What are the U.S. Catholic bishops really arguing about with the Obama administration? Is it religious liberty, as they insist? Is it contraception and sterilization, as the headlines in my archdiocesan paper stress? Is it a desire, conscious or unconscious, to reassert their authority after the dog days of the sexual-abuse scandal? Is it simply anti-Obama prejudice? Maybe it’s all of the above, and then some: perhaps they just lack astute advisers. In any event, the daunting task of explaining the Catholic bishops to others and to oneself has come a cropper. They are digging a hole from which they may never emerge.
Of course, the Obama administration did itself no favors when it tried to define what was and was not a religious institution for the purposes of the exemption. That definition, written into an HHS regulation issued in early January, required that nonexempt religiously sponsored institutions provide their employees insurance coverage for contraception and sterilization. Only houses of worship and parish schools were exempt from providing such coverage; religiously sponsored colleges and universities, hospitals, and social-service agencies were not. In failing to provide an accommodation for religiously affiliated institutions, the administration did not run afoul of the First Amendment, but it did unite Catholics of all stripes in protest—at least temporarily.
That uproar got the administration’s attention, after which there has been much backpedaling. A new “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,” issued March 16, has the tone of “whatever you want, just tell us.” The new proposal does not rescind but minimizes the previous differentiation between exempt and nonexempt religious institutions, rejecting any implication that only some have a genuinely religious mission and emphasizing that any definition determined for purposes of contraceptive coverage will have no application or precedent for other federal policies. The proposal turns cartwheels to protect Catholic institutions, including the self-insured, from direct responsibility for providing contraceptive coverage—it has insurance companies or some other third party handle it.
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Still, perhaps mistaking the initial Catholic protest for a standing army, the bishops continue to say no to Obama. Yes, they’ve left the door open for further negotiations—but just a crack. Unless they widen that opening, they will seize certain defeat from the jaws of near victory.
Who does the USCCB’s fervor and intransigence actually represent? Is it the view only of the bishops at the forefront of the public protest, while the many dutifully stand back in the name of consensus? How can so many otherwise prudent and experienced bishops remain silent? Why has the conference been so implacable, even going so far as to move the goal posts by demanding that any business owner be able to opt out on religious grounds? It’s difficult to see the merits of this expanding Constitutional argument. And politically it makes no sense: Why would anyone expect the Obama administration to remove contraception and sterilization from mandated health-care services (as the bishops and Rush Limbaugh seem to demand)? Constitutionally, the bishops’ claim that “the government has no place defining religion and religious ministry” doesn’t hold up. While U.S. legal tradition favors government restraint in this area, at some point the organs of democratic government must decide whether to grant, say, tax exemptions to the Church of Scientology or to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
While the March 16 proposals continue to give women access to contraception and sterilization coverage, objecting religious institutions and the bishops are off the “material cooperation” hook because they won’t have to provide it directly. Yes, some problems remain. But isn’t this how policy-making goes in a pluralistic society?
Indeed, this could have ended in a victory for the bishops on a teaching most adult Catholics don’t accept, even if they defend their bishops’ right to insist on it. The bishops might have kept their army intact if the mandate had been about abortion (it isn’t, despite the USCCB’s repeated claim that some contraceptives are abortifacients). But the bishops march on, seemingly oblivious to the damage they are doing to their already diminished authority, as well as to their credibility on matters that need a vigorous and rational voice: immigration, unemployment, poverty, the threat of war with Iran, and assisted suicide (on the ballot in Massachusetts).
On the issues that the bishops seem to count as paramount—the legal right to contraception, abortion, and same-sex marriage—they have already lost the cultural argument, even with many Catholics. Seeking to reverse a cultural defeat through political muscle is a misbegotten strategy. Losing an argument is not a disgrace. But losing because you’re fighting in the wrong arena? That’s just dumb.
Related: Partisan Dangers, by the Editors
Simplifying Sex, by Jo McGowan
The bishops were forced into this, Margaret. They can't back down, because the principle, at this moment in Church time, is rock solid. A hundred years from now the Church may have moved on, but we're not there yet, and pretending we are would be to let a callow kid president change our theology. That would be ridiculous, not to mention unconscionable.
Of course, if the bishops stick to their guns, the American Church may have to considerably reduce its ability to help the socially disenfranchised, but it should not compromise its principles just to be allowed to keep sucking at the public teat.
David:
You are correct. However, the issue is freedom of religion disguished around the doctrine of contraception, et al. While the bishops mount an army of defence, spend millions of dollars, all in the name of moral principle, they ignore the contradiction between the word (doctrine) and deed (pastoral practices), especially around issues of contraception.
Heoric virtue can be a commendable behavior if prudently reasoned. It is indeed heroic that the bishops are steadfastly holding to their sacred beliefs. At the same time, they do not practice the virtue of courgage or bravery when they remain silent at the pulpit, and in Church bulletins about the requirement to confess contraception as a sin, obtain absolution, before receiving the Eucharist....otherwise it is a sacrilige.
Every priest and bishop understand that most young marrired couples who stand in line each week to receive the Eucharist practice some form of contraception. They rarely, if ever, confess this as a sin. Yet, there is no reminder, or catechesis about the requirements of receiving the Eucharists that these same bishops issued as guidelines to all US diocese. Rarely do we hear anything about an informed conscience, how to form it, what is required if one disagrees with a church doctrine..etc. In fact, according to the late JP II, disagreement with Humanae Vitae was not a matter of conscience because in Vertitatis Spendor he asserted that what has been taught is what every Catholic conscience should know.
Could the silent pulpit be heroic virtue because silence will prevent many Catholics from leaving the Church along with their financial contributions? I think not. Virtue means to form a good habit. If so, the bishops will want to put the same amount of time, energy and resources into correcting the contradiction between doctrine and pastoral practices, and truly guide the people of God according to their moral principles that they steadfastly honor.
Michael, you're right. But to preach sexual continence to all Catholics in this country in this day and age would be suicidal. Among Catholics, the bishops finesse it as best they can. It's a sad dilemma.
Alas, Obama has put pressure on them from outside, pressure that they cannot finesse. The cultural sea change that can and must be fuzzed over within the Catholic community cannot be fuzzed over when the threat is external. Sexual continence is still Church teaching and a significant number of Catholics remain faithful to it. To cave in on this to secular pressure from Washington would betray both the institutional Church and those Catholics who still practice what it teaches.
If the blogger who said that Washington is falling all over itself to please the bishops is right, we can expect a happy outcome. I'm skeptical, though, that the President can please both bishops, on the right, and the progressives and sexual modernists, on the left. And in the coming election, he can't afford to displease his base.
David Smith writes, " But to preach sexual continence to all Catholics in this country in this day and age would be suicidal." Cowardice or hypocrisy? The real reason they would not take such measures is that the collection plate would dry up.
Good grief. The USCCB are making this into the case of the century, after virtually igoring similar mandates at the State level for 15 years.
What's being mandated? That private insurance companies be required to enter into purely private contracts (not involving the employer) between themselves and individuals who want contraception riders to provide such riders at no added cost. Given that these riders are projected to pay for themselves, and given that there has been no outcry from the insurance companies to the contrary, this seems an entirely reasonable solution. And, in any event, these health insurance policies represent earned income for the employees in question, and not some sort of gift from the employer who provides them.
Exactly who's conscience is being assaulted? Who's religious freedom is being abridged? Churches themselves are exempt. Major employers involved (Catholic hospitals) have allegedly given their OK (Sr. Carol Keehan and the Catholic Health Association hospitals).
It still smells like an attempt by the Bishops to get scuttle Justice Department investigations into abuse cover ups and concealment of assets to escape the terms of settlement contracts.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
David:
You are correct that the bishops are not finessing with Washington, but that is the point. They are taking a moral stand based on principle.
However, they are being deliberately and willfully silent, about the teaching of contraception. Silence is not fineseing. They will not preach what they proclaim as divine law, namely that contraception is intrinsically evil, a grave moral sin, and that Catholics must confess this sin, obtain absolution, before receiving the Eucharist. Full stop. They tend to cowardice and cave into the fear of a dramatic uproar from every parish and more pressure than they want to handle.
They point to the narrative, the doctrine, and say we have proclaimed the truth and encourage NFP-PC. Yet, in practice they remain silent about conscience and the requirements for the reception of the Eucharist, because they don't want dialogue, confrontation or the consequences that would follow. I find their behavior hypocritical and contradictory.
I can only marvel at the seeming sophistication of the earlier comments by David Smith and Michael Barberi. Reading their measured remarks I found myself a little adrift. The discussion began to feel like that of two movie critics, neither of whom could not possibly demonstrate the craft of a script writer or screen director - but nonetheless felt comfortable providing the most detailed criticism of someone else's work.
Of course if the theology is settled once and for all, as each of these gentlemen takes for granted, then there isn't much left to talk about except matters of peripheral significance. Peripheral that is to the central issue - sex is one of the messy givens of life's existence on this planet - it will never submit to a prescriptive and foreordained (pun intended) rendering of use and misuse; it requires life-long on the job training; and the skills welcomed by a sixty something, will always differly vastly from those of an adolescent.
Talk of making a perfect confession depresses me. Faith-inspired reflection, on the actual events of one's life, is after all what that examination of conscience preceeding the Sacrament of Reconciliation (not Sin-Telling) is all about. Entering the confessional unprepared to examine things in one's life that might want to be reframed would seen to undo the signifying of the telling itself - lots of room for imperfection in that short chain of events.
No, the naked, six hundred pound gorilla in the room is the reality that the Bishops have devolved into the same monolithic adversarialism exhibited by the Republican Caucuses in Congress. These "my way or the highway" "self-ordained leaders" are simply old-fashioned totalitarian dictators - we've seen them often in the Catholic Church over the Centuries. Their periodic power grabs go back milleniums before American Democracy.
Pointing to minor political bumps on the current Administration's road of governance - as if on a par with the mendacity of some Churchman and their political allies - has given this meaningless saga far more journalistic legs than it deserves. It seems clear that some are quite content to graze smuggly in the shadow of their bishops - how regretable.
That some supposedly earnest Catholics in the 21st Century would advocate that the American Church forego its social justice mission so that Bishops can keep from soiling their ornate and expensive surplices is mindless and might give cause for prayerful self-reflection along the Way to Reconciliation.
I think there are a couple of important aspects of the issue glaringly missing from this article.
The first is that, from a policy standpoint, the accommodation does not exist. The original HHS mandate is the one that is going to go into effect. The accommodation announced by the Administration is only under consideration for future revisions to the mandate. The accommodation is not policy and is not guaranteed to be policy in the future. This means, as of now, the Administration will still be requiring religious institutions to pay for the coverage.
Second, we can argue about whether hormonal birth control has the potential to act as an abortifacient. Their literatuce says that it does (it says that it prevents implantation, that an abortifacient), but the science is less clear. But the reality is that the mandate includes coverage for emergency contraception which *does* act as an abortifacient. So, the mandate requires that Cathoilc institutions fund abortion, plain and simple.
Third, I find the blanket assertion that the mandate doesn't violate the First Amendment or Religious Liberty to be astounding. It requires people and institutions of faith to act against their faith. How is that not a violation of religious liberty? Appeals to a pluralistic soceity don't cut it here. It is true that there are plenty of examples where religious liberty has been legitimately circumscribed. But these are always done by balancing rights. A right can only be circumscribed by a superior right. So, right to life of a gravely ill child trumps the right of her parents to religious freedom. The only way to say that this mandate does not violate religious liberty is to say that the right to have someone else pay for your contraception is a superior right to religious liberty.
As to why the bishops are taking a stand here, I think it is pretty clear. They see the writing on the wall. The Church has responded to a multitude of other federal and state regulations through reconfiguring the structure of institutions and quiet capitulation. But it just keeps advancing. If we do not draw a line, the intrusion on our religious liberty is just going to continue. This issue is so clear cut, it makes it an easy line to draw. Despite the way the Republicans want to cast it as a Conserative issue, and the way the Administration wants to cast it as a women's heath issue - how mandating converage for something classified as a Class 1 carcinigen by the WHO is a women's health issue makes no sense for the life of me - and the way the culture warriors want to cast this as a sex issue, this is a religious liberty issue.
I think the writers of Commonweal need to take something to heart. If the mandate is not defeated, then the precedent is set, the government has the authority. You might trust those in power now and the way that they would use it. But what about the next administration? How would a President Perry use this authority to dictate to faiths? or a President Santorum? Any time you grant an authority to government, you have to consider not how your side would use it, but how the other side would use it.
I'm always amazed to read comments that suggest that if the secular health and family services complex does not exempt Catholic institutions from following mandates and regulations that require them to indirectly (or even directly) participate in programs that countenance policies that go against Church teachings, that they are going to take their ball and go home when it comes to running hospitals, universities, or family services programs. While the bishops feel that curbing their ability to follow through on conscience issues like artificial birth control or letting same sex couples adopt children is an infringement on the full religious rights of said Catholic institutions, to threaten to pull the plug on other vital services that those institutions provide to the public is in my view unconscionable. While the teachings on birth control and homosexuality (to cite just two areas of contention right now) would ideally be respected by the state, if they aren't, the bishops are just going to let our much more fundamental Christian responsibilities to minister to the poor, the sick, the imprisoned be overwhelmed by what I would call minor infringements in these other areas? So the poor will suffer and any esteem our Church still has in this country will be forfeit because the bishops can't get everything they want from a state that represents a pluralistic society in its policies? How could they even think of this threat and look themselves in the face afterwards?
Excellent colloquy. But the argument on behalf of moral principle is fatally eclipsed in my view by the blatant revelation of personal animus embodied in a comments such as, "callow kid president." (I'd be curious to know how Mr. Smith might have characterized JFK, or whether callowness might not more properly be applied to the behavior of this president's warmongering predecessor, a fellow who took evident pride in refusing to admit error or alter a presidential decision.) No, this argument partisan politics masquerading as a dedication to moral principle. It might even be latent racism. It certainly is elsewhere on the right, with the exception of the word latent.
For pure reason I give you Mr. Weisenthal above. But of course you can't win an argument with facts when fighting on somebody's home turf of emotion.