No Catholic hospitals for me, please

There have been some recent controversies in how Catholic hospitals handle ethics — most prominently in the case of the Phoenix hospital that carried out an abortion to save a woman, and got rebuked by the church for it. The Catholic church faces an ethical challenge here, and guess what their response has been: not to change their dangerous and amoral doctrines, but to emphasize emphatically that the church dogma must be followed.

The flaw is in the workers, who must be better indoctrinated in Catholicism. How that would help a dying pregnant woman is a mystery the church will not explore.

Controversies over bioethical standards at U.S. Catholic hospitals show the need for greater Catholic education for health care workers, Vatican officials said Thursday.

They have further decided that mere doctors and professional ethicists are not qualifed to judge medical dilemmas — instead, decisions must be made by old male theologians with no medical training and little awareness of life in the real world.

In the wake of public spats between the Catholic hierarchy and health care executives, the Catholic Health Association publicly acknowledged that bishops — not doctors or hospital ethicists — have the final say on questions of medical morality.

A reader sent along a suggestion, that I take a look at the mission statements for some of our regional hospitals. Mission statements tend to be the places where institutions place a pile of fluffy vague expressions of wishful thinking, and they usually aren't going to be the places to look for substantive differences, but I was surprised — there was a huge difference. It's actually rather frightening to see what a Catholic hospital publicly, cheerfully and unashamedly considers the most important job it has.

Whoa. So the job of the Catholic hospital is to "nurture the healing ministry of the Church" and make the church healthier in the 21st century. The job of the secular hospital is to improve medical care for its patients.

Now when you get sick, you know where to go, and it's not your local Catholic hospital. Unless, that is, you think it important to prop up the power of your bishop, in which case you deserve the medical care you'll be getting. Make sure to leave a substantial portion of your estate to the church in your will!