What is Caritas Christi up to?

This story has been simmering for awhile but I only just now had a chance to do a treatment.

AmP reader Jeanne gives us a fantastic opening brief:

Caritas Christi Health Network (which owns the remaining Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts) wants to partner with Centene Corp. - a St. Louis based health network - to put a bid in for government subsidized healthcare. Ostensibly, this is for the sake of allowing lower-income people greater access to healthcare.

The catch is that if the venture were to accept government money, then they would be required by Massachusetts state law to cover abortions. (In the words of Connector Authority spokesman Dick Powers: "Health plans must provide covered services. Covered services specifically include abortion services.") On March 5, 2009, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley released a statement, saying that, "...Caritas Christi Health Care has assured me 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." And while it is true that Caritas Christi Health Care does not plan to directly offer any of the so-called "family planning services" that would be mandated by the state, they are planning on providing referrals for such services. The plan is this: Caritas would refer the patient to another facility, knowing that said facility would then direct her to physicians who will perform abortions, prescribe contraception, and so forth.

Despite his protestations to the contrary, lot of people believe that the Cardinal is being intellectually dishonest in how he is presenting the situation and that the partnership would amount to the Catholic hospital system cooperating with a provider of abortion services. In the face of public outrage over this partnership, the Cardinal is submitting the situation to the National Catholic Bioethics Center. It will be interesting to hear their opinion of this situation.

The Catholic Action League has been very vocal on this issue, saying in their most recent press release that Caritas Christi is "stonewalling".

Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe did an in-depth story on March 4th, and had a symposium of moral theologians weigh-in yesterday. Together they've compiled a tome of contributions.

Sadly, however, from my brief survey of the names chosen, there appear to be many theologians who don't think with the mind of the Church on this complex issue.