Sister Simone Campbell will speak Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention. According to CNN she refused to have her speech edited by the party:
And at a convention that is revolving largely around an alleged GOP-led “war on women,” Campbell is a poignant feminist symbol. She has stood up to the Vatican’s criticisms of American nuns for what the church says is their fixation on progressive advocacy at the expense of promoting socially conservative positions.
“We’re certainly oriented toward the needs of women and responding to their needs,” she told Colbert in June, defending the nuns against the Vatican. “If that’s radical, I guess we are.”
But Campbell isn’t taking marching orders from the Democratic Party, either.
When party officials asked her to speak in Charlotte, she made it plain she’d do it only if she could give voice to her anti-abortion views.
And when Democratic handlers revised a draft of her speech in a way that sounded too political to her, she told them she was happy to give her speaking slot to someone else.
The handlers were more than happy to work with her to revise the revisions
…At Network, Campbell’s proudest accomplishment is helping pass Obamacare. But she also boasts of becoming an early thorn in the side of Paul Ryan, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate, by organizing the “nuns on the bus tour” in May.
The nine-state trip from Iowa to Washington was aimed at attacking the federal budget Ryan drew up as the chairman of the House Budget Committee.
The Ryan plan, in Campbell’s view, “set up this total undermining of government services as a way for there to be additional tax cuts for the wealthy.”