Greg Daly
A Rome-based moral theologian has said the Vatican has an obligation to block plans by the Sisters of Charity to facilitate the building of a new National Maternity Hospital where it is expected that abortions will take place.
Fr Kevin O’Reilly OP, who lectures in Rome’s Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, better known as the Angelicum, told The Irish Catholic that if the Religious Sisters of Charity do not reconsider their proposal to sell land and the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group to an independent company capable of facilitating the new hospital, the proposed scheme should be vetoed.
“Inevitably at some stage what we would regard as direct abortion is going to happen, and when it happens you can’t turn around and say we didn’t mean that to happen,” he said, explaining that to enable abortions in such a way would be completely contrary to Catholic teaching.
Property
Under canon law, Irish religious bodies cannot sell or give away property worth over €3.5 million without permission from the Vatican. The Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life must vet all such disposals of assets, typically not approving of them without at least receiving confirmation from the local bishop – in this case, Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin – that he has no objections to the religious body’s plan.
Fr O’Reilly said that when the proposal reaches the Vatican, the authorities there “absolutely” should prevent it from going ahead. “The bottom line is that you’re talking about abortion, and you’re talking about facilitating abortion,” he said, continuing, “even if it’s only one abortion, you’re morally obliged to do what you can to prevent that taking of innocent human life.”
He compared the controversy with how a group of Belgian psychiatric centres owned by the Brothers of Charity last month announced plans to perform euthanasia, in accordance with increasingly common Belgian practice, on mentally ill patients, he said the situation was “similar, though not as bad”.
Noting how the sisters had come under “an onslaught” of criticism ahead of putting forward their proposal, he warned of a “pattern of religious coming under pressure, capitulating, and cooperating with the culture of death”.
The State, he added, should be able to find another site for the new hospital.