While serving as Vice President of Finance at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, Sister Marie Thornton, affectionately known as "Sister Susie," embezzled $1 million from the school and used the money to fund her gambling addiction. 

From 1999 to 2009, the nun would drive to Atlantic City and lose anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 in a single day on the slot machines. To pay for her addiction, she submitted false vendor invoices for reimbursement and had the school cover personal expenses from her credit card bills. 

Authorities were only made aware of the situation after a federal probe was launched to investigate $1 million missing in the school's 2010 tax filing, meaning that the Catholic Church likley had been aware of the nun's bad habit and opted not to alert authorities. In fact they fired her from her position in 2009 but failed to report the incident to police. Instead, they instituted their own form of punishment.

Sister Susie's order has shunned her, and she has spent her days and nights in confinement in a small room at a convent in Philadelphia. She is not allowed to take her meals with anyone, nor is she allowed to visit with friends and relatives. She goes to counseling and therapy. 

Defense lawyers argued that her gambling was a means to cope with extreme abuse she suffered as a child. An empathetic judge spared the nun three years of jail time, noting that Sister Susie seemed rehabilitated, and that the strict supervision at her order was additional punishment enough. 

I really doubt that any other member of the public would only get three years probation and 2,000 hours of community service if he or she had been falsifying documents and business records, forging signatures, and stealing massive sums of money for ten years.

Sister Susie's religious life didn't stop her from committing crime, so it shouldn't stop her from facing the full consequences just like anyone else. 

It's particularly disturbing that the judge thinks that the strict supervision the nun faces at her convent is sufficient punishment. A religious institution should not be allowed to dole out discipline in lieu of the courts, especially when that institution didn't reveal the crime to begin with. Federal employees wasted time and resources trying to determine where the missing money had gone when the church knew all along that Sister Susie had stolen it. 

The Catholic Church has no legal means to force the nun to do anything. If she really wanted to, she could leave the convent at any point, and this "punishment" she is enduring would come to an end. It would mean abandoning her order and her way of life, but she still has the freedom to make that choice.

The whole situation has infuriated the Iona College students and donors and made them wonder why the school and church left them nun the wiser. 

What do you think? Did the nun get a fair punishment?