CJ Doyle's Press Release on Backtrack of Character at Landmark Hospital

NEWS RELEASE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: C. J. DOYLE

(781) 251-9739

ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON BACKTRACKS ON

SECULAR CHARACTER OF LANDMARK HOSPITAL

On  August 31st, the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts broke the story in the Catholic media that Caritas Christi Health Care --- the network of six Catholic hospitals affiliated with the Archdiocese of Boston --- would operate the Rhode Island hospital it is acquiring, Landmark Medical Center of Woonsocket, as a secular facility which would continue performing sterilizations and distributing contraceptives. 

Within twenty four hours, the Archdiocese began to reverse the decision by Caritas to keep Landmark secular, and now asserts that Landmark will become a Catholic hospital compliant with Catholic medical ethics. This is a direct disavowal of the statement by Caritas Director of Media Relations Chris Murphy, who told The Providence Journal"Our intent is to preserve Landmark in its current form, which includes no religious affiliation."

The Catholic Action League called the reversal "a victory, though probably a temporary one, in the campaign to keep Caritas Catholic."

Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: "First, Landmark was to become a Catholic hospital.  Then it wasn't.  Now, it is to become Catholic again. 'Who's in charge?'  might be a interesting question to explore."

"It is unimaginable that Caritas spokesman Chris Murphy would have publicly announced that Landmark was to remain a secular institution without the explicit approval of Caritas President Ralph de la Torre.  It is equally unlikely, that after fifteen months of negotiations between Landmark and Caritas, Doctor de la Torre would not have apprised his Board of Governors of this decision, which includes an Archdiocesan Cabinet Secretary and close advisor to Cardinal O'Malley."

"Whether the Archdiocese of Boston is trying to affirm Catholic moral teaching or simply trying to dig itself out of another embarrassing scandal of its own making, remains to be seen.  Given the buy-out clause which will allow the new owners of Caritas to terminate the Catholic identity of the system for the payment of an eight figure fee, it is likely that it won't take long for us to find out." 

Love this guy!

The Archdiocese Launches Strategy Against The Coalition to Save Catholic Healthcare

As I previously mentioned here, last week the Coalition to Save Health Care held a press conference to talk about the deal structure that puts Catholic identity of the hospitals and Catholic healthcare in Massachusetts in grave danger.

When the Globe covered the story, the Cardinal's multi million dollar public relations team was quoted:

“The wild speculation engaged in today is absurd,’’ Murphy said.

Get it?

Speculation that the Cardinal's talk about Cerebus keeping the Catholic identity of hospitals isn't absurd, the people pointing out the 'ethics team' is set up to be controlled by Cerebus and there are lucrative golden parachutes for the diocese built into the deal are wild and absurd.

Meanwhile, as reported on BryanHehirExposed, Cerebus had the Cardinal's portrait removed from the lobby of St. Elizabeth's, the Blessed Mother has been removed from the emergency room and religious artifacts are being purged from the hospital. (Do take a look at the blank wall where the Cardinal's picture used to hang.)

Amazing since there's a pretense that the deal hasn't been approved by the Attorney General.

We announced yesterday that an agreement has been reached with Cerberus that ensures the Catholic identity of the Caritas Christi hospitals. The sale is still pending as the Attorney General has to review it, but this stewardship agreement was a key component for us because it will preserve the Catholic identity of Caritas. (Cardinal Sean’s May 7, 2010 blog)

The Stewardship Agreement memorializes Steward’s commitment to maintain the Catholic identity of the Caritas Christi Healthcare system and its fidelity to the mission of the Church’s healthcare ministry.” (Fr. Richard Erikson, Vicar General, quoted in The Pilot, May 14, 2010)

This is a substantive and structural commitment by the archdiocese and Steward to operate this hospital system by the religious and moral directives of the Catholic Church.” (Fr. Bryan Hehir, Secretary for Healthcare and Social Services, quoted in The Pilot, May 14, 2010)

Judie Brown at the American Life League picked up the story today in her column "Catholic Heroes and Villians".

The entire scenario is most disturbing. In addition, we find the underhanded tactics of Caritas representatives like Chris Murphy, which cannot be unknown to Cardinal Sean O’Malley. The Boston Globe interviewed Murphy, who slammed the Coalition to Save Catholic Health Care, saying “The wild speculation engaged in today is absurd.”

Oh really? Not so fast.

As always, Judie hits the ball out of the park. It's a must read.

Her ending is just too good not to repeat here:

This sort of skullduggery doesn’t sit well among faithful Catholics. But it proves once again that, when Catholic identity is diluted or denied for any reason, including a few measly dollars, nothing good can come of it. Judas Iscariot found that out the hard way. Shame on the Archdiocese of Boston! Thank God for Catholic heroes like John O’Gorman, R. T. Neary and El Paso’s own Father Rodriguez!

Amen to all that!

When it comes to the perception that the archdiocese acts in good faith, Cardinal O'Malley and his team of advisors and hench men continue in a free fall.

The Future Catholic Identity and Mission of Caritas Christi Hospitals

“The Stewardship Agreement memorializes Steward’s commitment to maintain the Catholic identity of the Caritas Christi Healthcare system and its fidelity to the mission of the Church’s healthcare ministry.”

Father J. Bryan Hehir, the archdiocese’s health and social services secretary, said that the ethical and religious directives provide the framework by which Catholic health care operates in the United States.

This is a substantive and structural commitment by the archdiocese and Steward to operate this hospital system by the religious and moral directives of the Catholic Church,” said Father J. Bryan Hehir.

I promised some thoughts on Fr. Hehir's hooey about the Catholic identity of Catholic Hospitals that I'm a little late with....

I wanted to get out a draft of some thoughts before the weekend which is below.  I will tighten up these thoughts some time before the weekend ends.

So long as the Stewardship Agreement is in effect, the hospitals will be operated in accordance with the moral, ethical and social teachings of the Church - essentially interpreted solely and exclusively by the RCAB.

Section 3 (page 6) - deals with social dimension of Catholic identity -- incluldes free and accessible care to the poor, "just labor and public advocacy" in improving access and quality healthcare;

Section 4 - moral dimension - again interpreted solely by RCAB

This appears to be carried out by the appointment of an  "RCAB representative".    Steward appoints what is called a "Vice President for Mission" and must obtain the written approval "of the RCAB or RCAB representative (if one is designated) or any other RCAB designee.   RCAB can terminate for bonafide reason.

They've appointed an individual named James Corbett (no diligence has been done here by Catholics on this individual yet)

While we have some obvious problems with the Cardinal's (and his appointees) judgment - up until this point, it all appears to be going in the right direction, right?

Then we come to page 8, section 4.4  which is labeled "Ethics Committee"

Steward will cause each of the hospitals to maintain an Ethics Committee which will have responsibility for managing day-to-day monitoring and observance of the religious directives and other ethics-related matters.  They put in a "system-wide" ethics committee to oversee the Ethics Committees of each hospital.   One ethicist employed by RCAB "with direct training and experience in field of medical ethics, will, after consultation with the (Steward's) Vice President for Mission, be appointed solely by the RCAB" (who shall consider in good faith any nominations for such positions provided by the Vice President for Mission)..."

 "solely" by the RCAB" neither needs or warrants any consultation with Steward--further,not only are the credentials of Steward's people nominating the ethicist unknown, this puts an individual at the top of this ethical pyramid the power of the moral justification.   The System wide "ethics committee" consists of the "ethicist", the Steward Appointed VP of Mission and the RCAB representative "if one is designated"

Is it me, or is the RCAB potentially out of the loop here? At best, they are trumped by Steward at the top of this pyramid. 

It then goes on to say that Steward shall "reimburse the RCAB" on the monthly basis for out of pocket cost for compensating the ethicist, along with his or her benefits and an administrative assistant to the ethicist. 

Who then is the actual employer of the ethicist?

Don't worry though -- it goes on to say that the RCAB will check in at least annually to make sure religious directives are being carried out properly.  They'll be right on top of it.

4.7 then deals with civil law compliance which to me is the golden parachute.  I would urge you to review.

 
There also appears to be an parallel governance committee on Catholic identity which is fleshed out in the  Governance Agreement

http://www.mass.gov/Cago/docs/nonprofit/Caritas/Exhibit%20E.PDF

Page  - 16 re:  the "Catholic Mission Committee"

Responsible for promoting understanding and implementation of mission, philosophy and Gospel values.

Comprised of 2 members of the board of governors, the CEO and 6 members appointed by the Board of Governors.  Additionally the Board of Governors may appoint such other individuals as they deem appropriate to serve as advisers  to the Mission/Catholic Identity Committee.

If anyone has any thought about who is actually in control of the mission and Catholic Identity of Caritas, please do enlighten me.

Post Obamacare Hospital takeovers, including Catholic ones, are popping like popcorn

The "prolife" abortion contract signing Cardinal, Sean O'Malley, was johnny on the spot selling Caritas employees and patients into the bondage of sin


Not to worry though, they're reportedly "keeping the Catholic identity":

"If [Cerberus’] money is green, and the deal that was negotiated between management and Cerberus is as was represented, I think it’s a very square, fair deal," he said.

Right up Cardinal Sean O'Malley's Alley. You can be sure it will all be as Catholic as the Pope. No doubt they're rounding up the National Catholic Bioethics Center for another dog and pony show as we speak.

By the way, for those of you for whom Greek Mythology is a faint memory, Cerberus is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades to be sure nobody escapes. He's the centurion of hell. His mother was a half-woman/half serpent.

I am not making this up.

As a last ditch effort to wake up the wizards in the Chancery, Christ has ceased being subtle.

I was going to post on this story early this morning but I couldn't do it without swimming in the river of the multitude of sins.

Martha Coakley, of "Catholics shouldn't be working in emergency rooms" fame is going to bless the deal.

"We have several criteria we look at, including whether this will be in the best interest of the public," Coakley said. "I anticipate it will take several months. It's fairly complicated. There are a lot of individuals involved, even within the Caritas chain, and a lot of money involved.

Cerebus who previously acquired Chrysler and GMAC is positioning themselves, they say, to start buying up hospitals but Boston will remain the hub, no matter how many other hospitals they purchase.

Caritas is inching closer to buying Landmark as we speak.

In fact, post Obamacare, several other hospital takeovers, including Catholic Hospitals, have started popping like popcorn.

It certainly does look like a trend now. In fact, today a Wall Street Journal blogger suggested that this trend may be an immediate, although perhaps unintended result of the health care (insurance) reform legislation that just passed in the US Congress:

Cerberus is planning to turn the Caritas Christi Health Care chain into a for-profit corporation in what it is likely the first sizable M&A bet on the newly minted Obama health-care overhaul law. [seemingly ignoring the Detroit Medical Center/ Vanguard Health/ Blackstone deal - ed]

Hospitals that serve the poor and previously uninsured are expected to benefit from Obama’s plan, which is expected to extend insurance to 32 million previously uninsured Americans. That means such hospitals are likely to have more patients who can actually pay their bills. It is hard not to see how that new cash-flow stream wouldn’t have private equity licking its chops.

That’s funny, I did not think that a major reason to pass the bill was to benefit private equity. Also, somehow the image of private equity honchos licking their chops over cash flow does not seem to fit with the breathless pronouncements above about improving quality, serving poor patients, etc

The gobbling up of hospitals wouldn't come before the big "ta da" of government controlled socialized medicine, would it?

The Catholic Bishops handing the country over to communism makes me all warm and fuzzy.

And, just when you think the Bishops couldn't possibly get any stupider or craven, they prove you wrong.

"We are apprehensive as we look to the future, even as we applaud much of the increased care that will be available," Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago told Catholic News Service March 23, shortly after U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

"So we will watch basically and try to continue to enter into conversations as a moral voice -- never as a political voice; we've been very careful to insist upon the moral principles that everybody should be cared for and no one should be deliberately killed," he added.

Cardinal George acknowledged in the interview that "the unity of the church has been wounded" in various political actions and conversations surrounding the health reform debate. The USCCB opposed the Senate bill that passed the House March 21, while some Catholic groups and members of Congress supported it.

"We are certainly concerned about division in the church, because bishops have to be the people who are concerned about its unity, about keeping people together around Christ," he said.

"The bishops know that they don't speak for every one of the 61 million Catholics in the country, but what we do is we speak for the Catholic faith itself," he said. "And those who share the faith will gather around."

With the numerous threats to life, liberty and the sovereignty of our nation, Cardinal George is clapping and hoping nobody gets deliberately killed.

Shoot for the stars dude.

You know what I think????

I think the Light is Going to be On for Me next Wednesday.

See you there.

The Cardinal and Caritas close to closing another deal that will require outsourcing abortions, sterilizations, family Planning

As previously mentioned, in addition to the contract to provide abortions through "CeltiCare", Cardinal O'Malley and Caritas have been in negotiations to purchase Landmark Medical Center in Rhode Island.


This will be the second business arrangement that will involve the Catholic Cardinal's agreement to subcontract parties to perform moral evils.

The mysterious pot of money in a corporation that is supposedly broke is apparently not limited to the previously reported 70 million they're spending on IT.

The financially strapped Caritas Christi Health Care hospital system is negotiating to buy the Landmark Medical Center, a 214-bed community hospital in Woonsocket, R.I., that has been in court-appointed receivership for a year. Massachusetts and Rhode Island regulators say they will take a hard look at the potential merger.

Officials at Caritas Christi and Landmark declined to confirm that a deal is close. “We have looked at Landmark Medical Center, as many others have, and have not yet decided whether we are interested in pursuing a relationship with them,’’ said Caritas Christi spokeswoman Teresa Prego. A merger would require Landmark to become a Catholic hospital.

While the hospital doesn’t perform abortions, Thundermist does offer family planning and sterilization at Landmark and would have to find other relationships to continue providing those services if the hospital is acquired by Caritas Christi, Montanaro said.

Any more questions about whether O'Malley has been upfront and truthful?

Caritas Abortions: Where The Rubber Meets the Road

Take a moment to view the reactions in the comments section to the CNA story on the Cardinal's pro-life "affirmation".

Pretty much across the board, the Cardinal's statement just did not fly.

In the last comment posted,"Mary" asks where's the groundswell of prolifers banging the drum in front of the Bishop's Cathedral with a sign in our hands.

The answer to that is, the Cardinal has said if the venture can't be reconciled with Catholic teaching he would "block it". Since the venture can not possibly be reconciled with Catholic teaching, they're assuming, any minute now, he'll announce the blockade with the opinion of the National Catholic Bioethics Center.

Like any activist community - there are a number of people on the ground who are extremely active in chasing down facts and then there are people who will move once they're given them. Most of the prolife movement in the pews is unaware that the contract was actually signed, money has changed hands and the thing is full speed ahead.

I'm going to predict that if we don't see a reversal of the contract, which at this point is going to be a legal breach, Cardinal O'Malley's tenure in Boston is going to dramatically change. We have plans to ensure that every parishioner in every parish get their hands on the charade. Then, we are going to put a choke on the money, their benefactors, their oxygen.

The Vatican is well aware of the situation through various sources and they had ample time to pour over the details and put the kibosh on it. They're aware of the deliberate deceptions and stonewalling, the publicity stunts to undermine the credibility put on by the Cardinal himself.

If they don't put the kibosh on this - with all the Bishops, lay people and folks in the Roman Curia with the evidence in their hand, there's something screwy going on.

They've spent the last five years trying to convince us that they're sincere about protecting children against salacious crimes. This is where the rubber meets the road.

Cardinal O'Malley's Fata Morgana

The public argument between Vatican officials and the archdiocese of Olinda and Recife over the abortion of the twins of a nine-year-old rape victim in Brazil continues as the archdiocese today distributed a legal memorandum to Vatican officials, detailing what the local Church in Brazil did and attempted to do to help the girl.

The memorandum, says the head of the Rome office of Human Life International, is likely an attempt to find an “amicable and Christian solution” to the conflict in order to avoid a canonical lawsuit against Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Monsignore Ignacio Barreiro told LifeSiteNews.com, “It is the Christian thing to do, to try to find an amicable solution before you go to trial.”

The six-page memorandum, written in Italian and signed on each page by Marcio Miranda, the attorney for the archdiocese, was distributed today to over a hundred Curial officials of the Vatican administration. It lays out in detail everything that was done by archdiocesan officials in Olinda and Recife, including by the girl’s parish priest, to attempt to help her and avoid the abortion of her twin children.

In his article, published on March 15th in the Vatican’s newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Archbishop Fisichella said that Recife's Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho's announcement of the excommunication of the doctors who had procured the abortion, had been “hasty,” and that the diocese had done nothing to help the girl.

I've not been following this story, sadly exposing the battle against truth and life going on inside the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life.

Bravo to those who exposed this coven at the Vatican.

Controlling the spin in the newspapers is part of the mendacity of corrupt inside of the Catholic Church.

Speaking of spin, that coming from the Chancery in Boston - published by those who are not activists for life willing to dig until they get the truth - reveals a level of corruption that is mind boggling. You can't expect Michael Paulson and Kay Lazar at the Globe to understand the tenets of the Catholic religion and thereby have an epiphany of the willful, deliberate deceptions - but we can't get the facts published. Paulson knows enough about religion to know what "theologians" have a long history of dissent against the Church's tenets and he knows theologians who are faithful. When a Cardinal is backing his ventures with those who have a long history of espousing heresies, the light should dawn on the head.

What does EWTN have to say about this? George Weigel? Robbie George?

This is what needs to be published:

Can a Catholic Cardinal bid on a contract that includes performing abortions, give written assurances they will either perform them or contract with people outside of their network to perform them, create an entity to send the women to the abortionists and take 49% ownership in that entity who then hires subcontractors to perform abortions, hires bilingual phone operators who will give the woman the number of the abortionists they've subcontracted, tell their employees at the hospital to give the number out of their 49% owned corporation?

What level of ownership interest they can take in the set up that would make the arrangement consistent with the Gospel of Life and Catholic theology?

After they have set this all up, can they then submit a revision of a partnership agreement to reduce their interests to 3% ownership in the arrangement?

1% ownership in the arrangement?

After you bid on a contract that compels you to promise to perform abortions and you promise in writing to perform them - what is the structure in a corporation that the Cardinal can claim his arrangement meets compliance with Catholic ethics?

What kind of advice is a Cardinal hoping to get when he places NARAL on his advisory Board in his partnership? After bidding on abortions, promising to contract with people to perform them and creating the corporate structure to flow the contracts, women and money through?


"Caritas" is a fata morgana. We now need to know need to talk about the Cardinal's bussines "CeltiCare". What are they doing and how does it comport with Humanae Vitae and Evangelium Vitae?

If you haven't seen the Cardinal's blog this week - do check it out.

This man losing sleep over his arrangement that will harm souls, kill children, perform moral evils upon the poor, and wipe out the vocations of any practicing Catholic who wants to go into medicine?

Mendacity.

They are not going to get away with it. The army for life in Boston will to go to every parish and inform every parishioner in the diocese to expose the Cardinal's deception.

Statement from the Archdiocese on their Abortion Services

Tells CNA it is "under review".

As of Monday afternoon, benefit information at the Celticare site lists abortion services for $0, $50, $100 depending on the participant’s health plan. Another Celticare document listing “Family Planning and Reproductive Services Providers,” dated May 21, gives information on four Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Centene and Caritas Christi each said they would partner with providers to ensure access to all services required by the Massachusetts Connector Authority, including “confidential family planning services.”

In March, Caritas Christi said it would ensure that its participation would be “in accord with Catholic teaching.”

Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley said Caritas Christi Health Care had assured him that it will not be “engaged in any procedures nor draw any benefits from any relationship which violate the Church’s moral teaching as found in the Ethical and Religious Directives.”

The Catholic Action League, a lay group critical of Caritas Christi, said the new information was “final and conclusive proof” that Caritas will be a participant in “state subsidized abortions.”

CAL Executive Director C. J. Doyle accused the Archdiocese of Boston of “cynically misleading” Catholics in the controversy and said Cardinal O’Malley should “apologize” for asserting that Caritas Christi will not promote abortions or direct any patients to providers of abortions.

CNA sought comment from the Archdiocese of Boston and was told the matter was “under review.”

Terrence Donolin, the Archdiocese’s Secretary for Communications and Public Affairs, referred CNA to previous stories, stating “At this juncture there is nothing new to report and no announcements have been made.”

One can only imagine what the Cardinal is doing when credible accusations of the rape of children come along. Sadly, even when the evidence is insurmountable that his own employees are engaging in moral evils, it is crystal clear that he will publicly undermine the credibility of the assertions and deny the prima facie evidence. He will attempt to use whatever agency is at his disposal to cover up the corruption.

Where is the report from the NCBC?

It has taken them three months to advise the Cardinal?

There is evidence here of the worst kind of corruption.

The conduct of Cardinal O'Malley is absolutely unacceptable.

American Life League Coverage

Judie Brown at the American Life League has been fearlessly posting over the last several days about the Caritas abortion referrals.

PANDORA’S BOX HAS NOTHING ON CARITAS CHRISTI

The facts about this “Commonwealth Plan” are disturbing on a very basic level. The Massachusetts Commonwealth Care plan is the very type of "universal health-care insurance" that President Barack Obama wants to impose on the rest of the country. Indeed, proponents of national health-care insurance always point to the Massachusetts program as a model of a successful plan.

Second, in order to be an approved health-care provider eligible for payment under the Massachusetts plan, the law requires that the hospital must provide the full range of “reproductive services," such as abortion, sterilization, contraception and counseling that recommends such services. All of these things are directly contrary to the teaching of the Church. This is what we have to look forward to from Obama's proposed national plan.

Furthermore, Caritas Christi cannot participate in the approved plan without agreeing to provide the mandatory “reproductive health services” that are in direct violation to Catholic teaching.

In order to avoid the direct provision of immoral services, CC has entered into a partnership with Centene, under which Centene will do all the dirty work and CC will claim that it is not doing anything contrary to the teaching of the Church. While this might sound like a little bit of compromise for the sake of the common good, it is no such thing! Cooperation with evil is not a part of Catholic teaching. It never has been and it never will be.

As a matter of fact, in Massachusetts law, Caritas must provide counseling that includes immoral "reproductive services" and must arrange for patients to receive those immoral services from Centene, even to the point of transporting patients to abortion facilities. Both Caritas and Massachusetts regulators have publicly confirmed this fact as Massachusetts Citizens for Life pointed out.

Furthermore, it is indisputable that, even if Caritas Christi itself does not perform any immoral services, its partnership with Centene means that CC will be profiting from the immoral services rendered by Centene. One can easily come to the conclusion that the entire partnership deal with Centene is driven solely and exclusively by financial motives.

This certainly begs the question, how could a Catholic entity such as Caritas Christi become embroiled in such a fiasco? How many evils will a Catholic health care provider accept as part of a deal that most assuredly was made in Hell?



CARITAS CHRISTI’S DEAL WITH THE DEVIL – II

CJ Doyle quote:

• In response to an inquiry from the Catholic Action League, Brian Delaney, Director of Communications for CeltiCare, stated on May 11 that, “CeltiCare’s program has been approved by the Massachusetts Connector Authority. Under the contract, CeltiCare will be operational July 1, 2009, and will meet all the [s]tate’s requirements under the Commonwealth Care program, including providing family planning services as appropriate.” Assertions to the contrary by Cardinal O’Malley notwithstanding, this is the third time since February 26 that a representative of the Caritas/Centene partnership has affirmed that the Commonwealth Care contract will include abortion and contraception.

As we mentioned yesterday, American Life League is well aware of the healthcare plans being orchestrated by the Obama administration. We are equally aware of President Barack Obama’s track record of using Catholics to his advantage and their willingness, for whatever reason, to be used. Obama’s relatively short history of appointments of totally pro-abortion Catholics, the Notre Dame scandal and other such events lead us to suspect that if the Archdiocese of Boston remains silent and does not demand immediate dissolution of the “joint venture” agreement, the death knell for genuine Catholic health care will have been sounded.

The evil that has gone unaddressed by Cardinal O’Malley, and persists in the context of unanswered questions and the absence of policies based on Catholic doctrine, is scripted by the devil himself. Of that there is no doubt. American Life League cannot be silent while such a dastardly plan moves forward with nary a whimper.

I somehow had missed the highlighted citation from CJ Doyle's last press release. The deception of the Cardinal, Chancery officials is breathtaking.

Do visit ALL and continue to spread the word, forward it to your priests, Bishops, forward it to the Nuncio, Rome, encourage intervention as though children's lives depended upon it. Because they do.

Catholic Action League on the Caritas/Cardinal O'Malley Abortion Scandal

NEWS UPDATE



TUESDAY, MAY 19, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: C. J. DOYLE

(781) 251-9739



CARITAS CHRISTI/CENTENE CONTRACT ON TRACK FOR JULY 1st



In the continuing controversy over the decision of Caritas Christi Health Care - a network of six Catholic hospitals affiliated with the Boston Archdiocese - to seek a state contract which will require abortion referrals, there have been several new developments.



* On May 4th, 2009, CeltiCare Health Plan of Massachusetts announced that Richard D. Lynch had been appointed Plan President and Chief Executive Officer. Based in their new corporate office in Brighton, CeltiCare is a managed care organization that will provide health insurance to Massachusetts residents enrolled in the Commonwealth Care program. Celticare’s participation in the Commonwealth Care contract comes as a result of the partnership between Caritas Christi and the Centene Corporation, whose wholly-owned subsidiary, the Celtic Insurance Company, is the parent organization of CeltiCare.



* In response to an inquiry from the Catholic Action League, Brian Delaney, Director of Communications for CeltiCare, stated on May 11th that “CeltiCare’s program has been approved by the Massachusetts Connector Authority. Under the contract, CeltiCare will be operational July 1, 2009 and will meet all the State’s requirements under the Commonwealth Care program, including providing family planning services as appropriate.” Assertions to the contrary by Cardinal O’Malley notwithstanding, this is the third time since February 26th that a representative of the Caritas/Centene partnership has affirmed that the Commonwealth Care contract will include abortion and contraception.



* It has now been more than two months since Cardinal O'Malley requested an advisory opinion on the contract from the National Catholic Bioethics Center. On May 14, Fr. Tadeuscz Pacholczyk, Director of Education for NCBC, stated that “The NCBC is not able to comment regarding on-going, confidential consultations. Your best source of information would probably be the Archdiocese or perhaps Caritas Christi.” Later, when asked if the opinion had been given to the Archdiocese, another NCBC official told the League “I’m not at liberty to say”.



* On May 3rd, at the annual convention of the Massachusetts Knights of Columbus, the State Council repudiated a resolution by former District Deputy Joseph B. Craven Jr. opposing the Caritas contract with Commonwealth Care. The State Council ruled the measure “rejected” and “out of order”, an impossibility under parliamentary procedure. State Officers claimed that an unnamed Archdiocesan official (reportedly one of the Cardinal’s two secretaries), stated that the resolution contained unspecified factual errors. Deacon John Baniukiewicz then told assembled delegates that “We can’t be more Catholic than the Church”, and “We can’t tell the Cardinal what to do.” The measure was defeated.



Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “It is clear that the Caritas/Centene partnership is proceeding with all deliberate speed towards the July 1st start-up date of the Commonwealth Care contract, while the Archdiocese continues its efforts to suppress Catholic opposition to the arrangement. Given the prolonged uncertainty about the nature, or even the public availability of the NCBC advisory opinion, one might reasonably surmise that the Cardinal’s request for their involvement was a public relations tactic intended to buy time and diffuse pro-life opposition. Catholics need to keep the pressure up on the Archdiocese to cancel the contract, and they need to keep Rome informed.”

Caritas Abortion Contract Update

-----Original Message-----
From: Carol McKinley
To: catholic.conscience.protections@gmail.com
Cc: joefeitelberg@maltaboston.org; archbishopsean@rcab.org; DrJohnHaas@aol.com; tad.grd.nsc@aya.yale.edu; cmmckinley@aol.com; Beirne_Lovely@rcab.org; glendon@law.harvard.edu; NuntiusUSA@NuntiusUSA.org; jimk@firstbristol.com; tdonilon@vzw.blackberry.net; terrence_donilon@rcab.org
Sent: Sun, 17 May 2009 6:53 pm
Subject: Caritas Abortion Contract Update

+
IHS

Dear Prolife Friends,

As you know, several months ago, Caritas Christi placed a bid on a lucrative contract to provide health care services that included victimizing the uneducated, distraught and poor with morally evil medical practices (including abortions with a $50 co-pay).

They were subsequently awarded the contract after Caritas officials gave assurances to the Commonwealth, in writing, that Catholic employees will be forced to counsel indigent Massachusetts residents that contraception, sterilization, in-vitro fertilization and abortions are the cures to their problems and predicaments. Caritas officials have given written assurances that the conversations and practices of Catholic employees will be monitored to ensure that they are counseling the poor with immoral guidance, convictions offensive to God and opposed to natural law, their consciences and their faith. Implied of course in this "monitoring" is the silencing and disciplinary actions against Catholic healthcare providers which will take place. Caritas officials are permitting monitoring of Catholics to discipline them should they respond to a pregnant woman seeking an abortion with the lifegiving and life-sustaining truths of the Catholic Church. This contract will not only eradicate the vocations and conscience protections of Catholics who wish to practice medicine without violating their conscience in Massachusetts, it eradicates the safe environment where a poverty stricken Catholic woman finding herself with an unplanned pregnancy will be responded to with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.


When Boston Catholics raised objections to the spiritual exploitations and demoralization of the immortal souls involved in a Catholic Cardinal hiring subcontractors to carry out the killing of infants required by a contract he wishes to sign and the theological errors inherent, Cardinal O'Malley published a statement which affirmed he was informed and educated about the contract, discussions took place and that persons saying that unethical and immoral services would be provided to the poor through the contract with Caritas were untrue and "doing a disservice to the Church". Since this contradicts the contract itself and public statements and written assurances given by Caritas officials, questions persisted and Cardinal O'Malley agreed to obtain the opinion of the National Catholic Bioethics Center to "assure him". That opinion has never materialized.

While Cardinal O'Malley has given the impression that the contract is on hold until the experts at the Bioethics Center render an opinion, Cardinal O'Malley and team at Caritas, led by Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, are proceeding full speed ahead in preparations for the hundreds of thousands of patients whose primary care physicians will be Caritas employees. They are hiring employees, appointing directors, officers and leadership. They have created several corporations that will hire the employees to carry out the moral evils upon the indigent to effectively inoculate the Cardinal and the Caritas Board of Governors from the victimization of the poor and the murders of the unborn children they have assured the Commonwealth they will carry out.

* MarketWatch (press release) - USA, CENTENE CORP-- In March 2009, we were awarded a contract to manage health care services for Massachusetts residents who lack access to traditional public or private health insurance. This contract will be operated through a joint venture between our subsidiary, Celtic, and Caritas Christi Health Care. Effective July 1, 2009, the two entities will serve the Central, Northern, Boston and Southern regions operating as CeltiCare Health Plan of Massachusetts.


* BOSTON, May 04, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- CeltiCare Health Plan of Massachusetts (CeltiCare) today announced that Richard D. Lynch has been appointed Plan President and Chief Executive Officer for CeltiCare, effective May 1, 2009. Mr. Lynch will be based in the CeltiCare corporate office in Brighton, Mass., and will report to Frederick J. Manning, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for Celtic Group....CeltiCare Health Plan of Massachusetts, Inc. is a managed care organization that will provide health insurance to Massachusetts residents enrolled in the Commonwealth Care Program. A partnership between Celtic Insurance Company and Caritas Christi Health Care, CeltiCare offers a new form of local managed care that is tailored to the needs of Massachusetts' progressive healthcare system. Effective July 1, 2009, the plan will contract with the Commonwealth Care Health Insurance Connector Authority (Authority) to serve low-income, working adults who are not eligible for Medicaid.

Many Boston and national lay Catholics have contacted the Cardinal to get clarification on his assertions that this arrangement does not violate Catholic ethics. He has been unresponsive to those attempts.

Though the Caritas Board of Governors has refused to identify themselves, one of the members, Joe Fietelberg (who also happens to be the Boston head of the local Chapter of the Knights of Malta), identified himself to a Catholic benefactor who is a friend of mine. My friend had been fully briefed and apprised of the material facts of the contract over the past few months. Mr. Fietelberg repeated the Cardinal's assertions that "nothing has been signed" and attempted to explain new facts which are not yet public. If I understand Mr. Fietelberg's reply, in response to concerns raised, Cardinal O'Malley has restructured the organization chart to shift Caritas from a majority shareholder to a minority shareholder in the corporations set up to carry out executions of moral evils. I have sought clarification from Mr. Fietelberg and am awaiting his response. (exchange below).

Children of the poor are about to be massacred at the authorization and Cardinal's directives to Catholic employees and healthcare workers so that the diocese can be the beneficiaries of a lucrative contract. Not a single Bishop in Massachusetts has raised an objection. Several national Bishops, the Nuncio and the Holy See have been apprised. It does not appear that we have the system in place to protect children from being abused with the collaboration of Chancery officials, even if that abuse involves murder. The Cardinal responded by posting a character assassination on his blog about Catholics who don't need ethicist to index the theological errors in the situation, the spiritual exploitations and abuses to the poor, the obliteration of the right to practice medicine without violating our religion or the misleading of souls into temptations and debauchery.

This is a very disturbing situation. Let us rise to the occasion.

Call the Cardinal at 617-254-0100 and register your disapproval.

Arm yourself with the facts, send a letter to a dozen Bishops and Cardinals in the U.S. of your choosing and ask them to go to the Holy See and beg their intervention. Send a letter to the Nuncio, certified, telling him that the remote material cooperation of Chancery officials in the killing of unborn children is a far greater scandal than remote material cooperation with pedophilia. Ask him to seek emergency intervention in Boston as though childrens' lives depended upon it, because they do.

Forward this email to a dozen prolifers in your network and ask them to do the same.

Finally, pray for all involved, with special petitions to our precious Pope John Paul II.

In Christ, Carol McKinley


Apostolic Nunciature, the Holy See
3339 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20008
Telephone: (202) 333-7121



-----Original Message-----
From: cmmckinley@aol.com
To: joefeitelberg@maltaboston.org; archbishopsean@rcab.org; DrJohnHaas@aol.com; tad.grd.nsc@aya.yale.edu
Cc: catholic.conscience.protections@gmail.com; Beirne_Lovely@rcab.org; glendon@law.harvard.edu; NuntiusUSA@NuntiusUSA.org; jimk@firstbristol.com; tdonilon@vzw.blackberry.net; terrence_donilon@rcab.org
Sent: Wed, 13 May 2009 2:52 pm

Dear Mr, Fietelberg,

For several months, I have been updating my friend _______________ about the contract awarded to Caritas Christi that requires abortions and other moral evils.

Our mutual friend __________ mentioned that he brought our concerns to your attention in a discussion as head of the Boston Chapter of the Knights of Malta. It is my understanding you informed ___ at that time that you are member of the Board of Governor of Caritas and responded to those concerns by providing him with the informative email below to assist his assessment of the situation. _____ graciously tried to help me understand, but I'm afraid it wasn't completely gelling, so I am writing to seek clarity on the missing pieces and questions he was unable to answer.

If I understand your email correctly, you are not disputing that the contract awarded to Caritas mandates abortion services and other services contrary to Catholic moral teachings be provided to patients. You do not dispute that Caritas has promised to provide family planning services (including abortion) in and out of network. You are also not disputing that Caritas has given written assurances that Catholic healthcare workers will be forced to advise an emotionally distraught woman seeking an abortion at Caritas where to obtain o ne, and to arrange transportation if necessary. You do not dispute that Catholic healthcare workers who for moral reasons would never advise and assist any person (including a pregnant and distraught woman) that abortion is an option will now have to quit their jobs, as it is a gravely sinful act and offense against God. Am I correct in my understanding of these issues? If there are new facts available now which were not published in the Globe, and which you believe ___, I, and thousands of other concerned Catholics are unaware of, could you share them?

You mentioned that Caritas now has "an outstanding Management team in place" great to hear that; however, I do not immediately understand how strong management will somehow allow Caritas to not violate Church moral teachings as part of the arrangement where those same managers have agreed to refer women to abortions. Could you explain further why you believe strong management will result in Caritas not violating Church morals, as the published comments in the Globe indicated those "strong managers” indeed plan to do?


You mentioned that the Centene-Caritas proposed plan would have Caritas be the majority, not the "minority" shareholder. Can you explain the significance of that? Does that somehow mean they will not be referring or transporting patients to get abortions-- thereby materially collaborating with evil--as committed in writing to the state? Is there some assessment or study underway to advise the Cardinal and Caritas on how many layers of legal entities or how many shares of stock might be held in the combined entity in order for a collaboration in the killing of unborn children to somehow be permissible? (If not, I would imagine that you have advised the Cardinal and the Board of Directors to take out a substantial directors and officers liability policy, as even one physician's livelihood that will be taken away would be a sizable award sought for damages?)

Forgive me, but we don't seem to be on the same page. The faithful who are objecting to the corporate involvement of an entity advising poor women to get abortions thought they were waiting for the National20Catholic Bioethics Center’s opinion on the moral issues associated with forming such a corporation as well as the effects upon the immortal souls of the Catholic physicians and healthcare workers who will no longer be able to advise the distraught woman that abortion is murdering her child--and who will instead be forced to give her resources on abortion written by abortion advocates. Is the National Catholic Bioethics Center rendering an opinion about how the Church might enter into the lucrative contract they'd like to sign by shifting Caritas’ ownership share in a combined entity whose services violate Church moral teachings and deprive babies of their fundamental right to life?

Again, forgive me, as I don't mean to stampede those working on this into assumed incompetency. However, in principle, I’d invite you and others involved to replace the services or practice of "abortions" with the practice of "pedophilia" when considering the moral implications of the agreement. Assuming we all agree that there is no number of layers or number of legal entities put between the Church and victims that would make it permissible to collaborate with the moral evil of “pedophilia,” then how could anyone envision this being permissible with the taking of an innocent life via abortion?

I look forward to hearing your perspectives on the questions I have raised.

Carol McKinley

From: Joe Feitelberg [mailto:jhfeit@comcast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 11:32 AM
To:
Subject: RE: from boston globe

XXX-Thank you for sending this along.

Here are a few missing pieces:

· The Globe wrote this early on before all today’s facts were available

· There has been no execution of the Connector agreement at this time. There is a clear intent to try and be part of this resource which principally serves the poor

· In the Centene-Caritas proposed plan Caritas would be the majority, not the “minority” shareholder

· Cardinal Sean has this under ethical review by the Church’s highest talent base

· Caritas now has had an outstanding Management team in place for one year which has a skill set that was missing

· FINALLY—none of us should let innuendo or inadequate information stampede us into assumed incompetency

Be assured that with my 1950s HC background I will never support a development which would injure our Church. Having said this I will also tell you that while at HC (Holy Cross) I learned to use the full power of judgment to find new ways to improve things while living within the Church’s standards.

See you in June,

Joe

Joe Feitelberg

From:
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 4:01 PM
To: joefeitelberg@maltaboston.org
0A Subject: FW: from boston globe



From: cmmckinley@aol.com 0A[mailto:cmmckinley@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 3:52 PM
To:
Subject: from boston globe

However, planned parenthood made Caritas put their promises and writing and then released the content of those promises to the Boston Globe:
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 w hich 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. The insurers will also provide a toll-free customer service line, available around the clock, to inform women abou t where they can get contraception, sterilization, and other family planning services not offered in the immediate setting. In an emergency, a service representative will arrange transportation to the nearest appropriate facility, officials said.
The regulators promised to watch closely. "We will certainly monitor their performance ," said Jon Kingsdale, the authority's executive director. "We will not allow them to start up or continue if they are not in compliance."
As a measure of the underlying tensions, four board members emphasized the need for oversight.
"I remain somewhat concerned about implementation," said Nonnie Burnes, state commissioner of insurance and a former Planned Parenthood board member. "I am willing to support this as long as we have some way to monitor this" in doctor's offices and other healthcare facilities.

**UPDATE

Local pro-lifers here in Boston have told me that when they've written the Cardinal, he has sent back the following response:

"The Cardinal will not approve or allow any activities or procedures that are not in complete accord with Church teaching to be performed at Catholic hospitals."

The contract requires abortions be done to women, they've promised the abortions will happen. He has every intention of proceeding with this contract. He is setting up an elaborate power point presentation to get the woman from point A (Caritas Hospitals) to point b (the abortionist). He believes this is in complete accord with Catholic teachings.

Nobody acting in good faith would enter into a contract promising to carry out abortions, hire people to perform them, promise to get the women there and provide transportation if necessary and then make believe he isn't approving it or allowing it.

I think a lot of people are going to be shocked when this goes forward, because they sincerely believed he was putting kibosh on what is irrefutably against Catholic teaching, obvious to even the village idiots.

God Bless!

Bryan Hehir on the Caritas Abortion Referrals: "You Freeken People"

Bryan Hehir has some Peace and Justice thoughts on the Caritas Christi Abortion Referral Contract with Commonwealth Care.

Go to about 9 minutes into this first youtube when Hehir starts..spreading the love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMkyfz0bFkM


"You people care about Abortion????"
"Why don't you people mind your own business"
"You're supposed to take care of the people"
"Stay out of politics"


In the second youtube posted, listen carefully at the beginning, he says
"You freeken people......." something.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6osfjM67K8Q

You freeken people what?


Is it me, or has this sent Bryan over the edge?

These the conversations going on at the Braintree Pastoral Center?


The articles on Cardinal Sean's Blog and the Pilot must be editing out pastoral potty mouths?

Father J. Bryan Hehir who is the Secretary for Health and Social Services has co-written a letter with Vicar General Father Richard Erikson to all the Pastors and Principals of the Archdiocese of Boston regarding pastoral responses to the economic crisis.

Pastoral Thoughts from the Pastoral Center and Pastoral Letters and Pastoral Abortions.

They're so Pastoral. There's no abortion referrals. And, your children are safe from predators. You can count on their honesty.

***UPDATE

A threat and a mysterious thug at St. John's Rectory in Wellesley has materialized.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carol McKinley
Date: Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 11:14 PM
Subject: Re: Bryan Hehir on Caritas Abortion Referrals: 'You Freeken People"
To: "Donilon, Terrence" , Beirne_Lovely@rcab.org, archbishopsean@rcab.org, Vicar_General@rcab.org


+
IHS

Mr. Lovely,

Below please find my response to Terry Donilon's email this afternoon. I will of course correct the record if you can provide me with the clarification of who answered the call and whose voice it is. The disturbing conduct demonstrated in the youtube conversation against prolifers is further complicated by an allegation that it wasn't Fr. Hehir who answered the call but somebody impersonating him. Very confidential things are conveyed to a priest. Who would pick up a call for Fr. Hehir and impersonate him? A priest at St. John's Rectory? A friend of Fr. Hehir's?

There's nobody to blame but the Cardinal himself for this heightened atmosphere of confrontation about the Caritas situation.
The Cardinal has insisted that no abortions will be fostered or promoted, no women will be referred for an abortion, he has avoided answering questions, circulated misinformation - and when the Boston Globe published material facts that contradicted his assertions, he has stonewalled opposition for a month by claiming he needed an ethicist to tell him what is plainly obvious to anyone who knows their faith. Even at the lowest common denominator, a Catholic Hospital cannot subcontract the services of people who kill other people because they cannot do it themselves. The Cardinal is responsible for the spiritual welfare of the Caritas Board of Directors who thinks they can subcontract killing people, the employees of Centene and other facilities who will collaborate in the debauchery we have subcontracted them for. The Caritas Board has refused to identify itself, even though they are required to by Massachusetts law. Everyone involved has refused to answer our questions. The deception is breathtaking.

Boston is sede vacante. Bryan Hehir has been given the full authority to run the diocese. I'll spare you the list of grievances as a result of this arrangement. Suffice it to say, Bryan Hehir ushering in FOCA has ended our inertia. He had a good run though. His victories are numerous.

Finally, speaking of ceasing to distribute hurtful and untrue information and making whatever clarifications to those who have received such a message,

"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." Cardinal O'Malley


The Cardinal, Mr. Doninlon and other diocesecan employees circulated misinformation and character assassinations via email, through the Boston Globe, the Cardinal's blog. Please cease from distributing misinformation and please make the following clarifications to those who received the Cardinal's message:

Abortion referrals are a requirement of the contract. Caritas has promised, in writing, that women will get family planning services IN and out of Caritas facilities, including abortions. Caritas has pleged, in writing, that the medical staff at Caritas will provide the women with planned parenthood pamphlets, including information and instructions and phone numbers to obtain an abortions. The people who originally circulated these facts are not "people who do a great disservice to the Church".

Personally, I don' mind the slander to my reputation and my character. I am deeply concerned that stalling opposition and stonewalling until it's too late to extricate Caritas from this contract will result in decades of lost medical vocations and hundreds of thousands of lives and souls.

In Christ, through Christ,

Carol McKinley

p.s. A word to the wise from somebody tapped into the prolife grassroots - demonizing Fr. DiLorenzo in this scenario is not going to be helpful.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carol McKinley
Date: Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 6:11 PM
Subject: Re: Bryan Hehir on Caritas Abortion Referrals: 'You Freeken People"
To: "Donilon, Terrence"


Mr. Donilon,

I and others have been writing for weeks requesting that the diocese answer our questions regarding the misinformation the Cardinal and others are giving out, and nobody at the diocese has responded. Now, you send this communication with a threatening gesture of cc'ing a diocescan attorney?

Good evening Mr. Lovely, I'm pleased to meet your aquaintence.

As you may or may not know, the Cardinal has scandalized reputations by posting to his blog that I and others were lying and doing a "great disservice to the Church" by correcting the Cardinal's assertions that distraught pregnant women would not be getting information about abortion and the phone numbers to proceed with those abortions by anyone working at a Caritas facility. As you can see from the citations from articles below, the Cardinal's assertions are in spite of the fact that Caritas has given written assurances the Catholics would indeed be compelled to describe abortion as a viable option to distraught pregnant women and will indeede refer them to the people who will help her arrange that abortion and that Caritas is working on how to monitor the conversations of Catholic heatlhcare employees at Caritas to ensure they are complying with this contractual obligation.


While we're waiting for the Cardinal to obtain an opinion on whether Catholics can hire people to kill other people and pass out the phone numbers, since I (and others) have the civil and canonical right to my reputation, I would appreciate advising your client to correct his errors publicly at his earliest convenience.


Terry, With respect to the youtube - I'm sorry but, I'm a little puzzled by some ambiguity in your communication.

Your use of the word "apparently", without identifying the name of the individual who answered Fr. Hehir's number, identified himself as Fr. Hehir, responded to Fr. Tom by saying "You people care about abortions" "Why don't you mind your own busineess" "Stay out of politics" "You freeken people....", etc., will, I'm afraid,, require some more details.

Unfortuantely, due to the history of errors, misinformation and history of unjustly undermining the credibility of people who are exposing corrutpion of Chancery employees, I'm afraid you'll have to do a little better than this.

If it isn't Fr. Hehir, who is it?

Please furnish the name of the person and the contact information of the individual who answered Fr. Hehir's phone number, so that I can verify what you are saying is true.

In Christ,

Carol McKinley















On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 4:58 PM, Donilon, Terrence wrote:

Ms. McKinley -

Please be advised that Fr. Bryan Hehir is not the person identified in the YouTube clip you are circulating. The phone call Fr. Tom DeLorenzo apparently made was not answered by Fr. Hehir, nor is the response you hear that of Fr Hehir. Your suggestion otherwise is not true and is hurtful. Please cease distributing this misinformation (including your transcription of the phone call) and make whatever clarification you can to those who have already received your message.

Thank you,
Terry

cc: F. Beirne Lovely, General Counsel


**********************************************
Terrence C. Donilon
Secretary for Communications
Archdiocese of Boston
Email: tdonilon@rcab.org
Work: 617-746-5775
Cell: 401-480-0171

Pastoral Center
66 Brooks Dr
Braintree, MA 02184


From: Carol McKinley
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:16:51 -0400
To:
Subject: Bryan Hehir on Caritas Abortion Referrals: 'You Freeken People"

Below, please find Bryan Hehir's conversation with Fr. DiLorenzo relative to the Caritas situation. He claims we "freeken" people should "mind our own business" and "stay out of politics".

*
Bryan Hehir has some Peace and Justice thoughts on the Caritas Christi Abortion Referral Contract with Commonwealth Care.


Go to about 9 minutes into this first youtube when Hehir starts..spreading the love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMkyfz0bFkM


"You people care about Abortion????"
"Why don't you people mind your own business"
"You're supposed to take care of the people"
"Stay out of politics"


In the second youtube posted, listen carefully at the beginning, he says
"You freeken people......." something.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6osfjM67K8Q

You freeken people what?

Doing a disservice to the Church?

Story from the National Catholic Register about the situation.



Thanks in advance,
Carol McKinley


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 "rea dy 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.




Bryan Hehir has some Peace and Justice thoughts on the Caritas Christi Abortion Referral Contract with Commonwealth Care.

Go to about 9 minutes into this first youtube when Hehir starts..spreading the love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMkyfz0bFkM


"You people care about Abortion????"
"Why don't you people mind your own business"
"You're supposed to take care of the people"
"Stay out of politics"


In the second youtube posted, listen carefully at the beginning, he says
"You freeken people......." something.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6osfjM67K8Q

You freeken people what?





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 Bostons 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 Obamas 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 OMalley issued a statement saying that the deal, set to begin July 1, cant be considered final until the National Catholic Bioethics Center can assure him its 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 didnt 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 OMalleys 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 OMalley defended the hospital chains 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. Patricks Day, and didnt 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 Bostons Operation Rescue, believes the archdiocese was taken off guard by the Caritas move. But, he said, theres been a terrible loss of credibility for the archdiocese. It must forgo the potential financial gain and refuse this pact with the devil.

Caritas Christi CEO Ralph de la Torre Dear Obama Letter

Somehow, we missed this Caritas de la Torre stumping for Obama's think tank letter in Business Week.

Is "quality" care for the sick, elderly and poor going up or down?

Witholding medical treatment to elderly and poor, evaluating your loved ones cancer survival rate before spending money on their healthcare-you be the judge.

Dear President Obama,

As a concerned medical professional, I am gratified that health-care reform will have such a high priority in your new Administration. It was especially pleasing to see that one of your very first Cabinet selections was Secretary of Health & Human Services. (Both nominees radical proaborts)

You have spoken often about the flaws in the U.S. health-care system and the grave risks, in both human and fiscal terms, associated with not correcting them. As a current hospital CEO and former heart surgeon, I'd like to share my perspective on today's health-care problems and recommend a course of action.

According to your Web site, "the Obama-Biden plan&builds on the existing health-care system." With all due respect, I believe that simply adjusting our current model would be a mistake similar to the one the Clintons made when they tried unsuccessfully to reform health care early during that Administration. We can't simply tweak elements of the system while leaving the rest intact. It's time to overhaul the entire model.

To start fresh, we need to clarify the three basic concepts of every health-care discussion: access, cost, and quality. We need to answer the following questions:

• How should we define access? Should every U.S. citizen have a primary care physician? Should anyone on U.S. soil at any given moment be entitled to medical care? Should the elderly and the very poor continue to have access that others do not? Does "access" define all medical care without reservation?

• How much should health care cost in the U.S.? Is 20% of gross national product acceptable (the level we expect to reach by 2016, if the present system remains unchanged), or should we aim for less? How much of that cost should be borne by employers, and how much by the government? What should an American family reasonably pay for health care?

• Where should we set the parameters for quality? Do we want to shoulder the tremendous costs of medicine that meet the very highest standards? What should be the goals for infant mortality, cancer survival rates, and other such metrics?

Defining access, cost, and quality will set the baseline requirements the new system must satisfy. These conditions, rather than any vague goal such as "universal care" or "affordability," should be the starting points for reform. Without them, any plan will soon hit financial and demographic obstacles that will derail it completely.

Invite him and station the National Guard outside of every entrance as soon as possible:

Arriving at consensus on such basic yet critical questions will not be an easy feat. That's why I suggest you launch a kind of 90-day Manhattan Project as soon as possible. Invite 50 to 70 of our country's smartest thinkers—people willing to spend three months in Washington—to solve what is one of the biggest domestic problems facing the U.S. today. Avoid policy wonks and business consultants, simply because the economics of health care differ so radically from those of other industries. Station the National Guard at every entrance to the meeting room and instruct them to keep out all lobbyists.

Who should be on this "A-Team?" Obviously, you'll need to select representatives from the relevant groups: physicians and hospital administrators, insurers and drugmakers, as well as legislators and their constituents. But two-thirds of the conferees should be crossovers, such as doctors who left their practices to run hospitals or administrators who switched to insurance. That way, they'll speak each other's languages and be equipped to talk from both sides of the table. Fortunately, many highly regarded individuals fit those descriptions, including former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has gone back to practicing medicine.

The IT Factor

In addition to building consensus around the baseline questions, it is vital that we understand that information technology may ultimately be the most important element of health-care reform. While I applaud your five-year, $10 billion IT spending plan, I'm afraid it will barely scratch the surface of the nation's need for medical data sharing. My six-hospital chain alone is budgeting $73 million over the next three years to upgrade its medical-care technology.

People talk about the potential cost-savings of integrating medical IT so that hospital computers can communicate with one another, as well as with primary-care offices and with imaging labs across the country. But the real payoff from IT investment will be the birth of truly preventive medicine. Imagine an integrated system that lets us identify populations at high risk for conditions such as hypertension or diabetes and thus encourages intervention before patients get sick, instead of just before they need high-risk, expensive procedures like cardiac surgery or foot amputation. Effective data sharing will give researchers the tools to reach that level of analysis. We should no longer define prevention as lifetime treatment of chronic disease.

Predictably, the companies now competing in the medical data field will balk at cooperating to such a degree. And, finding answers to the basic baseline questions will no doubt result in strenuous argument. But, those are hurdles project members can clear. While the plan they produce won't please everyone (truthfully, it should completely please no one), the ultimate objective must be an agreement that transcends all vested interests. I firmly believe that, just as the greatest American minds could put people on the moon and invent the atomic bomb, they can also create a world-class, sustainable health-care system.

When the panel emerges with a plan, it must be followed immediately by a transition time line—perhaps six to seven years—during which an initial pilot program would expand in an orderly fashion, piece by piece. But it's imperative that this process begin right away. If we don't tackle health-care reform within weeks of Inauguration Day, the will for change that has built up so powerfully during your campaign will quickly evaporate. This is an opportunity our nation can ill afford to squander.

Dr. Ralph de la Torre is chief executive of Caritas Christi Health Care, New England's second-largest hospital network. He was formerly chief of cardiac surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

My Conversation with Sister Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association

I asked Sr. Carol Keehan point blank questions which she refused to answer.

Essentially, she said she herself would never do any of the things required of the contract and if I thought she would, I obviously have no respect for her. She said everybody knows abortion is an option.

Yes, Sister. Everybody knows. Everybody knows drinking is an option too. But people with sound judgment don't send the alcoholic with a case of Dewers to the AA meeting.


Our exchange is below.

Sr. Carol seems like woman who would appalled if she knew the details of this arrangement. It's clear to me she doesn't.

The people who will be miles away from what's happening are simply not thinking this through.

They think they are setting up a system that can hoodwink the insurance company and use the opportunity to talk women out of the abortions. That you can do in a Catholic hospital.

What they're doing now is taking that environment away and replacing it with a system that is going to force Catholic healthcare workers to CEASE AND DESIST from talking women out of abortions. They are replacing it with a system that is forcing Catholic workers to talk about abortion in a positive light and hand the women the phone number. And, they're promising that monitors will be watching.

They've made the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston a man who has set up a partnership to hire people to kill other people. They've told him it's ok to do it.

They've told the Catholics at Caritas its ok to do it. But when you ask them if they'd ever do it themselves, they tell you they're prolife and would never get involved in any aspect of killing anybody else. We have no respect for them if we would think such a thing about them.


It's too crazy to be of human origin. It's the devil, hiding truth, clouding judgment, taking advantage of naive people.

Also worthy of reading is Leila Lawlor's below post on this menacing debacle. The Cardinal's game playing has left her with doubts about the National Catholic Bioethics Center. I personally have never heard anything that came out of Father Tad's mouth that wasn't wholly consistent with the teachings of the Church in any matter and I cannot imagine him compromising truth. I do share Leila's sentiments about the foolishness of having to ask somebody whether Catholics can hire somebody to kill people and then point people in their direction.

It's giving the appearance of a disingenuous game. The Cardinal's statement that he "in order to assure" him, he hired the NCBC to review the agreement and "assure him" wasn't exactly helpful.

In order to assure me that this agreement will provide for the integrity of the Catholic identity and practices of Caritas Christi Health Care System, I have asked the National Catholic Bioethics Center to review the agreement and to assure me that it is faithful to Catholic principles."

Seems to many people that the Cardinal, who sits on the Board and helps fund the National Catholic Bioethics Center, has already given them the conclusion of their opinion.

The fight has not been kept far from the walls. The fight is inside the house.

I completely agree that the the culture of death has infested the walls within.

Sister Carol's exchange below (read from bottom up):


-----Original Message-----
From: cmmckinley@aol.com
To: srcarolk@chausa.org


That is an unfair response Sister.

You have made an assertion that will affect thousands of Catholics and I'm asking you to doctrinally confirm your assertions.

It's one thing to be in a Catholic institution and speak to women who approach you in that context and it's another to direct a flow of hundreds of thousands of Catholics who are covered for abortion services and intend to get them - and compel our Catholic physicians to do what you would never do yourself.

You have told the public that it is ok for the Cardinal to hire somebody to kill people and it is ok for Catholics to pass out those phone numbers.

Answer the questions, please.


-----Original Message-----
From: Sr. Carol Keehan <srcarolk@chausa.org>
To: cmmckinley@aol.com <cmmckinley@aol.com>

I am saddened by your response. I would never ask you if you had ever hired someone to kill another. As much as I want to work with you it does not seem possible, I have saved the lives of thousands of babies and never ever done anything to hurt much less kill anyone. You obviously have no respect for me if that is your response. Let’s pray for each other but no longer communicate.

-----Original Message-----
From: cmmckinley@aol.com
To: srcarolk@chausa.org


Sister,

You didn't answer the questions.

Would you kindly answer them?

Can a Cardinal Archbishop hire somebody to kill somebody else?

Can Catholics then give them that phone number?

Have you ever done it.

That's what I want to know from you.


-----Original Message-----
From: Sr. Carol Keehan <srcarolk@chausa.org>
To: cmmckinley@aol.com <cmmckinley@aol.com>

I am convinced few have complete information and I am concerned at the tone of so many comments about permission to kill etc. We are Church and we should talk these issues out with respect. What you are quoting is not what my understanding of the statement has to be. Also in todayE2s world, how many people do you think don’t know abortion is an option?

In my forty years in health care much of it in perinatology and neonatology, many women start out saying I can’t have this baby, I can’t afford it or I am too ashamed and because we are there for them in a loving and supportive way, we get a real chance to prevent the abortion. So many have been prevented because of this.

In any “service” that a provider does not provide, the person is sent back to the insurance company to have them deal with it. Often but not in this case the insurance company will tell the person that it is not covered or if it is what providers they can choose from.

No one likes to hear that someone is going to get an abortion, but if we stay in the business of Ob, we get a real opportunity to help women deal with this challenging time and often are able to save the baby. I am sure for our crisis pregnancy lines, it is an agony that never gets better to talk with someone who ultimately makes the decision to abort but if we don’t keep our call line open we can’t prevent so many of them.

My sense of this arrangement is not the same as yours but I do have faith in the integrity of the Archbishop. There is a difference is saying we don’t do that and hopefully they will ask why, and sending them back to their insurance company office. It is such a painful reality and our work together is the best way to be sure we have every opportunity for women to make another choice. Our example of providing services etc as well as a welcoming Church will do so much to change individual and public opinion which strengthens our pro life position. Sometimes it can be like walking a tightrope in order to have the opportunity to encourage life choices in pregnant women.

We may not see this the same exact way or even have the same information but I hope we can respect the goodwill we both have and the commitment both of us have to pro life. Thank you and God bless you . Sr Carol

From: cmmckinley@aol.com [mailto:cmmckinley@aol.com]

To: Sr. Carol Keehan
Subject: Re: question

Sister,

I'm not convinced you had complete information when you made your statements in the Boston Globe regarding the Caritas situation and I'd like to clarify your doctrinal assertions. We have thousands of Catholics who have expressed that this arragement will force them to quit their job.

Both Caritas and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has confirmed that Catholic employees at Caritas will be compelled to respond to a woman who is di straught about her pregnancy and wishes to terminate it by saying "Abortion is an option for you". Caritas has given written guarantees in writing that they will force Catholic employees to provide abortion information in a positive light and give them further instructions on how to obtain that abortion. The Commonwealth is now working out the details of how to monitor conversations of Catholic employees at Caritas to ensure they are complying with these orders. (please see citation from the Boston Globe below.)

Many of us are confused by your statements.

Can Catholics respond to people asking you to kill somebody by saying "I can't do that but here's the phone number of somebody who willl connect you to the right person?"


Have you ever responded to a distraught women who sought information about obtaining an abortion by giving her the phone numbers to get it or arranging for her ride?


Is it consistent with Catholic ethics for a priest to respond to a woman seeking information about aborti on by explaining the procedure and giving her the phone number to obtain it?

Is it completely consistent with Catholic ethics to respond to a distraught pregnant women by telling her abortion is an option for her and refer her to the phone number of people Cardinal O'Malley has subcontracted to kill the unborn child?



Is it morally ethical for a Cardinal Archbishop to create a partnership that is a subcontract knowing tha t the people employed by that contract are people that will assist and carry out a murder?



Thanks for the clarfications and answers to the questions. See below for the article and links.







http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/13/mass_regulators_ok_joint_caritas_centene_healthcare_venture/

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 "rea dy 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.

Carol McKinley