforms. [5] The letter contributed to the momentum in favor of the legislation. [6] Campbell attended the signing ceremony for the law and received a hug of gratitude from President Obama. [7]
Campbell led the Nuns on the Bus project, in which she also participated. [8] Campbell and a small group of religious sisters (commonly, "nuns") make tours on a dedicated bus to highlight social issues. In 2012, the first year of the project, the Nuns aimed to draw attention to nuns' work with the poor and to protest planned aid cuts. In honor of her advocacy work she was the 2014 recipient of the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award, which commemorates the 1963 encyclical of Saint John XXIII of the same name. [9]
Campbell addressed the Democratic National Convention held in September 2012, and again in 2020.
On July 7, 2022, the White House awarded Campbell the Presidential Medal of Freedom. [10] [11]
Campbell was among the people attentioned by then Pope Benedict XVI in his investigation of American nuns for communist views [12] and promoting "certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith". [13] The investigation was ended by Pope Francis on April 16, 2015. The official report from the investigation was quoted as including "oversight of their publications and choice of speakers for their annual conference to ensure doctrinal orthodoxy, and both sides agreed to a new set of statutes for the LCWR." [13]
Unlike the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Campbell supported the Affordable Care Act. [14] In her view, this was not only a matter of social justice but also a better way to eliminate abortion rather than through criminalization. She said: "From my perspective, I don't think it's a good policy to outlaw abortion. I think, rather, let's focus on economic development for women and economic opportunity. That's what really makes the change." [15]
With regard to sexual abuse committed by clergy and covered up in the Catholic Church, Campbell noted in 2017 that she found it "outrageous" that the church was failing to sufficiently address sexual abuse and clerical accountability. [16]
Campbell's memoir A Nun on the Bus was published in 2014. [17]
Author Sister Simone Campbell, title: Hunger for Hope: Prophetic Communities, Contemplation and the Common Good. Publisher Orbis Press, New York 2020 ISBN 9781626983786
José Horacio Gómez Velasco is a Mexican-American prelate of the Catholic Church. He became the fifth archbishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in California in 2011. He previously served as Auxiliary Bishop of Denver in Colorado from 2001 to 2004 and as Archbishop of San Antonio in Texas from 2004 to 2010.
Mary Ann Glendon is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a former United States Ambassador to the Holy See. She teaches and writes on bioethics, comparative constitutional law, property, and human rights in international law.
Frank Anthony Pavone is an American anti-abortion activist and secularized Catholic priest. He is the national director of Priests for Life and the chairman and pastoral director of its Rachel's Vineyard project. He is also the president of the National Pro-Life Religious Council, an umbrella group of various anti-abortion Christian denominations, and the pastoral director of the Silent No More campaign.
Catholics for Choice (CFC) is a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. that advocates for the legalization of abortion, in dissent with the teachings of the Catholic Church. CFC is not affiliated with the Catholic Church. Formed in 1973 as Catholics for a Free Choice, the group gained notice after its 1984 advertisement in The New York Times challenging Church teachings on abortion led to Church disciplinary pressure against some of the priests and nuns who signed it. It has lobbied nationally and internationally for abortion rights goals and led an unsuccessful effort to downgrade the Holy See's status in the United Nations. CFC was led for 25 years by Frances Kissling and is currently led by its President Jamie L. Manson.
Jeannine Gramick, SL is an American Catholic religious sister and advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights. She is also a co-founder of New Ways Ministry.
NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice is a national Catholic social justice lobby founded in 1971 and headquartered in Washington, D.C. The organization focuses its lobbying efforts in the areas of economic justice, immigration reform, healthcare, peace making and ecology.
Catholic Democrats is an American not-for-profit organization of Catholics to support the Democratic Party, based in Boston, United States. The Catholic Democrats have more than 60,000 members in all 50 American states and Puerto Rico. It claims no authorization from the Catholic Church, or any Catholic bishop, Catholic diocese, candidate or candidate committee.
Dignity Health is a California-based not-for-profit public-benefit corporation that operated hospitals and ancillary care facilities in three states. Dignity Health was the fifth-largest hospital system in the nation and the largest not-for-profit hospital provider in California.
Thomas James Olmsted is an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix in Arizona from 2003 to 2022.
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is one of two associations of the leaders of congregations of Catholic women religious in the United States. LCWR includes over 1300 members, who are members of 302 religious congregations that include 33,431 women religious in the United States as of 2018.
The National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN) was founded in 1969 by Margaret Traxler and Audrey Kopp. The organization is known for its advocacy for women's rights, support for the Equal Rights Amendment, opposition to the Catholic Church hierarchy, including Pope Francis, as well as its positions on abortion, LGBT rights, and women's ordination.
Women play significant roles in the life of the Catholic Church, although excluded from the Catholic hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons. In the history of the Catholic Church, the church often influenced social attitudes toward women. Influential Catholic women have included theologians, abbesses, monarchs, missionaries, mystics, martyrs, scientists, nurses, hospital administrators, educationalists, religious sisters, Doctors of the Church, and canonised saints. Women constitute the majority of members of consecrated life in the Catholic Church: in 2010, there were around 721,935 professed women religious. Motherhood and family are given an exalted status in Catholicism, with The Blessed Virgin Mary holding a special place of veneration.
The official teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1992 oppose all forms of abortion procedures whose direct purpose is to destroy a zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus, since it holds that "human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life". However, the Church does recognize as morally legitimate certain acts which indirectly result in the death of the fetus, as when the direct purpose is removal of a cancerous womb. Canon 1397 §2 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law imposes automatic excommunication on Latin Catholics who actually procure an abortion, if they fulfill the conditions for being subject to such a sanction. Eastern Catholics are not subject to automatic excommunication, but by canon 1450 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches they are to be excommunicated by decree if found guilty of the same action, and they may be absolved of the sin only by the eparchial bishop. In addition to teaching that abortion is immoral, the Catholic Church also generally makes public statements and takes actions in opposition to its legality.
The excommunication of Margaret McBride occurred with the sanctioning by the American religious sister Margaret McBride in November 2009 of an abortion at a Catholic hospital, the St. Joseph's Hospital, in Phoenix. It was lifted in December 2011. Her decision and her subsequent excommunication aroused controversy in the areas of medical ethics and Catholic theology.
"A Catholic Statement on Pluralism and Abortion", alternatively referred to by its pull quote "A Diversity of Opinions Regarding Abortion Exists Among Committed Catholics" or simply "The New York Times ad", was a full-page advertisement placed on October 7, 1984, in The New York Times by Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC). Its publication brought to a head the conflict between the Vatican and those American Catholics who were in favor of access to abortion. The publicity and controversy which followed its publication helped to make the CFFC an important element of the abortion-rights movement.
Agnes Mary Mansour was an American former Catholic nun, as well as a politician and public official. She is known for having been given a choice from the Vatican in 1983 to end her religious vows or to resign from her position as the director of the Michigan Department of Social Services, which required her to support and allocate public funding for abortions. The controversy involved her belief that abortion was tragic but should be legal, despite her vows as a religious and the teachings of the Catholic Church.
The Fortnight for Freedom is a campaign initiated by the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States. Events over the course of fourteen days from June 21 to July 4 each year, call upon Catholics to participate in a pledge to religious liberty and an appeal for the inclusion of a "conscience clause" for religious institutions and religious faithful to practice according to the moral tenets of one's religious faith.
Nuns on the Bus is a Catholic advocacy group in the United States. Their name comes from the fact that they tour the country on a bus.
The International Union of Superiors General (IUSG) is a Catholic organization representing about 600,000 sisters and nuns from 80 countries worldwide. Its origins date to the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, who supported its creation, later formalized after the Second Vatican Council. It offers a global forum for superiors general of institutions of Catholic women religious. It has evolved as a means of connecting women religious congregations with the council fathers. Its members include approximately 2000 leaders of congregations of apostolic women religious.
Deirdre "Dede" Byrne is a Roman Catholic religious sister, missionary, surgeon, and retired U.S. Army Colonel.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
