Be ready for mass Catholic Hospital shutdowns if the Bishops lose lawsuit. That's

[CK_John]

their cover story but lack of funding is more likely.

[Sam1]

1. How about some links?

[hedgehog]

2. All the bishops can do is remove the Eucharist (reserved consecrated communion wafers)

from the hospital chapels and refuse to allow priests to offer Mass on those sites. The hospitals are operated independently of the bishops. What the bishops are doing is forcing the hospital boards to consider whether it is still worthwhile to jump through hoops to retain the bishops' approval.

[jwirr]

7. My daughter works for a Catholic hospital and they have birth control coverage in their insurance

so the bishops are not speaking for all hospitals.

[hedgehog]

10. Once the bishops remove the authorization for the chapel,

they have no control. I expect a lot of hospitals, most of them under the control of the Sisters, to be offering birth control to their patients by the end of the Summer! This will depend on the level of support from the local Catholic laity. Soem areas are more conservative than others.

[qb]

3. Good riddance. I imagine they'll be replaced by hospitals run by non-bigots.

[tsuki]

8. Sing it! We have a state imposed

Catholic Hospital in our community with a monopoly on health care, no competing hospitals allowed. They are GAWD AWFUL and expensive.

[Peregrine Took]

4. No great loss, imo. I've never seen a good one. n/t

[zbdent]

5. Lack of funding?

Have you seen how much gold the Vatican has?

Great Hitler's Ghost, he was pissed when they took it ...

[Fawke Em]

6. They're already selling out to for-profit hospital groups.

Just happened in my area and I suspect it's happening all over since it's like everything else in this economy: locally-owned or even regionally-owned businesses can't complete with the multi-nationals that use cheap labor and cheap service to drive the locals out of business because Americans are too poor to demand better.

[meow2u3]

9. Mark my word, the bishops will not lose the lawsuit

They have 5 Opus Dei hacks on the Supreme Court.

[hedgehog]

11. Opus Dei is far scarier than shown in hte DaVinci Code - Opus Dei

operatives were hand in fist with the Franco and Pinochet regimes!