About Sponsorship
Sponsorship of a health care ministry is a structured relationship through which the sponsor, in the name of the Church, directs and influences a ministry that meets an apostolic need and furthers the mission of Jesus.
Sponsorship of Catholic health care involves promoting and assuring Jesus' healing mission. Those who sponsor are responsible for the continued viability of the health care ministry, promoting its ongoing mission, and animating its life. Sponsors act publicly on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church and have been entrusted to serve the Church by guiding and overseeing a specific institutional ministry in a formal and public way.
CHA's Sponsor Services Department provides numerous programs, services and resources to help sponsors of Catholic health care live out and better understand their roles.
Canon Law
Broadly defined, canon law is all the laws, both divine and ecclesiastical, universal and particular, of the Roman Catholic Church. More narrowly, the laws that appear as canons in the Code of Canon Law and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. An understanding of canon law is important for leaders of Catholic health care because Catholic health care is a ministry of the Catholic Church, continuing the ministry of Jesus. Canon law provides the values or norms from which health care organizations can effectively operate in mission.
Leaders of Catholic health care organizations differ from leaders of other-than-Catholic ones in that their work is bound by both civil law and the canon law of the Catholic Church. Because this is so, leaders of Catholic organizations should know something about canon law. Toward this end, Health Progress offered a series of columns on canon law. The column, which is the work of different writers, is under the general editorship of a well-known expert in the field, Fr. Francis G. Morrisey, OMI, JCD, Ph.D., professor of canon law, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Ontario.
Ministerial Juridic Persons
Juridic person is the generic term for a type of Church cooperation. These can be associations of persons, as in the case of a religious institute, or an association of things, such as the assets of an educational or health care ministry. The latter has come to be referred to as a ministerial juridic person or MJP, or a ministerial public juridic person (MPJP), to indicate that it was founded primarily for a ministerial purpose rather than for the sanctification of its members as a religious institute might be. Although ministerial juridic person (MJP) is not a recognized title in the Code of Canon Law, it is now being used to describe PJPs established for the oversight of Catholic health care ministries.
Models of MJPs
Distinct
In this model, a new MJP is established as sponsor that is distinct from the governing board of the civil corporation. Sponsor members do not serve on the governing body of the civil corporations.
Mirror
This model involves the establishment of a new MJP that consists of the same group of persons who constitute the governing board of the civil corporation. This one group acts variously in different capacities as it exercises its civil and canonical responsibilities.
Hybrid
In this model, the canonically established MJP is a distinct sponsoring body whose members also serve on the governing board of the civil corporation. Hence, the governing board of the civil corporation is made up of all members of the sponsoring body as well as members who serve solely on the governing board of the civil corporation.
In each model, the relationship between the sponsor board and the civil governing board is unique. The division and overlap of responsibilities between these two bodies can vary widely. In a mirror structure, all members serve in both capacities and, therefore, require competencies as both governing board members and sponsors.