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• ↓ Canon Law and Selling a Catholic Hospital
• ↓ A New Trend: Exchanging Consent Again at the Wedding Reception
• ↓ Who in the SSPX Was Just Excommunicated?
• ↓ Repost: Clergy and Summer Vacation
• ↓ Schism, Excommunication, and Attending a Latin Mass in Brazil
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"Q: In [the city where I live], there’s a hospital … that was founded and run by Catholic religious sisters for over a century.  Now however it’s owned by a huge conglomerate, and there are no Catholic sisters on the board of directors at all.  The sisters sold the hospital about 40 years ago, and later the buyer sold it to someone else, who sold it to someone else, etc.  The Catholic hospital is now a non-Catholic hospital.  Can you speak to the legality of selling a Catholic hospital to a buyer outside the Church? Also, how are the sisters permitted to use the money that they were paid?  I’m not suggesting they violated canon law, I’m just wondering how this works or is supposed to work. —Haley  A: Whether you’re Catholic or not, odds are high that you’re aware of the Catholic origins of the world’s oldest hospitals—and you’re probably equally aware that today, many/most of the hospitals founded by Catholic institutions are owned and operated either by the state, or by secular healthcare organizations like Haley describes.  Some of these transformations are many centuries old; others took place only in recent decades.  The history behind these changes can vary dramatically too: countless Catholic hospitals around the world (and all their assets) were seized at one time or another by political rulers hostile to the Church—while countless others were voluntarily handed over or sold to others by the Catholic entities which had maintained them for generations.  Bear in mind also that this has happened on every inhabited continent, in numerous countries with their own civil laws governing such buying/selling; and these civil laws must be observed in addition to any canon law pertaining to this issue.  Consequently, it can be quite difficult (to put it mildly!) to make general statements about this topic which apply to all cases.  Nevertheless we can have a look first at some of the basic canonical concepts pertaining to selling church property; and then at how canon law applies—or doesn’t—to the various aspects of selling a Catholic hospital to non-Catholics.  First of all, regular readers might recall that in this space we have looked at the canons relevant to the sale of church property before, in “Canon Law and Selling a Church,” and “Can the Pastor Buy and Sell Parish Property Without Our Consent?”  We saw that among other things, just as there are church laws regarding large purchases of property, there are also laws concerning the sale of church property to others.  In canon law the term used to refer to such sales is alienation.  And depending on the nature of the item to be alienated, and the amount of money involved, the approval of the diocesan bishop and the diocesan finance council may not be sufficient: if the sums are high enough, it will be necessary to obtain permission from Rome for the sale as well (c. 1292.2)—and rest assured that nowadays, the value of the average Catholic hospital in any country is so high that selling one will almost invariably require approval from the Vatican.    But if you stop to consider the full implications of Haley’s question, you may realize that it’s different from the sales-scenarios we’ve previously discussed.  The questions we’ve dealt with before involved the sale of church property for a different use.  For example, if a diocesan bishop suppresses a parish and closes the parish church, it might conceivably be sold to some outside entity that will re-purpose the building, perhaps turning it into a school or an office building.  The bishop is therefore not selling a Catholic church to some buyer that plans to use it as a Catholic church!  A key issue in sales like these is the purpose for which the property will henceforth be used; and as was discussed in detail in the above-mentioned “Canon Law and Selling a Church,” canon 1222 states that a church building can be relegated to “profane but not sordid use.”   When a Catholic hospital is sold to an entity outside the Church, however, the purchaser’s motives for buying the property are not really the issue.  If someone wants to buy a hospital, normally their intention is to continue operating it as a hospital—so the fundamental purpose to which the property will be put does not change.  What could definitely change, depending on the buyer, is the identity of the hospital as Catholic, and the potential implications for medical ethics in everyday practice.  This is ordinarily the key issue, when a hospital operated by a Catholic diocese or religious institute is sold to non-Catholics.    Assuming there are no abuses involved, we Catholics can take it for granted that doctors at a Catholic hospital don’t perform abortions, or voluntary sterilizations, or sex-change operations; nor do they engage in euthanasia, or assist patients in voluntary suicide (see “Catholic Funerals and Physician-Assisted Suicide” for more on this sad issue).  A Catholic hospital may also have an explicit policy about providing truly necessary medical services to the poor at reduced prices, or even for free.  The guidelines for Catholic hospitals in the United States can be read here. Such policies are grounded in Catholic ethics and social teaching, and in a Catholic hospital those teachings should take precedence over any secular policies that are rooted first and foremost in economics and efficiency.  In short, the Church will argue that you can’t put a price-tag on a human person, made in the image and likeness of God; and the day-to-day workings of a Catholic hospital should reflect that.  For this fundamental reason, if some non-Catholic business entity offered to buy a Catholic hospital for a fabulously high sum, it stands to reason that the Catholic owners shouldn’t automatically jump at the opportunity to make a lot of money.  There are serious questions involving moral theology that must be asked first!  At the same time, however, there’s no denying that particularly when hospitals are owned by institutes of women religious which have seen plummeting numbers of vocations, and are thus struggling to maintain control of the hospitals which their predecessors successfully ran only with far larger numbers of members working full-time … it might only be reasonable for the leadership to conclude that this can’t go on.  When a choice has to be made between “selling our hospital to non-Catholics” and “shutting our hospital down completely,” it makes total sense for Catholic institutions—like the institutes of women religious just described—to be willing to sell.  As sad as it may be for the local community as well as for the religious themselves, there is nothing necessarily wrong with this, from the standpoint of either moral theology or canon law.  No matter where in the world it’s located, transferring ownership of anything so large as a hospital is going to involve a lot of discussions and legalities on many fronts—so there will be secular lawyers for both sides engaged in the negotiations for sure.  While canon law can’t be ignored by the negotiators, this is one of those topics where in many ways canon law will defer to secular law.  As was discussed in greater detail in “Canon Law and Contracts: Firing a Seminary Professor, Part I”  and “Part II,” canon 1290 declares that if a contract is made in accord with the civil laws of a given locality, the Church accepts and will abide by that contract—unless “the provisions are contrary to divine law or canon law provides otherwise.”  Canon law doesn’t provide exact specs for drawing up a contract for the sale of a Catholic hospital; but there are some requirements that must be observed in the drawing up of that contract.  The first one we’ve seen already: it has to be clear as possible to the seller that the hospital isn’t going to be engaging in activity which is morally objectionable.  How precisely this is made clear will depend largely on the way that civil contracts are worded in that part of the world—and this can of course vary widely.  If it’s possible (for example) somehow to include in the contract some kind of explicit caveat that the buyer can’t start performing abortions at the hospital, great!  But as per canon 1290, the exact way that these conditions are spelled out depends on secular law, which unsurprisingly doesn’t always jibe with canon law.  Here‘s an article about a state law in California which sadly ties the hands of church officials there, when it comes to selling a Catholic hospital. There’s another condition that must be observed for the Church to recognize and accept the sale of any property as large as a hospital, and it’s mentioned in canon 1291.  Permission of the competent authority must be obtained in advance, for “the valid alienation of goods which constitute by legitimate designation the stable patrimony of a public juridic person.”  In “Who Controls Ecclesiastical Property?” we saw that the term public juridic person is legal jargon describing an entity—not a physical, human person—in the Church which has its own rights and obligations.  (See “When Can Parish Buildings be Rented Out for Secular Use?” for another scenario involving public juridic persons.)  Some entities automatically have this juridic personhood, because it’s given to them by the law itself: a diocese (c. 373), a parish (c. 515.3), a seminary (c. 238.1), a religious institute as a whole, and its individual convents/monasteries/houses (c. 634.1) … these all attain the status of juridic person when they are erected by competent authority.  As we’re about to see, this is directly relevant to our topic.  If readers’ heads are spinning by this point, know that this isn’t as complicated as it may sound!  A concrete, fictitious example may help to clarify its meaning.    Let’s pretend that Queen of Heaven Hospital was founded in 1885 by the Sisters of St. Matilda in Diocese X.  As an institute of women religious, the Sisters of St. Matilda constitute a public juridic person, as per canon 634.1, just mentioned above.  The bishop of the diocese where the sisters’ motherhouse was located gave his approval for this hospital work long ago, of course; back then, as now, religious could not engage in their various apostolates in a particular diocese without the bishop’s express approbation.  True, there was no canon 394 in 1885, but the fundamental concept existed all the same (and see “Canon Law and a Convent of Rebellious Sisters” for more on this issue).   Let’s say that the Sisters of St. Matilda used to have medical apostolates in five different dioceses, in two countries; but in recent decades they, like almost every institute of women religious around the world, have seen their numbers shrink drastically.  The leadership of the Sisters of St. Matilda was obliged to pull sisters entirely out of four of the five dioceses where they used to operate; and today they have only one house, a convent in Diocese X that is right next to Queen of Heaven Hospital.  This hospital, still owned by the sisters, is the only place where they are now engaged in their medical work.    Now imagine that the Mother Superior is heroically trying to balance the dwindling number of new vocations to the institute, the ever increasing number of elderly sisters who are no longer able to work (some of whom are now patients at the hospital themselves), the higher costs involved in running a hospital nowadays, the growing government regulation that sometimes interferes directly in the ability of the sisters to run an effective hospital … and she’s realizing that this is no longer sustainable.  She looks at future projections and sees clearly that by the year 2040, there’s no way that Queen of Heaven Hospital will be able to function as-is.  At the same time, the Sisters of St. Matilda are barely surviving themselves: they are currently deep in debt, and desperately need an influx of money to cover their expenses in maintaining their convent and supporting their large number of retired sisters.    So let’s say that Mother Superior and her council conclude that the hospital will have to be sold off.  A secular healthcare conglomerate will gladly buy Queen of Heaven Hospital from them, for a generous price!  In this way, the sisters reason, the hospital work will continue, and the Sisters of St. Matilda can pay off their debts.  Sounds like a good plan, right?  Wrong.  Here’s where canon 1291 comes into play, and saves the sisters from a disastrous financial decision.  Since Queen of Heaven Hospital is now the only source of regular income for the Sisters of St. Matilda, it constitutes the “stable patrimony of a public juridic person.”  Without it, the sisters have nothing!  When the diocesan bishop—and the Vatican, which must approve the sale of such a valuable property as per the abovementioned c. 1292.2—take a look at this proposed hospital sale, they will immediately object: “If you sisters sell off your only source of continued income, then what’s going to happen to all of you once you’ve spent all the money you received from the sale of the hospital?  It may sound like a large sum right now; but once you’ve paid off your debts as you intend, there won’t be much left!  What will you be living on, 15 or 20 years from now, when even more sisters will be elderly and in need of continued care?  On top of that, you haven’t even considered what kind of apostolate you sisters will engage in, once you lose your hospital.  Your proposed sale doesn’t make any provision for the continued employment of your sisters at the hospital after it’s sold, so what do you intend to do with yourselves when you no longer own Queen of Heaven?”  In blocking the sale of the hospital in the way that the Sisters of St. Matilda had planned, these church authorities will undoubtedly cite canon 1294.2, which directly addresses what the money from such a sale can be used for:  Continue reading →"

Key Topics & Focus Areas for canonlawmadeeasy.com:

Canon Law and Selling a Catholic Hospital

A New Trend: Exchanging Consent Again at the Wedding Reception

Who in the SSPX Was Just Excommunicated?

Repost: Clergy and Summer Vacation

Schism, Excommunication, and Attending a Latin Mass in Brazil