USA Today’s “Faith and Reason” blog:
When it comes to mandatory contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the nation’s Catholic bishops won’t budge an inch.
New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, initially said he would study President Obama’s newest variation of the requirement.
That didn’t last long. Now, it’s no sale unless the mandate is lifted from any person of faith who objects to facilitating contraception coverage for employees…
Yours truly is not one who thinks the Obama administration is at “war” with religion. This writer does not assume “bad faith” on the administration’s part. Yet in this matter it has genuinely ventured down a path no administration has before.
Backing the core reason why the Obama administration claims it has done so is beside the point. It is easy to justify measures one likes. In turn, all of us must support, through our taxes, general state measures and policies we dislike and may even consider abhorrent: for example, the Catholic Church is not a fan of the U.S. having nearly 10,000 (taxpayer-funded) nuclear weapons either.
Undeniably health concerns are vital. Yet so of course is national defense. But the importance of defending the U.S. does not give the Defense Department carte blanche to demand Church lands must house missile silos.
There is the “Free Exercise” distinction. A conscientious objector does not have to shoulder a rifle himself. But in this mandate, the administration is decreeing there can be no conscientious objectors. That being so, where is conscience next to be rescinded for health concerns? In demanding Catholic hospitals perform abortions? Or for end of life issues, in demanding Catholic hospitals euthanize? Or to fight crime, in requiring Catholic priests execute death row prisoners?
Thus the reason for the uproar is in the mandate itself. It is one thing for a politician — even a Catholic one — to support legal contraceptives being available. However, it is moving into a decidedly murkier “free exercise” realm for that politician to force the Catholic Church actually to pay for the contraceptives.
And in “Caesar” demanding the Church contract insurance coverages to which it is doctrinally opposed, and which must be paid for at least in part out of church funds raised through Mass collections, the HHS mandate is doing just that. That is its “Free Exercise” encroachment. Ironically an NHS-style single-payer system funded not by the faithful’s givings, but through taxes a church does not pay as an exempt charity, would not present the same thorny church-state conscience dilemma.
James Madison wrote that religious liberty requires defining government’s role with the utmost precision the law, and language, allows. We know there are no absolutes in this world; but it is undeniable that religion gets first mention in the Bill of Rights as a singular realm in which legislative intrusion is explicitly proscribed — even before speech. As we see once again, given its uniquely personal and sensitive nature, and the Founders’ essential belief that political liberty went hand in hand with religious freedom, there is a very good reason for that.
You don’t seem to address the fact that under the compromise the Church doesn’t pay for the coverage. Nor is it clear why forcing individual members of a religious organization to pay for something they are morally opposed to (war, for example, or capital punishment) is not a violation of conscience but requiring a religious institution to do so (as under the original mandate) is – after all, individuals have conscience, not institutions. Why is forcing a Catholic to pay for an unjust war a non-issue, but forcing a Catholic university to allow coverage for contraception so conscience searing?
Would the bishops be as much in favor of letting Jehovah’s Witnesses not cover their employee’s blood transfusion, or Christian Scientists denying their employees medical coverage? Free exercise simply doesn’t give people and institutions a free pass across the board, and never has.
The conscientious objector analogy is problematic, too. Being a CO changes the way someone serves if they are drafted: you get either a non-combatant role, or alternative civilian service, or go to prison. You don’t simply opt out.
Absolutely a military conscientious objector is required still to serve in non-combatant capacity. But he still does not have to engage in combat. However, his conscience choice is respected.
The issue with the mandate is no one is getting any choice. I don’t know what the bishops think about Christian Scientists or Jehovah’s Witnesses. But it would seem that, yes, under the First Amendment it would be entirely within their rights not to cover blood transfusions or not to offer coverage at all – however many of us might find that distasteful.
I do think the personal taxes v. Mass collection – or Jehovah’s Witnesses or Christian Scientist contributions – comparison holds up well. In this mandate, government is going to be demanding money contributed to the Church by the faithful be transferred from the Church to a government-demanded purpose the faithful finds immoral. Yet government does not tax church collections.
That is, to me, where the line is crossed into government interfering with “Free Exercise”. That’s why I made the NHS comparison. Churches don’t pay taxes in the UK either, so they are not “violating their conscience” if the NHS engages in actions that the Church dislikes. Meanwhile you, as a secular taxpayer and voter, if your conscience demands, may attempt of course to get your elected officials to scrap Trident or even the Royal Navy.
In the “compromise”, it is really purely semantics that the Church is not going to be paying for the coverage. Insurance companies get their income from premiums paid, so to try to state that the church organizations will not be paying is, again, to me, “merely a subterfuge”. Indeed that the President felt the need to try to invent that last-minute fig-leaf was in itself an admission on his part that the original mandate was very problematic.
The debate, of course, will go on…….
So that’s why you liked the “merely a subterfuge” line!
1. The CO who gets a noncombatant job, or alternative service, is still helping the war effort either directly (in the noncombatant’s case, because everything the military does goes towards the same goal) or indirectly (by freeing up others to serve in combat roles). What they don’t get is the option to simply forget about the whole thing because their conscience is involved.
2. I twitted a link to a Salon article by Joan Walsh. She’s a little to acidic for my taste, but there is a Scalia quote that bears on this:
“In an even more directly relevant 1982 decision holding that Amish employers must comply with Social Security and withholding taxes, though their faith bars participation in government support programs, Scalia wrote:
‘Respondents urge us to hold, quite simply, that when otherwise prohibitable conduct is accompanied by religious convictions, not only the convictions but the conduct itself must be free from governmental regulation. We have never held that, and decline to do so now.’”
As a country, we’ve simply never held that religious convictions necessarily give the believer a free hand. I’m pretty sure that draftees who object to vaccinations for religious reasons have been required to be vaccinated, just like everyone else, for example. People who think that modern medical care is evil have had their parental rights overruled when those beliefs put their children at risk.
3. I think the Mass offering comparison is a little weak. First of all, it’s problematic to think that the faithful are free to use their money for immoral ends, but the minute that they give it to the institutional Church it’s untouchable.
But further, we aren’t talking about institutions that are fully supported by the freewill offerings of Roman Catholics. If that were so, every penny that RC hospitals and universities take in would be pure profit, and that’s not the case at all. Even user fees and tuition don’t account for their funding in full, because these institutions also accept federal funding raised by taxes. In effect, you have taxpayers partially supporting institutions that address issues in ways that some of them, no doubt, find morally objectionable; why is that a one way street?
4. I honestly think that the USCCB has been spoiling for a while, and that if it hadn’t been for the contraception mandate, the bishops would have latched onto another issue. The bishop of Providence has gone out of his way for the past year to pick fights with the governor – everything from his not attending the inaugural Mass that the diocese puts on, to a civil union law that exempts religious institutions, to what the governor called the “holiday tree” at the State House, has been cast as a horrible affront to religious people in general and RCs in particular, affronts that must be resisted tooth and nail. I used to think that this was simply the work of one publicity hungry bishop (he hosted a competing Christmas tree lighting at the exact same time the State ceremony took place, and in Advent, to boot) but I don’t any more. I think he’s probably representative of the powers that be in the USCCB.
In my last comment sloppy editing left out the phrase “for a fight” after “spoiling.”
You’re keeping me thinking, Bill. Thanks. But, again, those charitable donations are not taxes. As a politician, a president is perfectly entitled to appropriate, or misappropriate, taxes at his whim. Voters then decide whether they like what he does with them or not.
Yes, religious organizations do receive tax monies: they as organizations also provide services government does not, or cannot. But they don’t have to receive those grants. They can, and do, lose contracts. Give and take exists between the state and religious-based charities over grant-funding as it does with all charitable organizations.
And, yes, some of us do certainly have moral issues with the way tax monies are spent when pulled from us. And true the conscientious objector may still be coerced into helping a war effort even by being assigned non-combatant duties. But a general war effort is a decision the objector may attempt to alter through persuasion — much as the Catholic church had, for instance, morally opposed the war in Iraq. One person cannot necessarily stop a war; but he, like any citizen, may try to alter the state policy he considers morally wrong.
I have read that Scalia statement on the Amish and the Social Security withholding ruling. In fact, I vaguely remember it at the time, believe it or not, as a teen. But remember, it is the “Federal Insurance Contributions Act” tax. None of us can choose NOT to pay taxes based on faith: that is indeed quite clear. If we don’t like what our elected officials DO with those taxes, or if we don’t like a tax, we should take that up with…well, our elected officials.
I think this HHS mandate issue should be viewed rather more narrowly than it is. It has become a joke about contraception and funny old men somehow obsessed with sex and has worst of all become a basis for a great deal of anti-Catholic rhetoric. Even Jon Stewart was a bit near the line Monday night.
In reality it is about a basic principle of the 1st Amendment about which we all should be concerned: the President is creating a precedent here whereby it is now henceforth to be acceptable for the Executive to stick his hand into charitable donations and demand those monies be directed as he thinks fit … when those monies are not his to direct or to spend.
If he wants monies to do something? Then he should darn well tax. But charitable organizations are usually tax-exempt, of course.
Speaking of “tax-exempt” I read that Joan Walsh post. I have a few things to say about her “Catholic” perspective. Uh, stay tuned.
But you seem assume that the insurance payments necessarily come from contributions, when that’s not at all clear. Given the fact that there are other revenue sources included, it should be easy enough to keep the charitable donations sacrosanct and have the insurance premiums paid from tuition or patient charges. Would that overcome at least part of your objections? How much of the average Catholic university is funded by Church sources, as opposed to alumni fund drives and tuition? I wish that we had an exemplar institution’s sources of revenue in front of us so we could get a better picture.
Doesnt it bother you just a little that the USCCB has chosen the issue of contraception for its battle to the death? I don’t recall nearly this much anger and concern about the Iraq war; certainly you didn’t see the sort of rhetoric about “violently resisting” (which is how the Bishop of Sioux City said Christians should react to the mandate) employed with that war. They said it was an immoral war and then largely dropped the matter from their public discourse. No talk about the devil plotting against the Church in the matter; no harrsngues in the press. Doesn’t the fact that they chose to make their stand over (a) institutional funds; and (b) birth control rather than Catholics funding and serving in an immoral war with horrible civilian casualties strike you as just the teensiest bit cynical?
I do agree that there is not a clear line about where donations go, and how much church institutions are actually funded by them. But the principle, I feel, does apply about the state attempting to leverage those donations to do what the state should be doing itself. Free contraceptives are available via a variety of sources, including tax exempt Planned Parenthood. Why the administration chose to make such an issue about this with the Church is itself odd. It is all so unnecessary, really. It could simply have made sure other sources had adequate reach for all women. It would not have been that difficult to do.
I think (and this is just my feeling) that the Church have chosen to make a stand (if indeed they stick to it) over the HHS mandate because they have been feeling increasingly crowded by the Obama administration generally. They felt that they had to draw a line somewhere. Here works, because it is about an essential doctrine: anything “unnatural” interfering with child-bearing is a sin, and that’s that.
Indeed, it could well also be the inverse: that the Obama administration decided not to back off a confrontation with the Church in order to rally anti-Church voters for the autumn. Cynical to think I know, but it is certainly not impossible. The administration either gets what it wants, or it makes the Church look “out of touch” and so either way rallies lukewarm progressives who had been thinking the administration too “moderate”. A win-win, for the administration, so to speak.
As I remember, the Church was quite forthright about Iraq. But its ability to influence government policy, is, naturally, always very limited. As we are seeing just now with the HHS mandate itself. Aside from claiming it opposed the war and stating so vehemently (and maybe wheeling out some excommunications, which it never does lightly, and would only have impacted pro-war Catholic politicians anyway), it is hard to imagine there is much more it could have done.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree about this, Bill. However, I’ll have a new post shortly that we are sure next to be able to agree to disagree about too!
Robert, I didn’t read the entire thread, just wanted to say that I agree with everything you’ve said, except the first paragraph–which means so much and so little at the same time…
My first paragraph meant I don’t believe the administration REALLY wanted this battle. It came about because in the closed-shop in which they all talk to, and agree with, each other, their view (that this is all about contraception and “women’s health”) is the be all and end all of the argument. That there might be a genuine constitutional issue utterly escaped them.
But when confronted now by many who insist uncomfortably in pointing out that this mandate infringes on the 1st Amendment’s opening line, they are truly shocked. They are, I feel, because they had never really thought much about it. Now, they don’t know what to do.
They didn’t reflect much on the 1st Amendment issue before January 20, or rejected out of hand what they might by some accident have heard voiced by a few cranks who insisted on pointing it out, because from where they sit “religious liberty” issues inside the US are now as “quaint” as the 3rd Amendment. True, they are dutifully watching, as all administrations do, “religious liberty” issues abroad. But, in their view, religious liberty worries inside the US are now the province almost entirely of extreme right-wing lunatics hellbent out to prove the President is not “natural born.”
Well, it is not. In short, I’d warmed to him; and I was close to thinking I’d vote for him for re-election. (I voted for John McCain in 2008.) But considering how James Madison is apparently completely new to him and most of his administration, I am having serious second-thoughts.
I see. Well, I’m tempted to think that perhaps the difference between you and me is that I’ve never thought Obama was an idiot or whatever — because, in my opinion, that’s how he would look like if things were as you describe them — or didn’t know what he was doing. Au contraire, I think he is a very intelligent man, and that’s why he must be stopped…
P.S. Or perhaps he is surrounded by idiots, but it wouldn’t by any means be an excuse.