Cardinal O’Malley Issues Statement on Caritas Christi/Centene Corp. Deal
Putting to rest any concerns over the possibility of losing the Catholic identity of the Caritas Christi hospitals under his watch, the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, issued a statement this past week assuring supporters and critics alike that no Archdiocesan agreement would violate the Church’s teaching on abortion.
His Eminence blogged:
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. We are committed to the Gospel of Life and no arrangement will be entered into unless it is completely in accord with Church teaching.
Recognizing the complexity of the proposed arrangement, I will ask the National Catholic Bioethics Center to review the arrangement and to provide me their opinion.
Put to rest?
I spoke to Victor(the Executive Director) and told him people defending the faith don't much appreciate being thrown under the Cardinal's bus by an initiative whose job it's supposed to be to...defend the faith. I also pointed out that Chancery lackeys had neglected to send him the article in the Boston Globe that contradicted Cardinal O'Malley's assertions, which he certainly was grateful to have and offered to send further information out to grassroots troops, which I certainly accepted the offer to arrange.
Nice guy but just got caught up into the vaccum of the Chancery's Publicity Stunts.
*****UPDATE
A local activist sent the following email:
The words on Catholic Citizenship e-mail: "To be perfectly clear...I will ask the National Catholic Bioethics Center to review the arrangement and to provide me their opinion.", are indeed from Cardinal Sean's blog of March 6, 2009.However, on March 12, 2009, Cardinal Sean issued another statement: "...I have asked the National Catholic Bioethics Center to review the agreement and to assure me that it is faithful to Catholic principles." He is now delaying, passing the buck, and asking NCBC, not for an opinion, but to rubber-stamp the Caritas/Centene arrangement!
That "assure me" didn't sit quite right with me either.
By the way, many, if not most people in Boston who have had experiences with Cardinal O'Malley with respect to trying to defend the faithful from scandal, have all articulated that they expect the Cardinal to lallygag and stall the opinions from being realized until after the contract is signed and awarded.
What's a guy to do if it takes a year to get his hands on the opinion and in the interim the contract just so happens to need to go forward?
It is consistent with the history of his tenure here in Boston and it is what it is.
Meanwhile ETWN's story leaves no room for the Cardinal's malarkey.
Catholic Healthcare Agency in Boston Wins State Contract - Including Abortion Coverage
Boston, Mar. 12, 2009 (CWNews.com) - Caritas Christi, the health-care agency administered by the Archdiocese of Boston, has joined in a successful bid for a government contract to provide health services for low-income clients. The program requires coverage for abortion, sterilization, and contraception.
State officials on March 13 awarded the contract for low-income coverage to Commonwealth Family Health Plan, a joint venture set up by Caritas Christi and the Centene Corporation, a Missouri-based company which currently has no facilities in Massachusetts. The Commonwealth Family Health Plan program will be centered around the Catholic hospitals of the Caritas Christi network.
The involvement of the archdiocesan health-care system in a program that provides abortions drew protests from Boston Catholic activists. 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.”
Last week, in a response to such criticism, Cardinal Sean O'Malley asserted: “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.” However, the cardinal's claim was contradicted by representatives of Commonwealth Care, who assured state officials that their program would provide "ready access" to all of the services mandated by the government program, including abortion.
Under the Commonwealth Family Health Plan system, abortions will not be performed at the Caritas Christi hospitals. But women who wish to procure abortions will be given a telephone number to call for information on where abortions are performed, and, if necessary, transportation to those sites.
2 comments:
I stopped getting info from them when Ray Flynn (the founder) came out for the pro-abortion candidate Hillary Clinton. I realize that Mr Flynn was shown the door pretty quickly but I had to wonder how many more liked-minded people were in the organization...
Yeah, I think that did significant damage to their initiative. To make matters worse, I think they kept Ray's picture and youtubes up on their site for a long time afterward.
I don't think it's a winning strategy to try to get momentum to be relevant by circulating the Cardinal's statements five days after Caritas contradicted his assertions in writing and published them in the Boston Globe.
The Chancery rats don't care how many people's credibility they ruin anymore than they're concerned about the child they're sending for execution in a taxicab.
Post a Comment