Not surprisingly, the GOP has taken up defending the right of the Catholic Church to infringe the rights of non-Catholics. But, also not surprisingly, they see all the moral and religious issues on the side of the Catholics. Let’s back off for a minute and think about this.
Can institutions run by the Catholic Church—hospitals, for instance—legally hire only Catholics? Generally speaking, yes—as long as they operate only on private money. They can also, under the same rules, choose to serve only Catholics.
But if, for whatever reasons, a Catholic institution chooses to accept money from all taxpayers, regardless of the latter’s religion or lack of it, or to employ or serve people of all faiths or none, then they are under the same legal restrictions as any other private employer or institution. Which is to say, they must refrain from infringing on the religious freedom of the non-Catholics they hire and serve.
For some reason, civil rights and reproductive freedom advocates have ignored this side of the issue. They have allowed the Catholic Church to imply that people who use contraception are interested merely in irresponsible lust or at any rate in mere convenience—in being able to play without paying.
Both the Catholic Church and the civil rights movement seem unwilling to acknowledge that there are religious people for whom the responsible use of contraception is not merely a convenience but a moral obligation. Many mainline Protestants and Jews, for instance, believe that it is not merely a bad idea, but a sin, to bring into the world a child for whom the parents cannot properly care. Like the majority of Americans of all faiths, we want to plan our families to fit within our ability to care for them, and not to have to live celibate within our marriages to do it. And many of us also believe that, while non-marital sex may be a bad idea, unprotected non-marital sex is a sin against the possible child. When a Catholic employer imposes difficulties upon non-Catholic employees who believe they are morally obliged to use contraception, it is a religious right they are infringing.
And let’s consider the financial side of the issue more carefully. It sounds as if the Catholic Church is taking the position that it will not contribute any money to anybody that might be used to defray the costs of birth control. If so, then they not only have to refuse to cover it in their employees’ health insurance policy, but logically they should refuse to hire non-Catholics at all, since heaven only knows what they will buy with their salaries! And presumably they should also advise all Catholics to refuse to pay taxes if there is any chance that those taxes might pay the salaries of local, state, or federal employees who might use the money to pay for birth control. In fact, they should be advising their members to withdraw from the money economy altogether, since any money they pay for goods and services may end up paying for somebody’s birth control. The Catholic church, which is probably the largest single denomination in the US, is putting itself on the path to ghettoization. Probably this is not what the bishops intend. Likely they do not want to join the Amish as exemplary but powerless elements within the American polity.
In fact, what the bishops seem to be trying to do is not to withdraw from the political world, but to throw their weight around within it, in ways that would horrify the Amish, St. Benedict, or, probably, Jesus Christ.
Finally, the Catholic establishment is surprisingly choosy about which of its values it chooses to impose on the rest of us. For instance, they are not willing to advise their members to withhold one thin dime from institutions that sponsor war and the death penalty, both also considered sinful by today’s Catholic establishment. Has it never occurred to the American Catholic Church that many of the civilian casualties of war are pregnant women? It also seems odd that the bishops have never even mentioned that the same health insurance plans they decry for covering birth control also cover the prescription of Viagra for unmarried men. Isn’t that at least as immoral as birth control, by their lights? Isn’t it interesting that the issues on which the Catholic Church chooses to exercise its political influence in the US, regardless of the Church’s own moral teaching, all directly and primarily affect women?
So let’s not allow the Catholic establishment to get away with monopolizing First Amendment high ground. What they are demanding is the right to infringe on the religious freedom of their non-Catholic employees. The government should not aid and abet them in doing it.
CynThesis
My good CynThesis,
It is interesting to me if to no one else that in this issue the Catholic Church is arguing so strongly simultaneously for itself and and for the rights of the Pillars of Fire Christian Identity Hospitals of North America to not treat Catholics, blacks, Jews, or others on the conscience grounds that, first, they do not practice veterinary medicine and, second, to do so in a hospital for humans would be irresponsibly septic.
Given this inescapable equivalence – that, however more important to Catholics themselves they may find their own religious conscience convictions, a claim based on the abstraction of religious conscience must of necessity apply to any and all* religious conscience – the problem fairly clearly then devolves back into one of the government making rules (in this particular HHS case which prescription medicines must be universally covered) which universally cover, empower, and restrict a diversity of values groups with often conflicting values.
Which then leaves us obviously at the root issue: what are the boundaries between elective tribalism and federalism, and what must they be in order to step beyond antagonistic, tribalistic social Balkanization?
On what basis does one parse condemning the conscience of the racist while approving the conscience of the Catholic corporation? Popularity? Preponderance of force? Coin toss?
Differently put, how thick a pad of permission slips will we need, for whom?
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
*This obviously puts the Roman Catholic Church (or, obviously, any other religion arguing priority) in an infinite regress of contradictions pickle if it wishes to argue that it is a legitimate religion deserving of exemption but Sammy Snoid’s Church of the Moment is not. Why is the SSCoM not? Well, because, obviously, the government should clearly recognize the pedigree of the 2,000-year-old RCC over the upstart SSCoM – because the RCC acknowledges the government as the definitive arbiter of legitimate religious conscience?
This Talking Points Memo post may be of interest: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/how-scalia-helped-obama-defend-the-birth-control-rule.php?ref=fpblg
My good Lynn,
There is nothing I have read about this issue yet that does not leave me feeling exactly like Goya’s self-portrait of himself in Plate 43 of Los Caprichos.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
This hits on the problem of granting conscience waivers. The government gets into the problem of what is a real religion.
This doesn’t seem to be a real problem in practice. The Universal Life Church (are they still around) and Pastafarians are more parodies or performance art. Overt scams by people claiming to be religions are few and far between* and it is best to leave gray area cases alone to avoid defining “religion” and “church” too narrowly.
There was a case in the Chicago area recently. A man claimed that his house was a church, and the property taxes should be adjusted accordingly. He furnished a picture of his house with a cross on it. He was too cheap to even put a real cross up, he just photoshopped it on to the picture.
The Universal Life Church is indeed still around.
I’m a minister of that organization and have performed marriage ceremonies under their auspices.
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there are religious people for whom the responsible use of contraception is not merely a convenience but a moral obligation.
Not a problem – that is definitely their perrogative. But it’s not a right, especially if it violates the constitutional protection provided to another religion. If you want birth control, BUY IT – THAT is your right, not receiving it from another just for showing up and wanting it.
Classic misstatement of rights, facts, etc from beginning to end.
For instance: What they are demanding is the right to infringe on the religious freedom of their non-Catholic employees.
No. The Catholic church is demanding its religious freedom. Their employees can always go down the street to Planned Parenthood. The demand that someone else pay for our rights is absurd. Is someone going to buy me a gun? Should someone provide me with whatever devices I desire in order to practice free speech? Is someone else responsible for providing a place to peacefully assemble? …
Just another example of how willing the left is to jump not totalitarianism to force others to do their bidding. Shall we start a modern day Inquisition? Yes, do as the left says, or else!!
“What they are demanding is the right to infringe on the religious freedom of their non-Catholic employees. ”
“Both the Catholic Church and the civil rights movement seem unwilling to acknowledge that there are religious people for whom the responsible use of contraception is not merely a convenience but a moral obligation.”
In other words, if I refuse to subsidize your contraceptives, I am actively violating your religious freedom. Hm. I think you need to take some time off and re-read the 1st Amendment and carefully examine how silly you sound. You may also contemplate if you have any right to other people’s fruits of labor.
P.S. Most important issue is that we have a man who cannot be trusted to run a hot-dog stand is being put in a position to decide what kind of insurance we all need to purchase or being provided by our employer. This is shameful. Even Obama were not an affirmative action fruitcake, it would be wrong to give anyone so much power – but giving so much power to this guy?! This is not even funny – it’s hillarious.
P.P.S. Our Glorious Leader found a way out of this predicament – the insurance companies will be forced to provide contraceptives free of charge – and won’t cost the employer anything. Apparently, the cost of the contraceptives will be covered by Santa Claus. I never thought highly about Obama – but his last decision makes him look even “dumberer”.