“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.” — G.K. Chesterton
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. – First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
As Christians aware of our history (and I’m not at all sure that most of us are), we have frequently had cause to love the countries we live in while fighting their current stupidities or evils. If we are aware of the histories of official government persecution or blind eyes to persecution (for Catholics, this would include Elizabeth I’s police state, the invasion of Maryland while it was still a colony, and repeated instances of the destruction of Catholic institutions and murder of Catholics in the U.S.); we certainly have grounds to expect the future might hold problems in a similar vein, prompting a pre-emptive promise to love our country, in spite of its failings.
And so, we come to the current “desperate case”:
In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.
— Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York City
I am honestly horrified that the nation I have always loved has come to this hateful and radical step in religious intolerance.
– Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria
In spite of a “compromise” that still meant everyone would be paying for contraceptives and abortions (we’d just hide the accounting, and, no, really, this time we’ll put it into law, unlike that last promise we made to the pro-life Democrats who voted for the health care bill in the first place. Really!), the HHS mandate is still a violation of religious liberty.
The Amish, who have religious objections to insurance, get an exemption from the plan. They also, we learned while on vacation in the area around Lancaster, PA, get an exemption from Social Security taxes, since they don’t take the payouts, relying instead on their children and their own savings when they retire, which they don’t do very early. (Gee, I’m not expecting to get a payout from Social Security, can I opt out of that tax and invest my own money, too?)
Catholics, however, do not get an exemption from the new health care law. The only religious organizations exempt from paying for contraceptives they believe to be sinful are actual churches. The definition specifies that the religious exemption is only for those organizations who employ and serve almost exclusively their co-religionists. The school the church runs will have to pay for contraceptives. The diocese that runs soup kitchens and counseling services will have to pay for contraceptives. Heck, if your parish is considered a mission parish and is evangelizing a less-Catholic area and has a lot of non-Catholic participants at mass, you might not really be “religious” enough under the definition the Obama administration has chosen to use. (Remember the howling about all the “the secretary shall define”, “the secretary shall decide”, etc. vagueness in the massive health care bill? If it’s that huge, and still contains all this leeway, what are they hiding? Well, here’s where it comes to bite us. Just like the pro-lifers were saying all along.)
The lawsuits against the federal government are piling up. Several major Protestant leaders have stepped up to support the Catholic Church (and I should note that Catholics aren’t the only church that has objections to contraception, although all the major Protestant denominations abandonned their bans on contraception by the mid-1900’s, starting with the Anglicans in 1930 at their regular Lambeth Conference). There are multiple websites up to collect signatures against the government mandate, including StopHHS.
I seriously hope the U.S. government gets trounced in court… except that my tax dollars are being spent to attack my church and to defend this idiotic law.
And right now, while I love my country and am very proud of our troops, especially this Memorial Day weekend, I still feel about like some poor daughter having to haul her drunk mother home from the bar, yet again, to the jeers of the neighbors. This is when you say, “My country, right or wrong,” and it makes your eyes sting with tears to think of how horribly, desperately astray my dear country has gone.
You grit your teeth, say it anyways, and pray that your mother and your country sober up and straighten out again, knowing that you’ll probably have to say it again under similar circumstances, even as you pray you don’t.
Notwithstanding the bishops’ arm waving about religious liberty, the health care law does not force employers to act contrary to their consciences. Contrary to bishops’ assertions and the widespread belief of those who trustingly accept their claims, the law does no such thing.
Many initially worked themselves into a lather with the false idea that the law forces employers to provide their employees with health care plans offering services the employers consider immoral. The fact is that employers have the option of not providing any such plans and instead simply paying assessments to the government (which, by the way, would generally amount to far less than the cost of health plans). Unless one supposes that the employers’ religion forbids payments of money to the government (all of us should enjoy such a religion), then the law’s requirement to pay assessments does not compel those employers to act contrary to their beliefs. Problem solved. Solved–unless an employer really aims not just to avoid a moral bind, but rather to control his employees’ health plan choices so they conform to the employer’s religious beliefs rather than the law, and avoid paying the assessments that otherwise would be owed. For that, an employer would need an exemption from the law.
Indeed, some have continued clamoring for such an exemption, complaining that by paying assessments to the government they would indirectly be paying for the very things they opposed. They seemingly missed that that is not a moral dilemma justifying an exemption to avoid being forced to act contrary to one’s beliefs, but rather is a gripe common to many taxpayers–who don’t much like paying taxes and who object to this or that action the government may take with the benefit of “their” tax dollars. Should each of us be exempted from paying our taxes so we aren’t thereby “forced” to pay for making war, providing health care, teaching evolution, or whatever else each of us may consider wrong or even immoral? If each of us could opt out of this or that law or tax with the excuse that our religion requires or allows it, the government and the rule of law could hardly operate.
In any event, those complaining made enough of a stink that the government relented and announced that religious employers would be free to provide health plans with provisions to their liking (yay!) and not be required to pay the assessments otherwise required (yay!). Problem solved–again, even more.
Nonetheless, some continue to complain, fretting that somehow the services they dislike will get paid for and somehow they will be complicit in that. They argue that if insurers (or, by the same logic, anyone, e.g., employees) pay for such services, those costs will somehow, someday be passed on to the employers in the form of demands for higher insurance premiums or higher wages. They evidently believe that when they spend a dollar and it thus becomes the property of others, they nonetheless should have some say in how others later spend that dollar. One can only wonder how it would work if all of us could tag “our” dollars this way and control their subsequent use.
The bishops are coming across more and more as just another special interest group with a big lobbying operation and a big budget—one, moreover, that is not above stretching the truth. The bishops want the government to privilege their business enterprises by allowing them to offer their employees health care plans conforming to the bishops’ religious beliefs rather than the law. They’re so keen on this that they have resorted to a media blitz centered on the false claim—sometimes uttered in priestly tones by bishops themselves—that the law forces employers to act contrary to their consciences. Bunk!
Wow, where are you getting these alleged “facts”?
No, employers do NOT have the right to decide what their healthcare plans will provide. If they don’t provide contraceptives, the insurance companies will (and apparently Obama believes it will be for free, out of the kindness of the insurance company’s heart!). What he chose to ignore, however, is that many diocese are self-insured; the Archdiocese of D.C. doesn’t hire Blue Cross, they have enough employees that they do their insurance themselves; the “compromise” fixed nothing, it only shifted the accounting. The entire problem is that the HHS mandate specifically declared that contraceptives and other “reproductive health” services would be defined as standard covered services, just as the government requires insurance companies to cover reconstruction after breast cancer or certain screenings and tests. So, yes, the dioceses would be forced to pay for contraceptives.
We do allow exemptions from various laws and taxes based on religious belief. The Amish are exempt from Social Security taxes. Churches are not required to be gender- or belief-neutral when hiring teachers or ministers, unlike other employers. Quakers are exempt from military draft because of their pacifist beliefs. In short, you’re dead wrong about religious allowances undermining the rule of law; it’s been going on for most of our history.
And your red herring about employers demanding that they control employees’ spending is just plain ignorant. If you had bothered to even try to understand Catholic teaching on moral culpability, you’d know nobody would say that. If I employ someone who chooses to spend his pay on an abortion for his girlfriend, I’m not culpable for that. If, however, I pay for his health insurance, which includes contraceptives and abortions, I have enabled the killing of his children. I may not have done the evil, but I’ve cooperated in it. (Much like how the getaway car driver can be sent to prison, even if he didn’t shoot the bank teller or touch the stolen money.)
Wild and crazy thought here: whereever you work, you knew what the healthcare plan covered and what it did not. If you work for a Catholic institution, it should be blindingly obvious that abortion, contraception, and a couple of other things are not going to be on the health care plan! Don’t like it? Go work for somebody else; you are free to vote with your feet, just as I should be free to say how I will spend my money, either as an individual or as a business owner.
Those alleged facts are, indeed, a straightforward description of what the law does and does not provide. You don’t need to take my–or the bishops’–word for it. As they say, you can look it up.
You say that “employers do NOT have the right to decide what their healthcare plans will provide.” That is simply false. 1. Employers can decide whether to provide any health plans at all. If they choose not to provide any such plans, they merely pay assessments to the government (which amount to less than the cost of the health plans). 2. Employers can provide non-compliant health plans that omit coverage the employers deem objectionable. If they choose to do so, they must pay assessments (much smaller than assessments for failing to provide any health plans at all). 3. Under the proposed accommodation, employers can choose either of the foregoing and be relieved even of paying any assessments, and their insurers will instead provide the omitted coverage. (You correctly observe that this would not benefit self-insured employers. Efforts are underway to develop a solution for such employers. One idea is simply to call on them to become insured, which is hardly an unreasonable approach to avoiding the employers’ moral bind.)
I see that I did not make clear my point about government and the rule of law being undermined if each of us could opt out of this or that law or tax based on a claim our religion allows or requires it. Confronted by questions about the government requiring or prohibiting something that conflicts with someone’s faith, the courts have generally ruled that under the Constitution the government cannot enact laws specifically aimed at a particular religion (which would be regarded a constraint on religious liberty contrary to the First Amendment), but can enact laws generally applicable to everyone or at least broad classes of people (e.g., laws concerning pollution, contracts, torts, crimes, discrimination, employment, etc.) and can require everyone, including those who may object on religious grounds, to abide by them. (E.g., http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/494/872/case.html) When the legislature anticipates that application of such laws may put some individuals in moral binds, the legislature may, as a matter of grace (not constitutional compulsion), provide exemptions for conscientious objectors.
The real question here then is not so much whether the First Amendment precludes the government from enacting and enforcing the generally applicable laws regarding availability of health insurance (it does not), but rather whether there is any need to exempt some employers in order to avoid forcing them to act contrary to their consciences. Since, as explained above, the law simply does not force any employer to act contrary to his or her conscience, there is no need for an exemption to avoid any such force.
Ok, so here’s the HHS statement on its final ruling. Yeah, that’s what I said it said, thanks.
You may note that it clearly states that all health insurance plans that do not qualify for an exemption must provide contraceptive services. Even those who qualify for an examption and don’t provide contraceptives will probably be required, the statement says, to inform their employees about where to get contraceptives for free.
So, every Catholic school, hospital and charity will be required to provide contraception (because they don’t fit under the new, narrow definition of a “religious” entity). Even parishes and convents that fit under the definition should be aware that HHS is already contemplating how to force them to promote contraception to their employees. The so-called compromise only means that these institutions will be forced to buy insurance that, for “free”, provides contraceptives. NEWS FLASH: when the hotel says the wi-fi and breakfast are “free”, they aren’t; you’re paying for it, they just add it to the room price. When the insurance company says, “Sure, we provide contraceptives for free,” um, no, YOU’RE PAYING FOR THAT.
(And you’re happy that dioceses will be forced to buy insurance from someone else? Why? Adding the bureaucracy of an insurance company won’t make health insurance cheaper for the employees. Is it because the government can bully the insurance companies more easily? Or are you just anti-Catholic and want Catholics to please keep their unauthorized opinions to themselves, unless they’re standing in a church?)
And, holy crap! how generous!, HHS has allowed that those institutions that do not fit under the definition but have objections can have an extra year to, as Cardinal Dolan put it, “Figure out how to violate our consciences,” as long as they prove they even qualify for the extension.
The last time I checked, in this country, we do not generally give out rights only to those who can PAY THE FINES FOR THEM. If you have to pay a fine for it, it ISN’T RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. I am not interested in being a dhimmi in my own country, thank you very much.
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