The American bishops are now reacting strongly against the new Health and Human Services mandate forcing religious institutions to provide health insurance coverage for contraception to their employees. A few thoughts:
● I am glad the bishops are angry about this, and that they’re presenting a unified front. Even liberal Catholicism’s favorite son, Cardinal Roger Mahony, has jumped on board in opposition to this new regulation, which is impressive. Cardinal-elect Timothy Dolan, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), has provided admirable leadership on this front.
● If the bishops had been more obviously opposed to Obama in 2008, we might not be in this mess. “Faithful Citizenship,” the U.S. bishops’ 2008 document on Catholic principles for voting, was exceedingly wishy-washy, and it provided the cover liberal Catholics needed to vote for a radical pro-choice candidate like Obama. Bishops need to become more stringently clear: Catholics cannot vote for a pro-choice president when there is a viable pro-life option. It is a sin to do so. The problem is that too many bishops are either too scared to admit that fact publicly, or don’t themselves agree with it. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s “seamless garment” ideas still hold far too much sway at the USCCB. Newsflash: the legal murder of 50 million people is more important than someone’s support for liberal immigration policies, or for SCHIP, or for strict environmental regulation (all of which Catholics can oppose or support without violating Catholic teaching). Opposition to the death penalty (1,279 deaths in 35 years) does not offset support for abortion (50 million+ deaths in roughly the same time period). Get over it.
● President Obama’s 2009 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame looks worse and worse for the Church every day. Fr. John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, looks more and more like a dupe. The fact that a crowd of mostly Catholic parents, students and faculty were blithely applauding Obama as he laid out his health care agenda — which, it turns out, was going to be radically pro-choice and violative of Catholic morality — is sickening.
● I hope the bishops don’t overlook another group of people who will have their consciences violated: Catholics and other Christians who own and operate businesses that are not overtly religious, and who are morally opposed to contraception. Catholic hospitals and universities aren’t the only establishments affected by this mandate. Bishops need to give vocal support to faithful Catholics who live out their faith in their professional lives.
● While the response of the bishops has been admirable, I fear the response from liberal Catholic hospitals will be to go along willingly with the HHS mandate. The focus shifts particularly to the newly formed Dignity Health. Dignity was known, up to a few days ago, as Catholic Healthcare West, which was a chain of 40 hospitals in California, Nevada and Arizona. It just recently announced a restructuring: the group is no longer a Catholic ministry, but is rather “in the Catholic tradition”; its board is composed mostly of laity; its 25 Catholic hospitals have stated that they will follow USCCB directives for healthcare, while its 15 non-Catholic hospitals have stated they would follow certain moral codes. In the past, the chain provided insurance plans with coverage for contraception, along with lots of other violations of Catholic teaching, as documented here by the American Life League. I can’t say Dignity’s track record fills me with any confidence that its hospitals will resist this new HHS mandate; my hope lies in the fact that even a liberal like Sr. Carol Keehan, the president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association and one of the most prominent supporters of Obama’s healthcare plan, is opposed to the new HHS regulation.
● I also fear what the response will be from liberal Catholic universities. Fr. Jenkins of Notre Dame has expressed his strong opposition to this new regulation; I hope he has the fortitude to resist the members of his faculty, who probably disagree with him strongly on this point. He hasn’t been particularly great at resisting what the faculty wants on controversial subjects (see: the “Vagina Monologues” controversy at Notre Dame). I fear that other Catholic schools will willingly give in.
● My hope is that institutions opposed to this regulation simply refuse to comply, and refuse to pay the resultant fines. If you refuse to pay the fines for long enough, eventually men with guns will come to take you to jail. Let them come. If every Catholic or Catholic-led institution were to stand firm, and if a couple Catholic bishops were to allow themselves to get arrested, this regulation would change. The outcry would be unlike anything we can possibly imagine. They can’t arrest every bishop, every hospital CEO, every university president, every Catholic business owner.
● There is only one surefire way to defeat this mandate, and the bishops are too afraid of their dioceses’ tax-exempt status to say what it is. Obama must go. The mandate does not kick in for another year, and can be overturned by a simple presidential fiat. If Obama is defeated this November, this regulation will go away. There’s no way that Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich are dumb enough to let this regulation stand.
John Gerardi is a student at Notre Dame Law School. He writes on topics relating to religion and society. He blogs at Christifidelis Laicus.
