Smith then applied these concepts to the challenge of keeping the faith in a Catholic hospital. If a practice is considered morally wrong, he said, it cannot be performed on a Catholic hospital's campus.
If Catholic hospitals wish to remain viable in the competitive world of health care, they can't shut out these procedures completely, Smith said. To remain competitive, then, Catholic hospitals must form alliances with non-Catholic partners. For these partnerships to mesh with Catholicism, "morally illicit procedures cannot be provided on Catholic campuses" Smith said. "They're provided on the other campus and are carved out through separate billing mechanisms, administration, and governance."
Smith also stressed the need to adhere to what each hospital deems appropriate. Even though the alliance is not necessarily Catholic, he said the associates must "respect the corporate conscience of the Catholic partner."
Hartnett then brought Catholic morality into the realm of judicial decision-making.
"There are a host of areas where Catholic teachings are at odds with American law," Hartnett said, citing divorce and the use of contraceptives as an example. On the other hand, he said, "Catholic tradition has never insisted that all things that are wrong be made illegal." Catholic judges should recognize that a conflict does indeed exist and that they should not see public law as the ultimate measure of morality.
Hartnett also addressed the fear of scandal in situations of material cooperation. Though the perpetrator is committing a morally permissible act by his standards, he faces the risk of leading someone else to think that the wrongful act is acceptable.
Tying Keenan's dissection of cooperation in wrongdoing into his speech, Hartnett said, "the doctrine of cooperation is not a doctrine designed to keep one's hands clean. The daily grist of a judge's decisions involves material cooperation. There will be ways in which what they do will help people do wrong."
Spring Break
