Phoenix bishop's response to hospital ignites questions of authority, identity | National Catholic Reporter

Phoenix bishop's response to hospital ignites questions of authority, identity | National Catholic Reporter

The bottom line really is that its not his hospital. Perhaps the bishops should get out of the business of judging the bioethics of hospitals that they do not own, since the seem to own most everything else in the diocese under the conventions of Canon Law. Their moral voice would be stronger without the perception that they are attempting to exercise ownership where they have none. Indeed, it would really be strengthened if they turned over all administration and property rights to more modern non-profit corporate structures and became official paupers - like the sisters who do actually own the hospitals.

On the bioethics question, perhaps the locus of study should be with Catholic Health Association and its owning Orders rather than the Bishops. While the Bishops should surely discuss and advise CHA, they should not try to micromanage within someone else's structure, either individually or as a group. CHA does its own work on Catholic identity. They don't need the USCCB for that function.

Catholic Higher Education institutes should also be the locus of the Church's response to bioethics in research, both in their institutions and in society at large. The bishops have enough to deal with on the ethical side without messing up someone else's sandbox.