Catholic Hospitals must be Catholic

In England, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has come down on the side of the Faith to a Hospital in the Diocese. (Article)

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the senior prelate of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, has instructed a Catholic hospital to cease in vitro fertilisation treatments, contraception distribution, and abortion referrals.

The Daily Mail reports that the Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth in North London, popular with celebrities, will no longer allow any staff members to participate in contraceptive or abortion related activities under a new code of ethics to be instituted starting next month. Bishop George Stack, an auxiliary of Westminster, has been appointed to the ethics committee to ensure that Catholic principles are upheld in the Catholic hospital.

It's about time. We need to have Catholic Institutions that act Catholic. Why do you think people have trouble with the Faith, seeing all the Hypocracy?

The cardinal wrote to Robin Bridgeman, the chairman of the hospital, “There must be clarity that the hospital, being a Catholic hospital with a distinct vision of what is truly in the interests of human persons, cannot offer its patients, non-Catholic or Catholic, the whole range of services routinely accepted by many in modern secular society as being in a patient's best interest.”

Now, if only the American Bishops could grow a spine. Maybe they could even crack down on the teaching in Catholic Universities.

-JG