Caritas Christi Abortion Referral Update of March 31

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carol McKinley
Date: Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 11:21 PM
Subject: Fwd: Caritas Christi Abortion Referral March 31st Update
To: tdonilon@vzw.blackberry.net, Beirne_Lovely@rcab.org, "Donilon, Terrence"








+
IHS

Gentlemen:

I hope that my update on Hehirogate meets with your satisfaction. As I said yesterday, if you get more information, please do send it along.

In Christ, with Christ and through Christ,
Carol McKinley

n.b. I keep refreshing the Cardinal's blog site to verify that he has corrected the misinformation. I keep getting the below post. Should I clean out my cache?


"To be perfectly clear, Caritas Christi will never do anything to promote abortions, to direct any patients to providers of abortion or in any way to participate in actions that are contrary to Catholic moral teaching and anyone who suggests otherwise is doing a great disservice to the Catholic Church."

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carol McKinley
Date: Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 10:57 PM
Subject: Caritas Christi Abortion Referral March 31st Update
To: catholic.conscience.protections@gmail.com


March 31, 2009

+
IHS

Dear Prolife Friends,

I wanted to update you on the Caritas situation and suggest an action item, if you are so inclined.

As some of you already know, Cardinal O'Malley handed over control of Catholic Hospitals to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in March of 2008. In the "restructure", the Boston Cathedra maintains the power to ensure Catholic doctrinal integrity is not violated. The Rev. Bryan Hehir was appointed by Cardinal O'Malley as the diocescan official to assist in the restructuring of the Catholic Hospitals and the Board of Directors and to guide the mission to be faithful to the Holy See and the Deposit of Faith and to uphold ethical standards that do not violate the conscience protections which faithful Catholic medical staff are entitled.

Since that time, the newly elected Board has refused to identify itself. The identity of the Board is being kept secretive through refusing to file their 2008 Annual Report (the public record at the Secretary of States Office which identifies Board members for all entities doing business in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts). Additionally, they refuse to answer questions from Catholics and from the media about the identity of Board members. All Six Caritas Christi Hospitals are dropping "Caritas Christi" from their names. A new image and logo has been rolled out, with the Cross removed and in its place is an image oddly reminiscent of a communist fist and a power to the people message placed under the fist.

A month ago, when details of a contract commandeered by the new Board of Directors with the assistance, oversight and direction of Fr. Bryan Hehir came to light, Caritas released a statement saying Catholic Hospitals "will contract with providers, both in and out of the Caritas network, to ensure access to all services required by the authority, including confidential family planning services."

The Cardinal, the diocesan and Caritas spokespersons refused to answer questions about the arrangement.

When Commonwealth Care (awarded the contract to Caritas) publicly stated that abortion referrals would be required of the medical staff at Caritas, thousands of faithful Catholics called the Cardinal, other Chancery and Caritas officials with questions and concerns. We were met with silence. Members of the press asked questions of the Cardinal, other Chancery and Caritas officials. Those quesions were met with silence.

The Cardinal did however circulate and post the following to his blog:

* "To be perfectly clear, Caritas Christi will never do anything to promote abortions, to direct any patients to providers of abortion or in any way to participate in actions that are contrary to Catholic moral teaching and anyone who suggests otherwise is doing a great disservice to the Catholic Church."


Subsequently, both Caritas and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have contradicted the Cardinal. Stating, that not only will Catholic medical staff be compelled to talk about abortion in ways that contradict our religion, they are working out the details of how the conversations of Catholics will be monitored for enforcement, including in the possibility of being monitored in the privacy of examination rooms:



* From the Globe:


The Connector Authority board, which oversees the Commonwealth Care program, voted unanimously in favor of the joint venture proposed by Centene Corp., a St. Louis-based health organization, and Caritas Christi Health Care Network.
The vote followed several closed-door sessions in which officials from Centene and Caritas, the minority partner in the joint venture, assured regulators that women will have "ready access" to family planning and reproductive services, an issue that sparked concerns from abortion foes and reproductive rights activists.Among the written assurances are a pledge that medical staff operating under the Centene-Caritas insurance plan, known as Commonwealth Family Health Plan, will inform women of their healthcare options, including abortion.


* From the National Catholic Register:

If Caritas-Centene proceeds with its plan, state regulators and abortion advocates will be watching. “How compliance will be monitored is just being worked out now,” Massachusetts health authority spokesman Powers said March 16.

Andrea Miller, executive director of NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) Pro-Choice Massachusetts, said her abortion advocacy group “vows to monitor” the Catholic hospitals to ensure that people have access to services to “protect them from pregnancy and disease …” In the past, NARAL operatives have made covert calls to hospitals, including Catholic ones, to see if personnel complied with a law to offer the abortifacient “morning after” pill.


To fulfill the abortion referral requirements of the contract with Commonwealth Care, Caritas has hired abortion provider subcontractors. Theologically, Fr. Bryan Hehir, the Cardinal and the Caritas Board of Directors is asserting that it is morally ethical and doctrinally faithful for Catholics and Catholic Hospitals to subcontract killing if you create a pass-through entity, hire people to man phone lines and give distraught pregnant women the phone number of the individuals who will arrange the murders. This construct to hire subcontractors to wash their hands of the commission of the abortions, implies a Cathedra and the role of a Cardinal of the Catholic Church is one that is no longer interested in the salvation of humanity at large. In other words, Catholics can now hire people to commit sins we won't/cannot commit ourselves. Gone are any concerns about the souls we are baiting into evil by offering them money to perform acts we are forbidden to perform as Catholics. A month has gone by since the Cardinal sought the services of the National Catholic Bioethics Center to "assure him" that these arrangements are morally ethical and doctrinally faithful. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and Caritas is moving forward. Taking on more than two hundred thousand patients takes a great deal of preparation and time. This contract is supposed to start on July 1st.

Finally, on Monday, March 30th, several Boston Catholics had contacted me earlier in the day to tell me that Fr. Tom DiLorenzo, who has been outspoken critic of the Caritas Abortion venture has been summoned to the Chancery on Thursday to be disciplined and silenced. Fr. Tom has been publicly motivating people to call the Chancery and Fr. Hehir to complain. A few weeks ago, he made a phone call to a person who identified himself as Fr. Hehir, a conversation took place that was recorded. The individual who identified himself as Fr. Hehir said "You people care about abortions, do you?" "You're supposed to take care of people" "Why don't you mind your own business" "Stay out of politics" and a few other vulgar choice words. I was circulating the youtube of the incident with the transcription of the incident. This past month, the diocese has refused to respond to thousands of us who have concerns. I finally heard from the Cardinal's spokesperson Terry Donilon. He sent an email stating the individual who answered the phone and identified himself as Fr. Hehir was not Fr. Hehir and to stop circulating the youtube and correct the record. He cc'd the diocescan attorney as a threatening gesture. Other than this communication, if you hear of anyone who has received a substantive response addressing questions and concerns about the abortion referrals required by the Commonwealth Care contract, I would be interested in that information.

Please vigorously oppose this situation by continuing to call the Chancery at 617-254-0100. Ask for the Cardinal's office and express your opposition. There is no time to waste.

Please find below an article that is in this week's National Catholic Register and a press release from the Catholic Action League.

In Christ,
Carol McKinley



Did Catholic Hospital System Compromise Ethics?

By GAIL BESSE

REGISTER CORRESPONDENT

BOSTON — If a joint venture between Catholic and non-religious health-care systems goes through, doctors in Boston’s Catholic hospitals may have to point patients toward abortion after July 1.

Indeed, state officials and abortion advocates would check to make sure they do.

This development did not arise from President Obama’s proposal to jettison conscience rights for medical personnel. Rather, the six-hospital Caritas Christi Health Care system, in conjunction with the St. Louis-based health network Centene Corp., recently sought and won a lucrative state insurance contract that requires the joint venture, the Commonwealth Family Health Plan, to make available all “reproductive services.”

After state regulators accepted the Caritas-Centene bid March 12, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley issued a statement saying that the deal, set to begin July 1, can’t be considered final until the National Catholic Bioethics Center can assure him it’s faithful to Catholic principles. He had requested an opinion from the bioethics center March 5. It had not been made public as of press time.

According to Dick Powers, spokesman for the Massachusetts Health Connector Authority Board, which awards the contracts for state-subsidized insurance for low-income residents, the board unanimously accepted the Caritas-Centene bid after regulators received written assurances that medical staff will inform people of all options, including abortion.

Powers said that if a Caritas hospital didn’t provide a service, the patient would be referred back to Commonwealth Family Health Plan, which would then refer the person to another facility. Commonwealth Family Health Plan would also provide a 24-hour toll-free phone line to inform women about where they can get contraception, sterilization, and other family-planning services. A service representative will arrange transportation to the nearest appropriate facility “in an emergency.”

The cardinal in a March 5 statement said, “As archbishop I have the responsibility to insure that Caritas Christi Health Care adheres to the ‘Ethical and Religious Directives’ established by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.”

At issue is whether the initiative involves cooperation in actions that are intrinsically immoral.

“Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 2272). “The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. ‘A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae,’ ‘by the very commission of the offense,’ and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law.”

The hospital chain is run by an independent board of governors, but the archdiocese retains authority on issues of its Catholic identity, mission and ethics. Father J. Bryan Hehir, Cardinal O’Malley’s secretary of health and social services, is archdiocesan liaison on the board.

Caritas spokeswoman Teresa Prego declined comment to Register questions, as did the president, Ralph de la Torre, and James Karam, chairman of the board of governors. According to Federal Election Commission records, both officials have given generously to politicians who support abortion: Last year, de la Torre gave $2,300 to Barack Obama; from 2007-08, Karam gave $6,900 to Hillary Clinton for president and $2,000 to Sen. John Kerry.

‘Nobody More Attentive’

At first, Cardinal O’Malley defended the hospital chain’s proposal on his blog, CardinalSeansBlog.org March 6: “To be perfectly clear, Caritas Christi will never do anything to promote abortions, to direct any patients to providers of abortion or in any way to participate in actions that are contrary to Catholic moral teaching.”

The cardinal was in Rome over St. Patrick’s Day, and didn’t comment further.

Spokesmen for the National Catholic Bioethics Center — ethicist Father Alfred Cioffi and education director Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk — said their consultations must be kept confidential.

If Caritas-Centene proceeds with its plan, state regulators and abortion advocates will be watching. “How compliance will be monitored is just being worked out now,” Massachusetts health authority spokesman Powers said March 16.

Andrea Miller, executive director of NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) Pro-Choice Massachusetts, said her abortion advocacy group “vows to monitor” the Catholic hospitals to ensure that people have access to services to “protect them from pregnancy and disease …” In the past, NARAL operatives have made covert calls to hospitals, including Catholic ones, to see if personnel complied with a law to offer the abortifacient “morning after” pill.

Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, told The Boston Globe March 11: “Nobody is more attentive to life issues than the cardinal-archbishop of Boston.” Sister Carol said that she had reviewed key provisions of the Caritas-Centene deal and that “Caritas has done more than one would usually see” to avoid being involved with abortion and other services opposed by the Catholic Church.

“As I look at the way Caritas Christi has structured this arrangement,” she said, “it allows them to be participants with the state in the care of the poor and the most vulnerable citizens of the state of Massachusetts in a way that brings the richness of their system and the caring nature of that system to the poor, without in any way violating any of the religious directives or the moral imperatives of our faith.”

But pro-lifers were worried. “We are now facing the end, in Massachusetts at least, of Catholic medical resistance to abortion and contraception,” said C.J. Doyle, who as director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts has headed opposition to the plan. “This will drive Catholics out of the medical profession.”

William Cotter, head of Boston’s Operation Rescue, believes the archdiocese was taken off guard by the Caritas move. “But,” he said, “there’s been a terrible loss of credibility for the archdiocese. It must forgo the potential financial gain and refuse this pact with the devil.”


NEWS RELEASE



THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: C. J. DOYLE

(781) 251-9739



CATHOLIC ACTION LEAGUE DENOUNCES CARITAS CHRISTI DEAL WITH COMMONWEALTH CARE



The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today criticized the Archdiocesan hospital network, Caritas Christi, for accepting a state contract, in conjunction with the Centene Corporation, to provide Commonwealth Care health insurance, which includes abortion coverage. The Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority Board awarded the contract this morning after Caritas/Centene assured the panel that women will have “ready access” to timely family planning services such as abortion, sterilization and contraception.



The Catholic Action League called the contract “a significant defeat for the pro-life movement, inflicted not by secular society, but by the Catholic Church in Boston.”



Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle stated: “What remains of the Catholic character of Caritas Christi has now been fatally compromised. The partnership in which Caritas Christi is one of the two principals will provide ‘ready access’ to abortion, which the Catholic religion condemns as ‘an abominable crime’. ”



“It is now clear that the Archdiocese of Boston has spent the last week cynically misdirecting Catholics and the general public with empty assurances that Caritas Christi would not collaborate in abortion. If a woman with a Commonwealth Care card walks into a Caritas Christi hospital seeking an abortion, she will be directed back to her health plan -- the Caritas/Centene partnership -- which will not only arrange for the procedure, but if necessary will provide transportation to the facility which performs it.”



“With Caritas Christi now thoroughly embedded in the culture of death, we are now facing the end, in Massachusetts at least, of Catholic medical resistance to abortion and contraception. This tragic state of affairs is the personal responsibility of the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who not only failed to stop this contract, but who endorsed it while making unsupportable assertions implausibly denying what everyone else knew -- that the contract required participation in the deliberate killing of innocent unborn children.”