Conservative Catholics complain that too many liberal Catholics instinctively greet every statement from the Vatican with suspicion, skepticism, or derision. It’s a fair point. The motives and judgment of those who appear unthinkingly hostile to all hierarchical authority should be questioned. Patient attention to the legitimate concerns of others and the presumption of goodwill on the part of those we disagree with are essential virtues.
Unfortunately, patience and the presumption of goodwill were not much in evidence in the response of the U.S. bishops and many conservative Catholics to President Barack Obama’s compromise on the question of mandated contraceptive coverage for employees of religious-affiliated institutions. Even before all the details of the president’s proposal were known, the bishops rejected it and then upped the ante by insisting that the only possible solution was to repeal the mandate altogether. In other words, the bishops are now demanding that no employer be required to offer free contraception coverage to its employees. To justify their response, they offered only the most tendentious reading of the possible flaws in Obama’s proposal. Now the USCCB is threatening a concerted political and public-relations campaign—during an election year—that casts the president as a determined enemy of religious freedom.
What is going on here? Is the question of contraception coverage—something most American Catholics already have, and which the bishops have said almost nothing about before now—really where the hierarchy wants to issue a non-negotiable edict? Why were they not this vocal in their opposition to the Bush administration’s use of torture? Has the USCCB thought through how these demands are likely to undermine the church’s much more important effort to change hearts and minds about abortion? Or how they will further divide Catholics?
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The Catholic community was largely united in its rejection of Obama’s initial failure to exempt religious-affiliated institutions from the contraception mandate (see “An Illiberal Mandate” and "Bad Decision"). Many of the Catholic leaders who led that protest, such as Sr. Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, and the presidents of various Catholic colleges and universities, are guardedly optimistic about the new mandate. Ideally, the administration would have simply broadened the original religious exemption. Nevertheless, the new plan, which requires insurance companies, rather than Catholic institutions, to cover the cost of contraceptives, is a welcome development. The details of how this will work are not entirely clear. One particular difficulty has to do with Catholic institutions that self-fund their health plans. Administration officials have expressed confidence that some workaround will be found that will prevent these institutions from directly paying for contraception coverage. This is a complicated legal and administrative matter, and a degree of caution, even skepticism, is warranted. What is not warranted is the USCCB’s demand that the contraceptive mandate be done away with entirely. This is a novel interpretation of the First Amendment, and one that will almost certainly be rejected by the courts. It is also a political gift to abortion-rights groups, who will use it to make the case that the church’s opposition to abortion is motivated by a larger disregard for the health of women. Republicans have already seized on the controversy, hoping to use it as a wedge issue in the presidential race. None of these developments will be good for the church or the nation.
The fact that many Catholic institutions already comply with state laws requiring contraception coverage makes the USCCB’s extreme demands all the more curious. For Catholic institutions to participate in insurance plans where individuals may decide to use contraception is at most remote cooperation with what the church considers evil. It is implausible for the bishops to insist that the revised mandate compels them to cooperate directly in a sinful activity when even the original mandate did nothing of the kind.
So, why are the bishops reacting in this way? Are all the bishops comfortable with the USCCB’s rhetoric? Will any bishop publicly express reservations or skepticism about this strategy? Are the bishops not worried that this initiative will be seen as transparently partisan by much of the public?
In their 2010 book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, Robert Putnam and David Campbell showed what the likely consequences of this fight will be. By the 1990s, after decades of the culture wars waged by Protestant and Catholic groups, many younger people came to think of “religion” as politically divisive and overly judgmental, especially on questions of sexual morality. As a result, the number of Americans who have abandoned institutional religion has risen dramatically. One-third of adult Catholics have already left the church. Isn’t that sobering fact more deserving of a national campaign than this self-defeating battle over contraception coverage?
For more coverage of this issue at dotCommonweal, click here.
We need to support the bishops on this issue, not because we support them on every issue, but because the intergrity and independence of the Catholic Church is threatened when we allow the government to define what is and what is not the "ministry" of the Church, when mandates are made that require actions contrary to the teachings of the Church (whether we are in full agreement with all those teachings or not), and because in order to maintain the power and influence of the Church on issues, we cannot aid the diminuation of that power; if we want the bishops to speak out forcefully on othe issues (like torture and the death penalty, for instance) and they need to maintain the "clout" to make politicians and society listen.
The simple fact is that Obama is trying to force the bishops to pay for free abortion-inducing drugs.
Why can't liberal Catholics admit that Obama is a tyrant?
There is room for honest and serious disagreement here, but saying "Obama is a tyrant" is the lowest form of nonsense.
The one thing noticeable about those who agree with the editorial is that they all have no problem with government intruding deeper and deeper into our lives. How important is the First Amendment’s right to free exercise to them? Sure, some employers already chose to cover contraception in their health care plans. As we say, “It’s a free country.” But when the government requires everyone to cover it, it is no longer “a free country.” But as long as our emperor is a sensitive, fundamentally moral person – like one who would press for legalized infanticide – we should be safe and happy.
I wish the editors did not let the bishops get off so easily! While I agree that both sides should speak from a place of respect and goodwill, I also think hypocrisy and misogyny should be called by name without incurring a charge of bad will. There are numerous instances of the ingrained misogyny of the bishops as it relates to failure to respect women's full humanity and their authority to make their own life choices based on an assessment for a particular individual that she believes would enhance rather than inhibit the flourishing of her own life. The hypocrisy takes many forms: the claim of a right to public money that allows the imposition of the bishops' point of view on those who disagree with them and the claim that legal prohibitions on abortion support life, when the reality is that the only life being supported is that of the embryo and then fetus only from conception until birth. Any commitment to supporting the lives of the poor (parents and children already living) is totally lacking. I was disappointed that the major instance of the bishops' hypocrisy cited by the editors is the hypocrisy of previous silence on the issue of contraception coverage mandated by numerous state laws.
Apparently, "Liberals" don't believe in the seperation of Church and state in any sense whatsoever. It would even appear that they favor a kind of "amalgamation" of both. Ancient Christians were painfully aware that they had to stay away from such a thing, even as they were heroically accommodating what in modern terms we would define as the unreasonable demands of Ceaser, that is, accommodating the institution of slavery with great docility. What they (the ancient Christians) would NOT accommodate was the intrusion of the uninitiated into the Sacred Assembly and its protocols, up to and including the Emperor, even to the point of martyrdom. It would seem that certain "modern" Christians accommodate and even welcome the intrusion of the state into Church affairs, and even condemn those within the Body who resist.
The University of Notre Dame has an endowment of $ 5 Billion. They provide no transparency as to how that money is invested, simply broadly diverse equities, bonds and 'alternative investment,' (hedge funds and private equity). One can presume that they invest, and make profit from, manufacturers and distributors of contraceptive products. How is this not immoral (or at least against the teachings of the Bishops)
There is a mutual fund that is structured to invest in companies that purportedly reflect, or at least do not ignore, Catholic values. Here is a statement from their website.:
"Luther King Capital Management (LKCM) serves as investment adviser to the LKCM Aquinas Funds. Founded in 1979 as an investment advisory firm, LKCM provides investment management services to religious organizations, pension and profit sharing plans, endowments, foundations, investment companies, trusts, estates and high net-worth individuals. LKCM is committed to selecting securities for the LKCM Aquinas Funds based on sound fundamental investing principles and most importantly, Catholic values.
The investment guidelines set forth by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops serve as a guide in the selection of securities for the LKCM Aquinas Funds. The LKCM Aquinas Funds follow these guidelines by using an approach that focuses on Catholic values screening of portfolio companies, proactive dialogue with those companies whose practices conflict with the guidelines, and potential exclusion of those companies that are unwilling to alter their practices over a reasonable period of time.
The LKCM Aquinas Funds are managed with the philosophy that investors should not sacrifice investment performance for their Catholic values. The investment team at LKCM is committed to managing the LKCM Aquinas Funds to provide a vehicle for Catholic values investing with the potential for solid investment performance."
I know nothing about them other than the information publicly available on their website and through their prospectus. However, they seem to rely on the investment guidelines "set forth by the USCCB." I'm not sure what guidelines, if any, Notre Dame follows with its investments.
I'm not sure any of this is relevant to the controvery of whether the mandate, even in it's vague "revised" version, is an infringement on religious liberty as guaranteed by The First Amendment; but, if all Catholic ministries with investment funds used Catholic values as a fundamental basis for investment decisions, it could make a very positive difference in the practices of modern corporations.
I agree with Mr. Sheridan, above. But why I think this is relevant to the discussion is that if Catholics should not, even through large insurance policies, pay for people to procure birth control products, why should Catholics profit from their sale? If, as you say, the Catholic Church, along with individual Catholics brought their vast financial power to bear, it would make a difference. But, I suspect this won't happen, because the cost of doing so would be too great. (Catholics could only invest in, say, the Defense sector.) Hence the problem -- the money talks louder than the conviction of the doctrine. The largest manufacturer of contraceptives is Johnson and Johnson, the largest distributor (I suspect) is WalMart. Are we as Catholics going to be willing to not invest in them, and hundreds of other companies? Are Catholic endowments and individuals? A double-standard, I would think. It would be disingenuous to claim that the profit is only small, or that merely voicing disapproval of the practice while being a shareholder provides sufficient cover.
jburns. I agree that the complexity of modern business might make such an investment doctirne difficult to implement. However, there can be gradations of "purity" vs. the values standard that would be helpful and perhaps pressure could be put to bear, as apparently the fund cited above tries, on corporations that violate the standards to reform. I'm not a trained investment advisor, nor a Catholic ethics expert, however, there seems to be potential for the Church to have a greater moral influence which should be explored. For example, by degrees of purity, perhaps a company that makes a large share of its profits from manufacturing cluster bombs would be ranked very low on the values scale, whereas Johnson & Johnson might be a bit higher, as the manufacturing of contraceptives would not have the same negative moral weight as the manufacturing of killing devices.