Equally Strange Fruit: Catholic Health Care and the Appropriation of Residential Segregation
Over the twentieth century, consolidation and intense focus on the bottom line by highly trained management executives have transformed Catholic health care into multi-billion dollar corporations once unimaginable by the founding sisters and brothers. Such largess has been accrued within a context r...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
The Journal of Moral Theology, Inc.
2019-01-01
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| Series: | Journal of Moral Theology |
| Online Access: | https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/11403-equally-strange-fruit-catholic-health-care-and-the-appropriation-of-residential-segregation |
| Summary: | Over the twentieth century, consolidation and intense focus on the bottom line by highly trained management executives have transformed Catholic health care into multi-billion dollar corporations once unimaginable by the founding sisters and brothers. Such largess has been accrued within a context rife with structural injustices, including residential segregation and black community disinvestment. This essay explores the relationship between residential segregation—named an intrinsic evil by Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor and in Gaudium et Spes—and Catholic health care. The concentrated poverty associated with residential segregation in the U.S. is an engine of health disparities; it also generates financial benefits for health care given the contemporary structure of health care finance and reimbursement. We utilize M. Cathleen Kaveney’s concept of the appropriation of evil to analyze moral dynamics implicit at the interface of residential segregation and Catholic health care, simultaneously demonstrating how the category of appropriation might be expanded to questions of social and structural sin. We also identify additional dynamics of appropriation, namely, moral inhibition, scandal, and implicit ratification. We close with constructive suggestions for ways that Catholic health care might engage with the realities of residential segregation to more constructively address health disparities with moral integrity. |
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| ISSN: | 2166-2851 2166-2118 |