Appropriation, Australia’s Drinking Problem, and the Cost of Resistance in Catholic Health Services

Abstract

In a previous issue of this journal, Cory D. Mitchell and M. Therese Lysaught developed M. Cathleen Kaveny’s conceptuation of ‘appropriation of moral evil’ to analyse complicity between Catholic health care institutions and a specific instance of structural sin. Kaveny put forward appropriation as the ‘mirror image’ of the category of cooperation, which has as its purpose the clarification and analysis of issues wherein a moral agent has a choice over whether to make use of, and benefit from, the fruits of another’s evil. Mitchell and Lysaught argue that this category has great potential for analysing issues of complicity in the context of structural sin. This article revisits their analysis and provides a case study of what it might take to resist such appropriation. The case study comes from the St Vincent’s Health Australia network of hospitals and aged care facilities, and in particular its advocacy position around alcohol laws in Sydney, Australia. The example demonstrates how a Catholic service, in witnessing to its ethical framework, may overcome the ethical risks of appropriation, though only with an intentionality which is willing to be courageous in the face of pressures which normally dominate the decision-making frameworks of large organisations.