On April 12 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty released a statement, “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” calling on Catholics and others to resist what the bishops characterize as unprecedented threats to religious freedom. The statement calls for a “great national campaign” of political and legal protest during what is sure to be an intensely contested presidential election. It urges Catholics to participate in a “Fortnight for Freedom” leading up to this year’s Fourth of July holiday, during which they are asked to study, pray, and take public action against what it describes as concerted government efforts to deprive religious groups of their rights. Among the bishops’ worries are the recent HHS contraception mandate, harsh immigration laws, the denial of federal funding to Catholic social-service agencies, and the closing of Catholic adoption services because of the church’s refusal to place children with gay parents.
Religious freedom “ought not to be a partisan issue,” the bishops declare. They are absolutely right. If defending religious freedom becomes a partisan issue or, worse, an electoral ploy, it will engender enormous cynicism in an electorate in which a significant majority of voters already think religion is too politicized. Unfortunately, the bishops’ statement and proposal for public action are likely to increase that possibility. This initiative is being launched during an election year in which one party has assumed the mantle of faith and charges the other with attacking religion. The bishops need to do much more to prevent their national campaign from becoming a not-very-covert rallying point for the Republican Party and its candidates. If that happens, it is the church and the cause of religious freedom that will suffer.
The bishops’ description of the various threats to religious freedom conflates a number of disparate federal, state, and judicial actions into an allegedly unified and urgent peril. The argument is hyperbolic. In a nation as large as ours and with so many points at which local, state, and federal government agencies and religious bodies interact, a number of such cases are almost always being debated, legislated, or litigated. It is not at all clear that the threat to religious liberty has suddenly become much greater. That does not mean defenders of religious liberty have nothing to worry about. Yet even those who agree with the bishops about the scope of the danger should be concerned about the appearance of partisanship. Writing in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs (“God and Caesar in America”), sociologists David Campbell and Robert Putnam trace the dramatic shift among Americans away from institutional religion over the past forty years. “As religion and politics have become entangled, many Americans, especially younger ones, have pulled away from religion,” they write. “And that correlation turns out to be causal, not coincidental.”
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Campbell and Putnam trace the rise of religiously conservative evangelicals and Catholics in the Republican Party, and the remarkable degree to which certain political allegiances now coincide with, or even determine, certain religious beliefs and practices. As religious objections to abortion and contemporary sexual mores have come to dictate Republican Party policy, many other Americans have reacted by becoming deeply suspicious of the role of religion in politics. In a 1991 survey, 22 percent of those asked said it was inappropriate for religious leaders to influence government decisions. By 2011, after decades in which the religious right exerted greater and greater influence in our national politics, 70 percent of survey respondents said that religion should be “kept out of public debates over social and political issues.” Surely, the bishops do not want to act in a way that inadvertently strengthens this trend.
During the same period, younger Americans abandoned institutional religion in startling numbers. Paradoxically, as religious groups campaigned to take back the “naked public square,” support for the role of religion in our political debates has steadily eroded and religion itself has lost a good deal of its appeal. “Future historians may well see the last third of the twentieth century as an anomaly,” Campbell and Putnam write, “a period in which religion and public life in the United States became too partisan for the good of either.”
For their effort to be effective, the bishops’ campaign must be seen to be nonsectarian and independent of electoral politics. Adding anti-Islamic prejudice to their list of concerns would help in that regard. The “grand campaign” should also begin and end with a frank admission about the complexity of church-state relations. No government can accommodate every conceivable religious practice or belief, nor does the Catholic Church have a strong record of supporting accommodation of other religious communities. In their simplistic rhetoric, the bishops sound more like politicians than pastors. As Campbell and Putnam warn, if religious freedom becomes a partisan issue, its future is sure to grow dimmer.
Related editorials: Religious Freedom & the U.S. Bishops, Compromise or Stalemate?, Bad Reaction, Bad Decision, An Illiberal Mandate
Clinging once more to that tricky ledge, it seems to me useful solutions to such complex issues might be moved along more quickly were we simply to modify what is little more than an attempt to overly simply a very complex challenge, government. I am assuming that was our motive in creating the term "the government" rather than "our government". Preferring the modifier "our" might allow us to more easily identify the source of so many of our challenges on this issue. But, then, there is that responsibility thing.
Perhaps this is a moment when being literal would be helpful. In this remarkable nation it requires merely the good fortune of birth or of choice for its laws and it public institutions to rightly consider a person worthy of the best this nation offers. Being considered, in all ways important, a "member" of its government is a gift one receives without any earning whatsoever. Reflecting responsiblity with the word "the" seems at best a temporary solution to a permanent challenge.
This thoughtful editorial was similar, in important respects, to Andrew Sullivan's (somewhat controversial) Newsweek cover story/editorial for its Easter edition. Both lamented the lack of emphasis on personal responsibility and personal morality, in favor of engaging in political coercion.
In the present context, it appears as if the Bishops feel that it's easier to win a political battle over contraception, at the level of Presidential politics, than to win hearts and minds, at the level of individual souls. As your current missive suggests, the former approach may ultimately work to the disadvantage of the latter, which should be the more appropriate focus of attention:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/01/andrew-sullivan-christi...
Here's Sullivan's conclusion:
>>I have no concrete idea how Christianity will wrestle free of its current crisis, of its distractions and temptations, and above all its enmeshment with the things of this world. But I do know it won’t happen by even more furious denunciations of others, by focusing on politics rather than prayer, by concerning ourselves with the sex lives and heretical thoughts of others rather than with the constant struggle to liberate ourselves from what keeps us from God<<
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
Larry:
The problem is that Sullivan's focus is a red herring. It isn't about people's individual sex lives. It's about forcing Catholic organizations to subsidize an element of their sex life that the Church regards as morally wrong. They didn't pick a fight to try to persuade everyone not to use contraception, and they didn't pick a fight because they want to prevent everyone from getting contraception. They picked a fight because it was the government who decided that Catholic-affiliated organizations should have to pay for contraceptive coverage as part of an employee's health insurance. It'll help on all sides to keep our eye on the ball.
Hi Anonsters. We've discussed and debated the contraception mandate extensively. I don't at all agree with the way you have presented this controversy, but it's pointless to continue going over all the arguments and counter-arguments, again and again. I think that the present editiorial (above all of these comments), presents thoughtful cautions, as does the Sullivan op-ed.
You can easily find a great many rejoinders to your point of view regarding the contraceptive coverage issue in a number of thoughtful Commonweal discussion threads over the past two months.
- Larry Weisenthal/Hunington Beach CA
Back to Anonsters: After saying that I shouldn't waste bandwidth re-arguing points which have been argued before, I find that I do need to offer a rejoinder to your claim that that "Catholic-affiliated organizations [CAOs] should have to pay for contraceptive coverage as part of an employee's health insurance." That's one was of looking at it, but I don't think it's accurate. Rather, as a pre-condition of being permitted to provide health insurance contracts, private insurance companies are required to offer a contraception rider as a private contract between insurance company and employee. The CAO has nothing to do with these private contracts. Additionally, it's not even the money of the CAO which is used to purchase the insurance -- these health insurance policies are compensation that the employees have earned, as a result of their labors in the service of the CAO.
There is some concern that the insurance riders could increase the total costs to the insurance companies and that they would re-coup these costs through raising premiums. But this "follow the co-mingled money" argument is theoretical and tortured, given that there is broad agreement that the costs of contraception will be offset by the decreased cost of pregnancy.
There are a great many more arguments which have been offered, including the relative silence of the Bishops when these contraception mandates were in place only at the state level and until the Obama justice department began to investigate the Bishops for cover-ups and hiding of assets to get out of settlement contracts in the various abuse scandals. This last fact underscores the potential hazard to the Bishops in politicizing this issue.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
"They're Catholic bishops, for God's sake, not full-time religious freedom activists."
That's about the best damning indictment of the Catholic bishops that I have read in quite some time!
I'm surprised this editorial doesn't mention the bishops' strong stand against the Ryan budget's deep cuts to programs for the poor and vulnerable. Of course their letters to Congress were not sent with the fanfare of their HHS mandate letters read in every church. The mainstream media was also apparently not alerted. Nevertheless, the bishops are close to saying don't vote democratic and don't vote republican.
It's almost like some people were encouraging of the church a few decades back: having around the world a half billion Catholic conscientious objectors to war. The bishops today are almost calling American Catholics to be pro-life across the board. If they were, some of us could emphasize the HHS issue and others could emphasize the social justice issue, as well others emphasizing capital punishment, unjust war or harsh policies against immigrants. And we could be Catholic in the sense of diversity within unity, with everyone demonstrating different gifts of the Holy Spirit, with few if any being actively pro-life on all issues. Almost everyone, after all, is a cafeteria Catholic. It has probably always been thus: we have different gifts of the Holy Spirit and are different parts of the one (mystical) body. Why the unnecessary -- and dangerous -- partisanship?
The USCCB lawyer in-charge tried to make a case that Catholic Taco Bells franchisees are being deprived of religious freedom.. that kind of silliness condemns the entire USCCB. And he still has a job!
Blah, Blah, Blah, all you want, the only individual persons who are denied the freedom of conscience in matters of reproductive health care by the Bishops are the low "non living wage paid" employees of catholic institutions. Any one who does not understand this basic simple fact is not paying attention.
The bishops have a growing PR problem. They weaken their credibility as they make it increasingly clear that they are merely, like many other conservative old white men, partisan Republicans.
It's obvious that their real underlying agenda is enforcing traditional gender roles by obstructing women's access to contraception. Their ridiculous stance that birth control is a "grave evil," punishable by eternity in hell, undermines acceptance of their pronouncements on other issues, including abortion. Their obsession with punishing uppity females (including nuns and Girl Scouts) makes them appear mean-spirited and foolish.
They'd do themselves a favor by stifling their impulses to bully everyone who disagrees with them. Playing the victim about their supposedly jeoparized freedom isn't doing them any good.