St. Francis Memorial Hospital, identified in a recent report as performing transgender surgeries, is not actually a Catholic hospital, the Archdiocese of San Francisco clarified Wednesday.
St. Francis was included in a recent report by the Lepanto Institute, which said that CommonSpirit Health, the nation’s largest Catholic health system, is violating Catholic moral teaching by performing transgender surgeries, providing contraception, performing abortions, and engaging in other immoral practices.
The report lists some four dozen hospitals and medical clinics that are affiliated with CommonSpirit Health through mergers with other health systems.
St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco is included on the list as reportedly offering transgender surgeries and therapies, and performing surgical sterilizations.
Peter Marlow, executive director of communications for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, clarified that St. Francis – which was founded in 1905 by a group of local doctors – is not a Catholic hospital, despite its name.
“CommonSpirit Health is a Catholic hospital system and has only Catholic hospitals in it,” Marlow told The Pillar.
“It is aligned with a different system that includes the non-Catholic hospitals that were in the former Dignity Hospital system. St. Francis is one of those.”
Marlow explained that when the relationship was established, “a special carve-out was made for the non-Catholic hospitals that would continue to do direct sterilizations.”
However, he added, the non-Catholic hospitals agreed to abide by other guidelines contained within the U.S. bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services – they do not perform abortions, physician-assisted suicide, or in-vitro fertilization.
Transgender surgeries are a relatively new issue, Marlow continued, and were not originally included in the ERDs, which are currently in their sixth edition.
However, he said, “[t]he agreement provided that other ethical and religious issues in the future could be included in the ERDs among those that the non-Catholic hospitals do not perform.”
Marlow suggested that new guidelines surrounding these issues could be forthcoming….
From The Pillar
It would be so beneficial if the SF diocese would make this information available through letters to pastors and the diocesan newspaper. The Pillar only found out through a phone call.
Marlow suggested that new guidelines surrounding these issues could be forthcoming….
The difference is that abortions, physician-assisted suicide, or in-vitro fertilization can be easily done outside of a hospital setting and are performed regularly by free standing medical businesses and don’t nearly represent the astonishingly lucrative attraction of the “gender affirming” industry to a hospital administration and share holders.
My money is on St. Francis leaving CSH or receiving another ‘carve out’. Some how mutilating healthy reproductive systems for ‘gender affirming’ surgery will be placed in the same category as direct surgical sterilizations. When you think about it, vasectomies and tubal ligations are kind of ‘sex change’ procedures anyway….
Like so many, they were Catholic until it was inconvenient to be Catholic.
And expensive.
What profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul?
Since it’s no longer Catholic but a carve-out, they should rename it Jesuit Regional Hospital.
St. Ignatius would not approve.
Okay, so when will the diocese announce that The Most Holy Redeemer Church is not Catholic?
MHR is Catholic. It’s just that a lot of the people at Mass and in the sanctuary there on any given day don’t have Catholic faith.
Kinda like Catholic hospitals, now that I think about it. And colleges and universities. And diocesan schools. And the synod. Oh, brother.
Catholic hospitals and all hospitals are in the service of providing health care to people who need health care. When someone needs health care, the hospital is there to provide that care to them. To not provide health care would be against the mission of the hospital to give health care to people. Catholic or not, it is a hospital. And as a hospital, it is there to provide health care to people who need it.
Yes, Kamala, by all means keep that nonsensical merry-go- round going, never making any sense at all nor telling anyone exactly what health really should be. (Said “tongue in cheek”, of course). In plain English, “You are very boring and tiresome:) As for me, I am getting off the merry-go-round.
Correction: exactly what healthcare should be.
Kamala,
Abortion and transgender surgery are not health care.
Abortion is not reproductive health care. It’s not even reproductive, it’s counterproductive. And it’s not health care because it kills rather than extends life.
Transgender surgery is mutilation of the human body, the temple of the Holy Spirit. It’s not health care because it violates the body instead of protects it. It insults God for allegedly making the “mistake” of giving the wrong body to the wrong gender.
You should know these. These are pretty common-sense stuff, not just hard Catholic teaching.
My God is big-hearted, not small-minded. My God doesn’t care about the gender or the genitals of the person I love and marry. My God blesses and embraces those of us rejected by our church. And his Son said nothing on record about the whole deal, so there’s that.
As it says in the Cafeteria catholic Catechism:
Man fashioned God in his own image and likeness.
Why should this surprise anyone. Most “Catholic” colleges aren’t Catholic and many self proclaimed “Catholic” politicians don’t believe or act as Catholics. Anyone or anything can label itself “Catholic.” The word has lost its meaning.