WASHINGTON (RNS) First it was President Obama against Republicans. Then it was Obama against Democrats. The health care debate roiling Capitol Hill has even pitted Catholic versus Catholic.

And, in the latest sign that things have gone sour, it’s now nun against nun.

The fight over abortion language in the Senate’s health care bill has ripped open longstanding fissures in the U.S. Catholic Church between clergy and laity, nuns and bishops, men and women, and conservatives versus liberals.

Those rifts are likely to remain regardless of whether Democrats succeed in passing a health reform bill on Sunday, as the country heads into another bitterly contested election year.

“When faith leads us in such different directions, it makes me wonder how we talk to the heart of the issue after this is over,” said Sister Simone Campbell, who piqued the bishops’ anger by supporting the Senate bill with an open letter to Congress from women claiming to represent 59,000 nuns.

At issue is whether the Senate bill goes far enough in restricting federal funds from being spent on abortion. Campbell and the Catholic Health Association think it does; the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says it doesn’t.

The un-civil war has sent traditional political bedfellows into separate bedrooms.

“At this point, people could argue about what kind of fish you’re supposed to eat on Good Friday,” said Catholic writer David Gibson, “and whether that makes you a good Catholic or a bad Catholic.”

The Catholic Health Association (CHA), which represents some 2,000 Catholic hospitals and health care facilities, endorsed the Senate bill, calling health care reform a “moral imperative.” Cathy Ruse, a former spokeswoman for the bishops’ anti-abortion office, questioned the group’s “sketchy history on sanctity of life issues.”

Campbell’s group, Network: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, and the nuns praised the bill as “life-affirming” however “imperfect” it may be. Sister Mary Ann Walsh, the bishops’ chief spokeswoman, said Network had “grossly overstated” its reach and insisted “they don’t come anywhere near representing 59,000 American sisters.”

Rep. Bart Stupak, an anti-abortion Michigan Democrat who’s leading the resistance to the abortion language, told Fox News he’s siding with the bishops: “When I’m drafting right to life language, I don’t call up the nuns.” Chris Korzen of the left-leaning group Catholics United responded, “With all due respect to the bishops, they’re not experts in health care policy. People would be smarter to listen to the CHA on this one.”

The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, clarified that only “the bishops of the U.S.” can claim the title to authentic Catholic teaching, and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver said groups “describing themselves as `Catholic'” but who support the Senate bill are “doing a serious disservice to the nation and to the church.”

The sometimes volatile Catholic blogosphere lit up with charges of “fake Catholics” and comparisons of Stupak to St. Thomas More, the 16th century British martyr who was beheaded for siding with the pope over King Henry VIII.

Even some rank-and-file bishops seemed flummoxed by what to do.

“There you have it, two highly respected organizations representing the same church of Jesus Christ on opposite sides of the street …” wrote Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., who sits in both the bishops conference and on the board of the CHA. “What should a serious Catholic make of all this?”

The dispute, like the battle over President Obama’s honorary degree last year from the University of Notre Dame, has resurrected the fight over who can lay claim to the title “Catholic,” and whether there can be principled disagreement on political questions.

“The bishops articulate church teaching, but they have no special charism for reading legislation,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Forum.

And that, in many ways, is the crux of the debate. One side says the Senate bill is the best anyone can expect; Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, head of the bishops’ conference, said the bill’s flawed abortion provisions are “so fundamental that they vitiate the good that the bill intends to promote.”

“This is like `Sophie’s Choice,'” Reese said. “You have to either take it or leave it and hope for the best.”

With no other feasible reform bill on the horizon, Korzen and other progressive activists say there’s ample room to disagree with the bishops without an “acrimonious and bitter fight” that further splits the church into partisan political factions.

“This isn’t a question of where Catholics stand morally on health care,” he said. “We all agree abortion shouldn’t be in there. This is about what’s in the bill; really, a question of interpretation.”

Campbell, sounding exhausted from back-to-back media interviews, said the church will weather the political storm, and looks forward to working with the bishops, like she has for years, on issues like immigration, housing and the environment.

“I’m sorry we’re at a different position,” she said. “But for me, the call of Jesus and the gospel demands that we respond to the needs of our neighbor. And that’s bigger than any inconvenient political position.”