Who Is Sister Carol Keehan?

NC Register ^ | March 5, 2012 | Ann Carey

[NYer]

>She has been photographed with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

She is frequently cited by the mainstream media as the ultimate authority on Catholic health care. She has consistently been in the top tier of “100 Most Powerful People in Health Care.” And she is credited with capturing the “Catholic vote” needed to pass the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act commonly called Obamacare.

So, who is Sister Carol Keehan? And how did the Daughter of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul come to wield such power?

Sister Carol did not respond to repeated requests for an interview for this article, but, like most powerful people, she leaves a considerable paper trail that allows an accurate portrait to emerge.

Sister Carol entered the Daughters of Charity — founded by Sts. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac in 1633 — in 1965. She started her career as a nurse and rose through the ranks in Catholic health care, obtaining a doctorate along the way.

She became president/CEO of the Catholic Health Association in 2005, a position she still holds. Under her leadership, the CHA — a trade association of hospitals, nursing homes, surgical centers and clinics — has been a powerful influence in shaping health-care policy in this country, even though the CHA has no authority to speak for the Church on faith and morals.

The CHA and the nation’s Catholic bishops share a common goal of securing adequate health care for everyone. However, as CHA CEO, Sister Carol has publicly challenged the bishops’ leadership when addressing prudential matters of grave importance to Church-affiliated institutions, thus undercutting the canonical authority of the bishops and giving ammunition to critics of the Church who try to claim that there is more than one legitimate Catholic position on these moral issues.

[NYer]

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, then-president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement in which he cited the differences between the bishops and the CHA. The CHA, he said, believed that the moral objections could be corrected after passage of the final bill, while the bishops said the bills’ flaws were fundamental: “Assurances that the moral objections to the legislation can be met only after the bill is passed seem a little like asking us, in Midwestern parlance, to buy a pig in a poke.”

snip

When the “pig in a poke” that Cardinal George had warned about materialized on Jan. 20 of this year, with the Obama administration’s mandate requiring most religious institutions to provide insurance that covers contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, Sister Carol briefly joined the bishops and countless other Americans to protest this assault on religious liberty.

There are more than bishops' skulls on that road to hell.

[Allison_Wonderland]

She is part of the socialist cabal in administrative places of Catholic institutions. She helped bring us Obamacare and now she is “shocked” at the new HHS contraceptive mandate.

There are way too many of these types of socialists in institutions of the Catholic church who mistake the need for the church to act with “compassion” and “caring for others” into trying to effect public policy whether or not it is good for the rest of us. And I make these claims as a proud Catholic school graduate who is disgusted where people such as Sr. Carol have taken Catholic hospitals. There are many others like her that most people never hear of either. But that is changing.

[Oratam]

She needs, as a friend of mine used to say, "some churchin' up."

To that end, she should be relieved of her managerial duties and sent to a monastery, a very austere one in a rugged valley somewhere cold and dry, to spend the rest of her days in prayer and penitence.

[Rich21IE]

After she’s been whipped and beaten with a stick for a few days.

[JPG]

The dear sis is many things but Catholic isn’t among them.

[RobbyS]

Sister has too much invested in her own opinion, and she dissembles all the time.