A current assessment of the Caritas Abortion Scandal

On Friday, the Cardinal announced that Caritas would be pulling out of the 49% ownership of CeltiCare. The Archdiocese no longer owns the corporation that has contracted with abortionists and hired phone operators. This is a triumph to be celebrated and a miraculous one at that given the powers we were up against.

The CeltiCare partnership previously 51% owned by Centene and 49% owned by Caritas signed a contract with the Commonwealth to provide health care including abortions and family planning. All parties in the venture, Caritas, Centene and the Commonwealth have reached an agreement that permits Caritas to withdraw from CeltiCare but remain as providers of healthcare to patient's of CeltiCare, now wholly-owned by Centene.

However, upon the withdrawal of their ownership interest, they have maintained their working relationship with CeltiCare and has said, they will in fact, continue to forward the women to Celticare. CeltiCare has lined up the abortionists and the 24 hour hotline and had previously placed NARAL as a police dog for the enforcement - to police Catholic employees - even inside of examination rooms if necessary.

Just because the Cardinal agreed to force Caritas to withdraw their ownership of CeltiCare doesn't mean all of the above arrangements that were in the original contract have been withdrawn. They may be - but I don't think we've done the due diligence and obtained the confirmation.

Is CeltiCare managing the obligations of the original contract? If so, in this scenario, Caritas employees are still burdened by them - even though the Archdiocese no longer has an ownership interest in CeltiCare?

Are we to assume that the Commonwealth agreed to permit Caritas to be the provider and released them from the obligation in the contract to ensure family planning and abortion be readily accessible in the arrangement?

Without a peep from Planned Parenthood representatives on the Commonwealth Connector Authority?

Caritas CEO Mr. de la Torre has affirmed that nothing at all has changed - when the patient comes in to seek an abortion, they will be referred back to CeltiCare who has taken out contracts with abortionists and hired phone operators to accept the requests from the patients that Caritas refers to it, they will make the arrangements for the abortion and then pay for the abortion.

Aren't we missing some details?

We still don't know if this new arrangement includes an intentional omission of that first course of action - counseling the patient and giving her prolife referral and resources-- and in its stead, handing patients the CeltiCare number. If we are to take Mr. de la Torre's comments on their face value - that intentional omission is built into these new arrangements.

Are we to be satisfied with this in our prolife community?

Giving the number of CeltiCare as the first course of action because Caritas and CeltiCare have agreed to do so in return for the money, this leads thousands to their deaths when they could have been saved. Isn't this the theological flaw in the contract we've been trying to avoid?


It's tempting to want to believe the new arrangement released Caritas from all the objectionable provisions in the contract. This certainly is implied in the Cardinal's and Caritas' statements. In reality, how that contract is being carried forward with all the parties remain mysterious. This is just too important not to insist on those details being made public.

Several people (reporters from the Boston Globe, from Catholic sources, prolifers in Boston, etc) have asked for clarification of the arrangements between all parties and the Cardinal has refused to make those details available. Since the National Catholic Bioethics Center has scrutinized this new arrangement we have asked for the report to be made public. If you review the facts as they are now, the Cardinal has not said that the NCBC has approved of this arrangement. The Cardinal thanked Caritas - who got them into the mess to begin with and thanked the NCBC whose comments have yet to materialize.

Now perhaps there is nothing sinister in the arrangements and the NCBC has approved this. If so, then the Cardinal needs to make all the contracts, partnership agreements and the NCBC opinion blessing this arrangeable, public. Until that time, we don't know what these changes are all about.

One more unpleasant thing needs to be dealt with in the post-mortem.


Though the contract had been long ago signed, the links on the Celticare website revealed, the Archdiocese had made contracts with abortionists and hired people to answer the phones, over 150 physicians and healthcare providers have been hired,the Cardinal continuously implying women would not be sent for abortions, even though Caritas had assured the Commonwealth they would and in fact the contract with the Commonwealth binds them to that promise, Anne Fox of MCFL is now claiming MCFL has always known the Cardinal would do the right thing and that is why they've been defending the Cardinal's false assertions for the last few months. In those few months - the conduct of MCFL activists is here and here.

The willful blindness, taking things out of context and full blown attacks upon people trying to bear witness to what is happening - the conduct in those posts speak for itself.

If you can't salute corruption, MCFL will throw you under the bus. They are not alone. For centuries now, whistleblowers have been treated as though they somehow got droped into an episode of Big Love.

It's time to put this dynamic out of its misery. This is the cause of the crisis that allowed the few pedophiles to fester into a situation whereby the problem could be hijacked to assert the word "priest" is synonymous with "pedophile".

We can no longer tolerate people who try to crush whistleblowers. People who do this in our parishes, in our communities, in our cyberworld and in our apostolates have got to be confronted and pushed back.

One victim of MCFL's tactics, Brendon O'Connell has had a pro-life television apostolate for many years that was somehow connected to MCFL. He interviewed CJ Doyle about the Caritas debacle (and I believe he interviewed Phil Lawler) and MCFL had Brendon's television program yanked.

This is the same conduct they have executed for the last 7 or 8 years, of recent vintage when Romney gave them 10,000 in exchange for a prolife award. When activists who had experienced Romney's tenure brought it to light into the public square, we all went under the bus then too.

They've got to knock this stuff off and everyone in the prolife community has got to put pressure on them to knock off. Firing salvos with the Cardinal at everyone in trenches that we are enemies of the Church is a hit to our reputation that is not only undeserved, it stalls convictions of people who have less knowledge of the situation and it stalls righteousness.

Every tactic has it's time and place. Crushing people speaking the truth has no place in our future. Let's stomp it out when we see it.

I was told earlier today a Q&A with the Cardinal produced by Joan Frawley Desmond will run in the National Catholic Register. I am contacting Fr. Owen and others in our prolife community to make known that a Q&A controlled and written by the Cardinal with Joan Frawley Desmond that will run in the Register is something the prolife community is going to be very, very upset about in light of the lack of transparency about the contracts between all the parties and the release of the "approval" by the NCBC. Having the Cardinal craft questions and then answer them while all the substance of the contracts gets left out of those questions, and the approval by the NCBC unpublished is unacceptable. Fr. Owen and the NCR are reasonable people and friends of prolife community and we expect they will see the problems with an arranged press release from the Cardinal.

If Joan Frawley Desmond is going to take our questions and get them answered, I'm all for it. We want to know the substance of the arrangements. When I get more details, I'll post them.

American Life League Promises Investigation of Caritas Christi

When Cardinal O'Malley's abortion business gets rolling on July 1st, the American Life League is promising to keep the pressure on with an investigation.

American Life League executive director Shaun Kenney announced a new campaign to investigate whether young mothers will be referred for abortions by Caritas Christi, the Boston Archdiocese-affiliated healthcare provider, after its joint venture with CeltiCare goes into effect July 1.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081105/DC44231LOGO )

"Caritas Christi and the Archdiocese of Boston have given reassurances that no Catholic hospitals will make abortion referrals," stated Kenney. "After July 1, we will put that guarantee to the test."

Organizations such as Live Action Films and other pro-life organizations have successfully exposed unsafe and illegal healthcare practices at abortion facilities all over the United States. Such practices include covering up child rape, committing abortions on minors without the required parental consent or notification and intentionally altering legal forms in order to commit abortions.

If Archdiocese-affiliated Caritas Christi is indeed making referrals for -- or participating in -- activities incompatible with its Catholic identity, the financially-strapped healthcare system could set a dangerous new precedent for Catholic institutions around the country.

"American Life League and its associates will not be satisfied with a policy that provides degrees of separation between the mother and an abortion business," said Kenney. "Catholics within the Archdiocese of Boston should be told the truth."

Under Cardinal Sean O'Malley's leadership, Caritas Christi and the Archdiocese of Boston have been under intense scrutiny due to the abortion scandal that has rocked the Catholic and pro-life communities in Massachusetts and beyond over the past two months.

"Catholic hospitals have a worldwide reputation as places of mercy," said Kenney. "Abortion is no mercy. Our Catholic hospitals and institutions should be doing everything possible to safeguard our mothers and children from the horrors of abortion, not seeking new ways to turn a blind eye toward an ever-increasing social problem.

"This scandal will not go away quietly so long as mothers and their babies are threatened by abortion through a supposedly Catholic healthcare system," stated Kenney. "Either our Catholic hospitals live up to our Catholic identity and protect every human being -- born and preborn -- or we compromise our principles and turn a blind eye for the sake of state and federal funding. Mothers and their babies deserve much better, and we will do everything we can to ensure this is the case.

"American Life League and millions of pro-lifers continue to call on Cardinal Sean O'Malley to carefully review the agreement and stop Caritas Christi's closed-door deal with the Massachusetts CeltiCare program," said Kenney.

The investigation is slated to begin on July 1 and run throughout the remainder of 2009.

As for my part, I will begin three crusades - one will be a grassroots parish-to-parish (hand-to-hand) campaign to unravel the Cardinal's deliberate and willful dishonesty - another campaign to make case nationally and internationally, within our Church structures to demonstrate that having a dishonest Cardinal is proof positive that whatever has been said about the safety of children from pedophiles is unreliable - and a third campaign will hit them where it hurts, pressuring the people with the money to withhold donations.

It is critical to expose that the systemic flaw of circling to protect a Bishop even when he is guilty and lying about the hand he is playing in salacious crimes against children, is still very much in place in the Catholic Church. From the pews, across the Conference of Bishops and all the way up the ranks to the Vatican. We cannot rely upon honesty, diligence in reviewing allegations and acting upon them. The system does not exist.

Stay tuned.

Good Summary of Prolife Reaction to the Caritas/CeltiCare Abortion Services

Nobody but Michael Paulson and Kay Lazar seem to be saluting the Cardinal's Press release.

(A reader pointed out that the Joint Statement is avoiding the word "abortion" - referring to it instead as the "procedure" )

Anyway - my first reading of the Globe, I missed these curious little tidbits:

The archdiocese would not say yesterday whether the ownership structure of CeltiCare would change, but a statement from the archdiocese and Caritas said, "Caritas is in active discussions with Celtic Group [a Centene subsidiary] and CeltiCare with a view to making acceptable modifications to their arrangement."
Centene referred questions to CeltiCare, and its spokesman said he had no comment.

Centene referred questions to "CeltiCare"?

But Centene is CeltiCare. The only other partner that makes up "CeltiCare" is the Archdiocese.

Further, today, it seems the loose cannon at CeltiCare has a new credo? Perhaps.. Gallus in suo sterquilino plurimum potest?

Some of the cardinal's critics are applying a tougher standard to the deal than are many moral theologians and Catholic healthcare officials, who have said that the issue here is whether Caritas is "cooperating with the evil of abortion."

No, long list of dissenting theologians has not articulated "the issue" at all.

Caritas isn't a real person. The word "Caritas" is a fata morgana. Prolifers are talking about a Cardinal agreeing to perform moral evils upon poor people, including killing children and then hiring other people to do it. The issue is exploiting and killing poor people for money.


I have 2500 emails in my inbox. Haven't come across a single one that has bought into the Cardinal's spin. In fact, they have only created more questions.

The Boston Herald ran the Cardinal's soundbyte (suddenly,liberal secular media believers everything the Archdiocese says?): "No Abortions at Catholic Hospitals"

Thanks Sherlock. But, if you've been following along with the story, Caritas said it was going to subcontract out the abortions. Catholics have been three months trying to flush out the Cardinal's theology that hiring people to kill other people and then paying for the abortions is consistent with the Catholic ethics. They're playing games with names. They've stalled opposition by giving the false impression that the Cardinal would block the venture, that the deal was not signed and he had a a team of luminaries trying to crack the code of Humanae Vitae and Evangelium Vitae to see how they can get the women over to the people they've hired to perform the abortions while making ludicrous assertions that this arrangement does not violate Catholic teachings and are services to the poor "at the very heart of Catholicism".

A posted named "Catholic Dad" had this to say in the comments section:

So let me get this straight. Caritas, a "Catholic" health care provider, is merged with "a secular health care company". The "Catholic" health care provider will allow the "secular health care company" to maker referrals for abortions. The Cardinal will then issue a press release lying that no abortion referrals will be made through the "Catholic" entity. This is a lie, sionce we know from the article that the "Catholic" health care provider and the "secular" health care provider are one and the same entity. The cardinal is up against some stiff competition when it comes to ecclesiastical bomfoggery- Cardinal Mahony in LA can give him a run for his money- but as of this morning His Eminence O'Mallery has got to be the odds on favorite to win the AmChurch Award for Most Disgraceful Dishonesty in a Public Statement by a Catholic Bishop. Congratulations, Boston.

Catholic Culture has a post up that articulates the reaction of the prolife community, pretty much across the board.

Although Caritas Christi sought out the government contract, and formed a partnership entitled CeltiCare to carry out the state mandate, Church leaders in Boston have insisted that Caritas Christi would not become involved in services incompatible with Catholic teaching.

Responding to critics who had noted that CeltiCare is advertising coverage for abortion, the Archdiocese of Boston released a public statement on June 10 saying that Caritas Christi "is in active discussions with Celtic Group (its partner in CeltiCare) and CeltiCare with a view to making acceptable modifications in their arrangement." The release did not indicate what sort of modifications would be sufficient to preserve the Catholic identity of Caritas Christi. But the June 10 statement did seem to suggest that the current agreement-- which Caritas Christi struck with Celtic Group in order to form the partnership that won the state contract-- contains provisions that archdiocesan leaders now recognize as unacceptable.

Cardinal Sean O'Malley insisted that Caritas Christi is, and will remain, faithful to Catholic moral principles. He said that "under no circumstances" would Caritas Christi perform abortions or "refer any patient to other providers who perform or procure such procedures." [The cardinal's statement, and the archdiocesan press release, refer to the issue obliquely, never actually using the word "abortion."]

However the terms of the state government contract that CeltiCare sought and won specifically require coverage for abortions. How could Caritas Christi-- which owns 49% of the for-profit CeltiCare-- justify its connection with that business? Dr. Ralph de la Torre, the president of Caritas Christi, explained:

When a patient seeks such a procedure, Caritas healthcare professionals will be clear that (a) the hospital does not perform them and (b) the patient must turn to his or her insurer for further guidance.

But when subscribers to the CelticCare plan turn to their insurers, they will be turning to CeltiCare-- in which, again, Caritas Christi is an active partner. The Boston archdiocese did not explain how the Church could justify that involvement.

While pro-life activists in Boston have pleaded for Caritas Christi to withdraw from the CeltiCare initiative, abortion advocates have also been watching the situation closely and demanding reassurance that the new state-funded agency will impose no restrictions on access to abortion. The efforts of abortion advocates-- unlike those of pro-life activists-- have been successful. The Boston Globe reported:

Brian Delaney, a spokesman for CeltiCare, said an abortion rights group, NARAL Pro-Choice of Massachusetts, will serve on an advisory group for the health plan but he did not know whether any Catholic groups would be on the panel.

Boston archdiocesan officials have stressed that no abortions will be performed at the hospitals of the Caritas Christi chain. That claim is not in dispute. The question is whether Caritas Christi, through its partnership in CelticCare, will provide-- and perhaps even profit from-- abortions performed at other facilities. CeltiCare advertisements indicate that Planned Parenthood will be enlisted to provide "reproductive services."