Agnes Mary Mansour

Michigan Social Services After the general election in November 1982, the incoming Michigan governor, James Blanchard, appointed Mansour in December to the directorship of the Michigan Department of Social Services (DSS); Michigan's biggest agency. Szoka asked Mansour to publicly state her opposition to abortion; he said he originally gave his approval on this condition. He told the Detroit Sisters leadership that Mansour no longer had his permission to serve the state, and he ordered them to inform her that she was to resign the state appointment. Indications were that most of metropolitan Detroit's 1.2 million Catholics sided with the Archbishop. Archbishop Szoka said, "It is a question of my absolute duty to stand for, to protect and to defend the doctrine of the Church which has to do with human life."

On April 11, the day after Mansour's 52nd birthday, Sister Kane requested a formal hearing on the matter from the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, a Vatican body that dealt with nuns and religious orders. On April 16, the Congregation instructed Anthony Bevilacqua, Auxiliary Bishop of Brooklyn who was visiting Rome with other bishops, that he was "to approach Sister Agnes Mary Mansour directly and to require, in the name of the Holy See and by virtue of her vow of obedience, that she immediately resign as director" of DSS. Pope John Paul II had in the past restricted the right of priests to serve in political offices, forcing the resignation of a member of Congress. The action was unusual because a Catholic bishop normally restricted his communications to the authorities of a religious order, not the individual members. After nearly 30 years of being in religious orders, she gave up her life as a nun. The NCAN and NARW requested sympathetic religious women to take part in a protest on Pentecost Sunday, May 22, 1983, "as a visible witness to the arrogant use of power in a male dominated Church."

In 1983, Mansour was offered money for the film rights to the story of her life. She said that she would accept on condition that the money was enough to balance Michigan's state deficit, $900 million at the time. No film rights were obtained. In July 1982 during her unsuccessful political campaign, Mansour wrote a "Position Paper on Abortion and Legislation". In late summer 1984, she joined 96 other leading theologians, nuns and priests who signed another position paper titled "A Catholic Statement on Pluralism and Abortion", asking for Catholic discussion about abortion and requesting religious pluralism in Catholicism. Mansour and the Sisters of Mercy made their 1980s decisions based on their belief that the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965 promised freedom of conscience in such cases. Mercy nuns believed that they held rights not to obey.

Illness The Sisters of Mercy did not honor Mansour's 1983 resignation of her vows. Author Kenneth A. Briggs, former religion editor for The New York Times, wrote that the Mansour case "was in many respects the most dramatic, but not the only, instance of a particular nun singled out for punishment". Theologian Margaret Farley, a Sister of Mercy and a professor at Yale University, said, "It was a painful truth that [Mansour] had to leave, that the Church declared her officially not a member. There was suffering in the community, and also for her. When she left she was quoted as saying that she would always be a Sister of Mercy in her heart. And that has absolutely been the case. She continued in works of mercy all her life."