Insurance claims.
Last week, in a tour de force of intellectual humility, Matthew J. Franck treated First Things readers to a catalogue of my confusions. He didn’t take kindly to my analysis of Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s response to HHS’s new proposals for the contraception mandate. First, Franck claims that I am “confused…about what the government actually announced.” Second, he says that my analysis of the moral culpability of religious employers is unreliable because I am “confused about the economic reality of insurance.” This confusion, Franck informed me via Twitter, is profound: He sees “no sign from you either of an argument, an ability to read, or an understanding of arithmetic.” Given those impairments, I may not be able to formulate a successful response to Franck’s confident critique, but I beg your indulgence as I give it a shot.
