'THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE' New national maternity hospital must obey the Church, claims Bishop

By David Kearns
Irish Sun
April 23, 2017

https://www.thesun.ie/news/900916/new-national-maternity-hospital-must-obey-the-church-claims-bishop/

Bishop Kevin Doran

People protesting outside the Department of Health over plans to grant ownership of the new National Maternity Hospital to the Sisters of Charity

The National Maternity Hospital must obey Church doctrine if plans to hand over the site to the Sisters of Charity go ahead, claims Bishop Kevin Doran.

The bishop of Elphin believes any healthcare organisation “bearing the name Catholic… has a special responsibility to Catholic teachings… [including] the value of human life and the dignity and the ultimate destiny of the human person.”

“Public funding, while it brings with it other legal and moral obligations, does not change that responsibility,” he told the Sunday Times.

Mr Doran believes that canon law “obliges a hospital on Catholic land to operate by Catholic rules”.

In his statement to the Sunday Times, he refers to canon law which decrees that land held by religious institutions is “ecclesiastical property” over which the Pope has “primacy of governance”.

His comments this weekend seem to confirm warnings by many groups opposed to the Sisters of Charity’s ownership of the new national maternity hospital.

Already over 87,000 people have signed a petition calling on Minister for Health Simon Harris to prevent the religious order from taking ownership of the facility.

The group is one of four convents implicated in the historic Magdalene Laundries abuse scandal and owe €3 million in redress to victims and survivors of these institutions.

The St Vincent’s Healthcare Group has announced that it is to review the status of the new National Maternity Hospital due to the “controversy” surrounding concerns about the Sisters of Charity’s ownership.

Fears what a dominant Roman Catholic ethos could mean for the new National Maternity Hospital were hinted at last week when its was revealed that one of Ireland’s largest hospitals does not provide women with the contraceptive pill, due to its operational ethos as a Catholic institution.

In-patients at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin are not provided with access to the pill, regardless of whether they need it due to illness.

While doctors are free to prescribe the medication, the hospital does not stock the pill at its on-site.