Bishop Tobin of Rhode Island makes the diocesan Catholic hospital withdraw its membership in the CHA.
Bishop Olmsted announces that a hospital executive, a Sister of Mercy, has been automatically excommunicated because she made a medical decision to hasten the death of an 11 week-old fetus who would have died anyway, taking his/her mother with him/her, days...or weeks...later.
Some bishop in Oregon makes a hospital take the cross off its roof because of some imagined slight (I can't remember what.)
It seems to me as if the crux of the matter is that maybe the bishops think these hospitals are just too darn independent.
They talk about the threat of health care to conscience protections, and they root around in medical records and 1700 page bills looking for a phrase....or a word....or a syllable...that makes it seem that abortion might....or possibly....or perhaps....be financed by people using their own money that they received as government discounts...
The CHA probably wonders why the USCCB didn't hire members of the CHA to assess the health care bill rather than Right to Life lawyers with an agenda--to find something, anything, even a comma that doesn't look right to them.
It's a power struggle, it seems to me. Sadly, it will probably end with the Sisters of Mercy and other Catholic health systems transferring ownership to lay advisory boards because they're just fed up.
And I think that's what happens in most cases of micromanagement. Those being micromanaged start withering and choking and dying. If this continues, it will probablyo be the end of the Catholic hospital system in the US.