A Theological Reflection on the Principle of Cooperation and the Catholic Health Care Ministry

Since the publication of the Third Edition of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services in 1995, the principle of cooperation has become the primary lens through which potential partnerships, mergers or joint ventures between Catholic health care organizations and secular health care organizations have been assessed. Directive 70 stipulates that “Catholic health care organizations are not permitted to engage in immediate material cooperation in actions that are intrinsically immoral, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide and direct sterilization.” In the vast majority of transactions between Catholic providers and their secular counterparts, the obstacle to their collaboration is the issue of direct sterilization. For such a transaction to go forward, the collaboration of the Catholic partner should be limited to remote mediate material cooperation.