Bishop Thomas "The Turtle" Olmsted: Candidate for Worst Arizonan!

It’s a tough competition in a state with Joe Arpaio, John McCain and Russell Pearce. But the head of the local Catholic diocese, Bishop Thomas “The Turtle” Olmsted, is right up there as one of the most despicable figures in the state.

E.J. Montini in the Republic noted this last month: That while the local Episcopal Bishop, Kirk Stevan Smith, has come out against SB 1070, Olmsted hasn’t said a word.

Olmsted’s counterpart in Los Angeles, Roger Mahony, has condemned the law in the most forthright terms, saying it used “German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques.”

From Olmsted? Nothing.

Olmsted’s also the guy who presumably orchestrated the diocese’s $50,000 donation to an anti-gay marriage campaign in Maine in 2008…

… and he’s also made it clear to administrators at St. Joseph’s hospital that he’ll scuttle their careers if they even think about approving an abortion—even to save the life of the mother.

Religious people are supposed to be compassionate and righteous, the enemies of cruelty and hypocrisy. Olmsted is more like Tony Soprano, overseeing a many-fingered operation that lacks morality and enforces its dictats brutally.

He deserves an appropriate street name; given his testudinal visage, as seen above, it seems “The Turtle” is most appropriate.

Creepy bishop punishes a hospital administrator for allowing an abortion--to save a woman's life

So reports the Republic:

A Catholic nun and longtime administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix was reassigned in the wake of a decision to allow a pregnancy to be ended in order to save the life of a critically ill patient.

The decision also drew a sharp rebuke from Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, who indicated the woman was “automatically excommunicated” because of the action.

Bishop Olmsted is apparently also the guy who cashiered the nun. St. Joseph’s is the hospital on Thomas and Third Avenue.

The story explains:

The actions involving the administrator, mostly taken within the past couple of weeks, followed a last-minute, life-or-death drama in late 2009. The patient had a rare and often fatal condition in which a pregnancy can cause the death of the mother.

Sister Margaret McBride, who had been vice president of mission integration at the hospital, was on call as a member of the hospital’s ethics committee when the surgery took place, hospital officials said. She was part of a group of people, including the patient and doctors, who decided upon the course of action.

The patient was not identified, and details of her case cannot be revealed under federal privacy laws.

This decidedly un-compassionate act comes after another one the local diocese is known for—donating $50,000 to an anti-gay marriage political campaign in Maine in 2008.

So people who are donating to local Catholic churches are having their money go to hate campaigns in other states … and to prop up local abortion fetishists who persecute hospital administrators put in the position of having to make a horrible decisions — not to mention the sick patients whose life hung in the balance.

(Though we have to note that excommunication strikes us as a pretty positive development for the woman. I mean, it’s obvious the bishop wasn’t looking out for her best interests.)

And for the rest of us, who wants to patronize a hospital that will let its patient’s die because of the radical religious views of a crazy bishop?