THREAD: This issue is still rumbling on, but I'm really not sure we are asking the appropriate questions to determine whether this arrangement may pose extraordinary risks to women's health in future. https://twitter.com/ivanabacik/status/1265924817628397568

Processes around alienation of temporal goods are complex and controversial precisely because they raise issues of ecclesiastical control, and of the relationships between state and religious law.

The Vatican did not block this transfer, but people are now asking whether it was subject to conditions.

Several commentators emphasise that the new charity which will be the major/sole shareholder in SVHG may be a public juridic person - an entity in canon law designed to ensure the continuity of the RSC's mission in contexts of lay governance. So, let's ask:

1. Is St Vincent's Holdings a 'public juridic person' for the purposes of canon law? Does the invocation of Canons 1292-1294 mean that it must be, or is the 'public juridic person' here the order, while St Vincent's Holdings is something else?

2. If St Vincent's Holdings is not a public juridic person, will a separate public juridic person be involved in sponsoring the new NMH and overseeing any religious aspects; as for example, is the case with the Mercy Hospital in Cork?

3. If the answer to either of those questions is 'yes', what practical difference will it make to the everyday running of the new NMH? Two distinct questions here:

3a. What difference will it make to SVHG board appointments and democratic decisions (sometimes raised as the 'reserved powers' issue)? 3b. What difference will it make to SVHG's health service code?

(On 3b. will this body be accountable to the Vatican, or to the diocese? Irish Bishops recently published a new Code of Ethical Standards for Healthcare, which closely mimics its Australian counterpart & covers issues incl. 'cooperation in a partner institution's wrongdoing.)

3. Note - it is(?) possible that no public juridic person is involved or substantially involved at all. That a charity is Catholic does not by itself denote substantial ecclesiastical control (see for example SVdeP). It should be easy to categorise this holding company.

4. We have been assured that care provision will comply with Irish law, but what does that mean? In particular, what interpretation of Article 44.2.5 of the Constitution (religious autonomy) arises here?

4. Invoking 'international best practice' (which has multiple meanings) does not solve that problem.

5. (And this is in my view by far the most important but least discussed question) What, if anything, will happen to a doctor working at the new NMH if they wish to continue conscientiously providing legal abortion care, to the full extent of the law?

5 contd. We know the NMH provides these services. We know the NMH staff prize clinical autonomy. Conflicts between even nominally Catholic orgs and the hierarchy are not unusual. But we don't know much about the dynamics enabling resistance, or what formal safeguards protect it.

5 contd. It would be reassuring to know more, especially given earlier admissions that some procedures could not be carried out at St. Vincent's without permission.

6. Can those involved in negotiations around the new NMH point to examples of previous comparable transfers, which passed off easily, at no cost to women's healthcare? Public juridic persons have after all been defendants in cases around refusal of ob/gyn care in the US.

6. In selecting those comparators, we have to pay attention to time and place. Does Ireland's reliance on institutions like SVHG make Ireland quite a different case to Aus/Canada/US where these are private, if influential hospitals? Are transfers which took place in Ireland

6. before abortion law was reformed relevant?

I am not a canon lawyer, and I am not an expert in hospital regulation. I'm happy to have mistakes corrected, if that is illuminating. But it should be no bother to someone like me to figure out what is going on here. The muddle isn't a great sign.

This whole scandal is a product of the continued unthinking normalisation of the state's relationship with orders involved, not only in the provision of healthcare, but in Magdalene Orders and industrial schools.

If the state *has* changed, then we need to see it paying clear attention to these issues, in all of their ethical and regulatory complexity.

A little more transparency would be welcome here, and would help to move things along towards everyone's shared goal - a really excellent maternity hospital.