Washington D.C. – The U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference has been forced to look into the emerging transgender surgeries and hormone treatments performed at its network hospitals. It has been reported that some of the non-Catholic hospitals within the country’s largest Catholic network of hospitals, CommonSpirit Health network, are performing transgender affirming surgeries and elective abortions. The Conference has asked its Committee on Doctrine to study the above issues and provide an adequate response to ensure its medical ethics are complied with by all the network hospitals.

A report published by the Virginia-based Lepanto Institute on the Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health network claims to possess “indisputable proof of gross defiance of Catholic moral teaching on the part of CommonSpirit Health.” The health network was instituted in 2019 after the merger of DignityHealth and Catholic Health Initiatives. The network had professed its compliance to the Catholic medical morals at the time of its institution in 2019.

The Lepanto Institute report questions the service offerings of some of the non-Catholic hospitals in the network that perform transgender surgeries. The report also alleges that some CommonSpirit-aligned hospitals provide hormone therapies and puberty blockers to children and offer contraception, abortifacients, and surgical sterilization to their patients.

One of the hospitals named in the report is Saint Francis Memorial Hospital which was founded in 1905 as a secular institution. Its website confirms that the hospital runs a Gender Institute which performs gender confirmation surgery. The hospital’s affiliated foundation has been spending millions of dollars each year to upgrade the facilities and equipment at the Gender Institute since 2016. The foundation is committed “to adequately support the transgender community” and other patients.

Countering the claims of Lepanto Institute, the San Francisco Archdiocese has claimed that “CommonSpirit Health is a Catholic hospital system and has only Catholic hospitals in it”. This was confirmed by Peter Marlow, executive director for communications and media relations at the Archdiocese of San Francisco. He pointed out that CommonSpirit Health has a special agreement with Dignity Hospital system which ensures a separate oversight board and revenue management.

Under a ‘Statement of Common Values’, the non-Catholic hospitals have committed “not to perform abortions, physician-assisted suicide, or IVF.” Marlow conceded that “transgender surgeries are a new issue not originally conceived in the ERDs” and, therefore, they will be investigated.

The Lepanto Institute president Michael Hichborn, however, criticized the views expressed by Marlow. “One cannot create legal barriers that grant license to commit grave moral evil. Any entity that is a part of a Catholic system must abide by Catholic moral laws, or else the system of which it is a member cannot remain Catholic,” he said. He pointed out that CommonSpirit Health funds non-Catholic hospitals in its network.

John Brehany, the executive vice president and director of institutional relations at the US National Catholic Bioethics Centre observed, “Catholic identity, and Church teachings, and the principles of the Catholic moral tradition should provide ultimate guidance for Catholic health care institutions.” The Catholic Bishops, in their March doctrinal note, wrote that “any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person.”

The Lepanto Institute acts as a fact-finding agency that examines and reports on Catholic organizations that do not comply with Catholic teaching and ethics. It has taken flaks from both Catholic and non-Catholic entities for its works of research over the years. Amid the controversies it finds itself in, the Institute’s efforts at guiding the Catholic health organizations to remain committed to observing the Catholic medical ethics cannot be undermined.