The issue of Catholic hospitals and Catholic ethos has been much in the news over the last couple of weeks because of a dispute taking place between the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) and St Vincent’s hospital over the possible relocation of the former to the latter’s campus elsewhere on Dublin’s southside.

The row was initially presented to the public as though it was about ethos; seeing as St Vincent’s is officially a Catholic hospital, would the NMH have to be a Catholic hospital also? The answer is no, and therefore the dispute is really about management structures.

However, what has emerged is that St Vincent’s itself seems happy to allow its doctors to perform procedures that are against Catholic ethos, for example, sterilisation and IVF. This in turn gives rise to the question; just how Catholic is St Vincent’s in practice? Keep in mind that St Vincent’s said it would obey the provisions of Ireland’s first abortion law, the so-called ‘Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act’.

We need to ask, what guidance are Catholic hospitals receiving these days from their boards about ethos? Do doctors and nurses receive any training about Catholic ethos or do they now accept as axiomatic the very common notion that Catholic ethos and good medical practice are necessarily at loggerheads?

These are very important questions and analogous questions have to be asked about Catholic schools and Catholic third level institutions as well, that is, how Catholic are they, and what efforts are being made to ensure they have a Catholic ethos and to provide the intellectual and moral justification for such an ethos?