Sr. Simone Campbell interviewed by Tavis Smiley, July 10, 2014.
pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/sister-simone-campbell/
TRANSCRIPT
Tavis: Sister Simone Campbell joined the Sisters of Social Service, the Roman Catholic religious community in the mid-60s and has been a tireless advocate for social justice ever since. As an attorney and author, Sister Simone has made it her mission to work on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised.
Her latest text is called “A Nun on the Bus” which chronicles efforts by herself and her fellow Sisters to speak truth to power. Sister Simone, I am honored to have you on this program.
Sister Simone Campbell: Oh, it’s great to be with you.
Tavis: Let me start – because I learned something – and maybe I’m showing my own ignorance here. I grew up in the Pentecostal tradition, not the Catholic Church. But I did not know until your text the technical distinction between a Sister and a Nun.
Campbell: Right, and most people don’t. A nun is someone who is usually in a cloistered community, is enclosed, takes public solemn vows which is all technical. And most of us who are in active communities like the teachers, social workers, those kinds of folks, we’re sisters.
It’s a less restrictive life and it is more engaged with service to people, taking the gospel to where it wouldn’t be otherwise. And nuns are enclosed in contemplative, prayerful, enclosed settings.
Tavis: Did that make it— trying to find the right word here…Did that make it then easier, more likely, or am I missing something here about the pushback that you ultimately receive from the Vatican, given that you are sisters and not nuns?
Campbell: Well, I think that some of the misunderstanding by the Vatican, most of the folks who are criticizing us in the Vatican are not members of religious communities. Obviously, none of them are Catholic sisters, so they really don’t know what we’re about.
They think we ought to be more contained, more closed, more limited in where we take the gospel. And they’ve missed the whole point of what we’ve been about for the last 50 years of renewal. It’s about living our charism in the streets where the people are, taking the gospel to the streets.
Tavis: You unpacked this in the text for those who remember hearing something about this, but don’t recall the details. Set the stage for me what you all were doing that got the ire of some inside the Vatican.
Campbell: That got us in trouble.
Tavis: That got you in trouble, yeah .
**Campbell: **The thing that I think was the tripwire for this was our position on the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and the fact that our sisters had been working across the United States in service, in places, you know, for decades, actually centuries. But what we did with the Affordable Care Act was to stand in favor of it and support its passage at the same time that our Bishops stood in opposition to it.
And the fact is that we knew there was no federal funding of abortion in the Affordable Care Act and our Bishops were told by their staff that there was. So they felt they had to oppose it even though they were given wrong information. I’d read the bill. I knew what was in it. I knew what it said, so I felt perfectly comfortable supporting it.
The Catholic Health Association stood for it, we stood for it, and sisters around the country signed a letter I wrote saying that they supported it as a way forward. It became the tipping point that allowed the Affordable Care Act to pass. Now the Affordable Care Act is not perfect, but it’s way better than anything that we had, so it’s a good step forward.
Tavis: So how then did this idea to get on the bus – because when you sister, you nuns, got on the bus, I mean, I was pleased. I’ve done these poverty tours, as you know, before in my own work.
Campbell: Exactly, exactly.
**Tavis: **But I was just so pleased at the response and the media attention that your…
Campbell: Wasn’t it amazing? Oh, my gosh, it was huge.
Tavis: Everybody was covering this bus tour you all were on.
**Campbell: **I know, I know. It was so amazing. But here’s the thing. It came because we had been censured by the Vatican and my prayer was how do we use this moment for mission? Because very quickly, I got tired of talking about sisters, what it means to be a sister, because we’re not about having the spotlight on ourselves, but how do we use this moment for mission?
And what came to me in prayer is to ask for help, that we had too small of an imagination to solve this problem. So we invited colleagues in D.C. to come together on May 14 at our office and no one remembers who first said road trip.
But by the end of an hour and a half meeting, we were going on the road. We were pushing back against the Paul Ryan budget. We were lifting up the works of our sisters and we were going in a rapped bus. I had no idea what a rapped bus was!
Tavis: A rapped bus!
**Campbell: **I thought it might be some kind of music or something. I didn’t know .
Tavis: Yeah, a rapped bus. No, that’s w-r-a-p, not r-a-p!
Campbell: Exactly!
(continued…)
